Black Swans and The Impact of the Unexpected

This little painting is my way of working out the kinks, technically and otherwise, in a larger painting that’s going to a paying customer (the commissioner). It’s where I can relax and have fun and make mistakes with reckless abandon. And sometimes the mistakes turn out to be in the right direction. Sometimes it’s a good idea not to overthink it too much. I repeat again what Gustave Moreau said, Art does not live by will alone; everything depends on docile submission to the inrush of the unconcious. I’m not sure how much absinthe he’d had by then, but I believe he’s right, up to a point. At some point the conscious mind should intervene and give a bit of direction. Or should it? Discuss among yourselves. See here for further enlightening instruction, but come right back.

So there I was, fussing and tightening up all those gray-edged black feathers (it’s really a beautiful pattern, but after awhile it was all you saw). My forest was vanishing under all the trees, the overall form (and that nice negative shape) was getting buried in detail. I suddenly saw this, grabbed a fat flat and started scooping darks at random off the palette. Big blobs of raw umber, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, and small swipes of light gray mixes that got in the way of the brush ended up on the swan. My purpose was to go back to the negative shape and try again, but something unexpected happened. The paint landed in a flurry of brushwork, unintended and unconscious, but when I stepped back the swan form had blossomed into positive shape. Nice edges, interesting sweeps of shape, interplays of warm and cool. I couldn’t have planned it better. And so I washed out the brushes, turned off the light, and went to make dinner. I know when one shouldn’t intervene with a good session of submission to the inrush of the unconscious.

The Black Swan Theory strikes again!

Speaking of highly conscious minds, Bill of the Birds has given me a mention on his very excellent blog. As Editor of Bird Watcher’s Digest, he’s been an enthusiastic supporter and celebrator (is someone who celebrates called a celebrity?) of everything-bird-and-bird-art-related, including bird artists. BWD is one of the very few magazines today using commissioned illustrations. They use plenty of great photos, but every cover is a work of art, and there’s plenty of fine art between the covers. Oh, and Bill’s got a podcast now, filled with entertaining interviews and discussions with top birders. Yay, Bill and Bird Watcher’s Digest!

The Search For Red, Blue and Green

Up Jumped Summer, With Cannas, version 1

Just finished two versions of the Painted bunting Bird Watcher’s Digest cover I’ve been working on this week, and have the third in the series well along. I’m pretty taken with the Canna Bunting version, though, gotta warn you. I hate to say how many times I’ve had to do this bird over, especially the face, which is so sweet in the real bird.

Closeup detail of Up Jumped Summer, Version 1

Getting to blazing hot red, royal blinding blue and vicious lime green in watercolor ain’t easy. You can’t get there straight out of the tube, at least I wasn’t capable of it, and I had to patch a lot of colors together to imply what I wanted. So I’ve been doing a lot of rewetting and lifting pigment, scrubbing the paper and even going over areas with goache (pronounced gwash) which is an opaque watercolor. I hate to resort to opaques but business is business. And I was not only trying to get a blazing hot red, but was trying to show the shape and volume of the bird. Pain in the butt, it was. I think it might have been easier and maybe more successful executed in acrylic paint, or possibly tiny bits of broken lapis lazuli, ground sulfur mixed with jade dust, and a soupçon of cochineal beetle juice with a dash of tabasco.

Recipe for a nice hot watercolor red:

Step one: Quinacridone Gold wash, let dry completely
Step two: Opera Pink (wow, what a color- bubblegum on steroids!) washed over QG, let dry
Step three: Rose Madder, use judiciously over both and be sure that the previous layers show .
Step four: small touches of Linden green goache, and goache tints of Cobalt blue and opera pink for further touches.
Step five: Cadmium red medium, Alizarin Crimson, Winsor Red, any damn thing that looks red.
Step six: Panic and scrub everything off with a stiff brush, dab paper dry and start over.
Oh well, whatever works. Experiment on a scrap of paper, for sure.

Here’s version 2:

Up Jumped Summer, version 2, with Romano Pole Beans

I  like the filtered light effect here, but there’s a certain lack of spellbinding drama (should have thrown in a tomato or maybe just thrown a tomato). The bird in #1 is nicer, I think. This one looks a little placid, like it’s eaten too many cutworms. What do you think?

I keep a layout template for Bird Watcher’s Digest in a folder on my Mac and use it in Photoshop to check my composition and layout. It’s handy and lets me preview and crop at will. BWD uses a wrap-around cover, with the art extending front and back. Here are the two versions popped into the layout template:

By the way, I’m not the only one working on a piece of bird art today. JZ has a splendid painting on the board which I insist you go have a look at- she’s a master at fresh and lively watercolor, and her birds are unparalled (mine are just Nonpareil. Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun).

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!