The Bunting, Painted

Up Jumped Summer-Painted Bunting in Cannas. Strong light, warm colors, tropical fervor- Oklahoma!

Here is Painted Bunting v1.0; for all intents and purposes he’s done. I am letting him sit overnight to percolate and so that I can get a look in the morning with a fresher eye and check for corrections. I still am working on the String Bean Bunting (almost done), and the Daylily Bunting is resting on the table as well. That one requires a different color palette, so when these two are done, that one begins.

Detail from painting. Some kind of fancy bird, eh?

I wish I could have days like this all the time- I worked on five paintings simultaneously and finished three. That’s efficiency! I felt so good I pulled an old nocturne of two Barred owls from its frame and with some judicious application and lifting refreshed and renovated it. I spent about an hour fixing bad anatomy, bad perspective, overly tight brushwork, edges so sharp I got a paper cut just looking at them, weird color choices and so on. The piece is over 12 years old, so I have some sort of (lame, temporal) excuse for all the plain badness. I’ll post it later.

The spray bottle got a workout today. Note that I label every color, or I’ll forget what I have in the palette. I use a large plastic palette with deep wells and a central flat mixing area, and squeeze out an entire tube of watercolor paint into each well where it dries into a cake. It gets rewetted with the spray bottle every time I paint.

Right after New Years I celebrated by tearing apart my studio, which is by now a yearly rite, and threw away four trash bags full of awful drawings and horrid paintings generated by me over way too many years. What a rush, what pleasure it was crumpling and tossing! How liberating it felt! Everything is now nicely organized and clean and spacious, and I even found a few relatively decent unfinished paintings, including this one I couldn’t resist finishing up. Finished up today, in fact, and titled as follows…

“Throw Back the Little Ones”- Koi and Snowy Egret, watercolor 21.5″x15.75″

Also finished today is a cottontail bunny, commissioned by a gentleman in California who is giving it to his young niece.

Sweet Geraniums- cottontail rabbit, watercolor, 10″x8″

It seems to be time for me to clean up, chuck out, and take care of old business. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a sense of closure and completion, or who thinks they might be having their mid-life crisis, sans red Ferrari or worse. Now I can begin something new and fresh. Where this goes is anyone’s guess. But, dang, I hope this keeps up- I might get something done if it does!

The Unbearable Loudness of Football Day

I’m huddled upstairs waiting for the next round of shouts, curses and excruciatingly loud handclaps, at which I invariably jump out of my skin and flip a blob of paint off my brush at random targets; this is college football season and there’s a large male on the couch right downstairs who gets heavily invested in this sort of thing. His team, and possibly his manhood, is at stake.

There was a time when the dog would freak out from the noise but in his dottage he’s gone deaf and can snooze through the worst of it. Lucky dog.

Based on all the noise from below, this game’s close. Lots of back and forth. If his team were losing altogether, he’d be very very quiet. If it were winning flat out he’d be screaming “Yes!” and applauding loud enough to carry all the way to the stadium. In Nebraska.

Meanwhile, in town, there’s another Big Game going on. We’re in OU country here and the population of Norman roughly doubles on game day. I was raised in a college town and I know better than to venture out in this kind of heavy weather.

So I’m huddled upstairs, putting paint on a commission I’m calling Walt the Wabbit. Walt, recently deceased, was a big, sweet, gentle lop-eared bunny much cherished by my friend Konrad, who is at this moment in the stands at Owen Field watching OU beat Miami. I’m sure it’s utter pandemonium out there. In his portrait, Walt is surrounded with his favorite food, parsley. It’s a very quiet serene scene; a small rectangle of peace and meditation. Downstairs the Nebraska game is still up for grabs. I know I have some earplugs around here somewhere.

No, not finished yet.