Black Swan Study

A commission: a pair of Black swans. I may have mentioned it. It involved me being chased by an angry fowl and taking refuge on an arched bridge over its personal waterspace. It preened and boated itself triumphantly back and forth beneath me for half an hour, glaring at me with that dreadful red eye while I took pictures. A glamorous creature with a dangerous edge; a Hollywood diva of yesteryear in the style of Bette Davis or Gloria Swanson, no pun intended, but I bet she wasn’t born with that moniker.

I’m starting with a study for the final painting, which will be 27″ x 15″, acrylic on board, and will have two swans. For this study, which measures 17 3/4″ x 12 1/2, I left off one swan to keep it simple.

I started off with a black silhouette of the bird. I’ll add detail later. I just wanted the shape here.

Next, I mixed up a big glop of titanium white and raw sienna, and one of cadmium lemon with titanium white, mixed with heavy acrylic gel medium, which reminds me of library paste. This got slapped on as a background, and swirled with a fat bristle brush to raise up waves and ridges around the silhouette.

Then I added the shape of the head and neck, and suggestions of feather edging and the shape of the back and folded wings. Funny bird, this swan. It’s black, except for the primaries (flight feathers), and the biggest wing coverts curl up at the ends.

Sorry for the short post; it’s late, I’m tired, time for bed. Sleep well, y’all!

Where Did I Go?

I went all sporadic on you again, sorry! I’ve been in Reduction/Organization/Creation mode, no time left over for much of anything else except for doing my taxes. Not that I haven’t thought about you- honest- everything reminds me of a blog post. Remember my little remark about cochineal beetle juice the other day? I just happened to be sipping my favorite new apertif, Campari and Cinzano With a Twist on the Rocks, enjoying the very interesting warm red color of the drink, as well as the peculiar bitter aromatic flavor with an underlying nuttiness, and looking at the ingredient list on the Campari bottle noticed that the only thing specifically mentioned was Natural Carmine Color. The rest of the ingredients, apparently, are a closely guarded secret. Only Mr. Campari knows for sure, or something like that. So I looked up Natural Carmine, and sure enough, it’s cochineal beetle juice. Who knew? I feel even closer to the splendors of nature drinking this stuff, and now I have something else in common with paint.

Think I’ll call this drink The Painted Bunting

Current art projects include a logo for OU’s Darwin celebrations (Darwin turns 200 next year- lots and lots of candles he’ll be blowing out), some new drawings, a pastel of a resting bison-see above-and a new commission of a pair of Australian Black swans. That’s a going to be a post all in itself. Do you know what I had to go through to get my reference material?

Q:Where do you find Australian Black swans in Oklahoma in the dead of winter?

A: You find them at the Jasmine Moran Children’s Museum in Seminole. Silly question.

Q: Are Australian Black Swans nice birds?

A: No. Swans are mean and will hurt you. Australian Black Swans will hurt you the hardest.

Oh no! A swan! Run like hell!

About the bison picture at the top of this post: the background was an experiment that turned out very well. I’ve been hearing all about pastel washes: you draw on the pastel and “wash” it with turpentine or turpenoid, in my case. Works real nice. You use as many colors as you want in the dry medium, get the colors where they look good, then brush on the turp, mooshing up and dissolving all the colors , smushing them around and into each other. When it all dries you can go over it again with more dry pastel. And turp it some more. As far as I know there’s no end to it. The pastel sinks into the tooth of the paper and stays there for good (I’m using Rives BFK heavyweight). Part of the beauty is that the paper doesn’t buckle, dries fast and flat when you saturate it with turpentine as opposed to water. Just don’t light a match while you’re waiting for it to dry, and use some ventilation, for God’s sake.

Pastel wash on Rives BFK, still wet.

Once you have your pastel washed paper, you can draw right over it, and add more pastel color on the drawing. Try it- it’s fun and easy!

The Sting

Polistes fuscatus- photo by Bruce J. Marlin

There’s something called the Schmidt Scale of Pain- comparable to the Fujita Scale for tornadoes or the Scoville Scale for chili peppers. We like to have a tool for measuring whatever we experience, and the Schmidt Scale quantifies the severity of Hymenopteran stings. To come up with this scale, of course, someone had to actually get stung for science. Justin O. Schmidt is that special someone. In 1990 he published a paper on the subject, with descriptions that are truly inspired:

• 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
• 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
• 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
• 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
• 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
• 2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
• 3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
• 3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
• 4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).
• 4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

In the last two days I’ve had the opportunity to sample the sting of the paper wasp firsthand. Two species, Polistes carolina and Polistes fuscatus have obligingly allowed me to make my own pain comparison. The last few days have been warm ones, and somehow these critters have been invading the house (along with a large number of ladybugs) and buzzing at the upstairs windows, looking for winter quarters or a way out. The last few days have felt like a siege- with these things droning around like scary little helicopters.

Three nights ago I was painting at my drafting table and felt a light flutter on my wrist. Absently I brushed it away and got instantly nailed by P. fuscatus. It hurt, but not as badly as I thought it would, although two days later my forarm was still red and swollen, probably an allergic reaction. Then, the night before last I stumbled barefoot at 3 a.m. into the kitchen for a drink of water and stepped on what first felt like a sand burr (having a long-haired dog in the country can be such a treat), but when the thorny pain grew exponentially into a flaming torch of agony, I turned on the light to find an angry P.carolina attached to my little toe, jabbing away. MUCH more painful than P. fuscatus. And my bleats of pain and bad language were more generous in proportion as well.

By the way, there is a P.carolina on the wall above me RIGHT NOW, behaving in a very threatening manner, and who knows when this horror will be over? All I can do for now is to stay vigilant, and pray for a cold spell.

Polistes carolina

Photos and description here