Sunday, July 28, 2013

Birding with oils

My backyard studio
Scarlet blooms of crocosmia brighten an otherwise emerald wall of grape- vines cascading down one side of my stuccoed garage.  They've been blossoming all summer.  But now they seem to sense that I'm trying to paint them, and they're tiptoeing away.

This summer, I'm determined to once and for all face the challenge of oil paints bequeathed to me by the late Charles Foster, New Orleans portraitist and composer who settled in Tacoma following the loss of his studio to Hurricane Katrina.

For the past year or so, I've collected How-To books on the subject.  I talk with painters.  I inventoried the thumb-stained tubes and worn brushes Charlie left me. I've uncapped the jug of turpentine and sniffed the jar of linseed oil, all but gagging at the overpowering stench.  If this is the price of printing "oil on canvas" in my catalogs, I think, forget it!  I won't have the smell in the house.

But sailing in on this summer's high-pressure atmospheric jet stream is my opportunity, I realized.  With little likelihood of rain, I set up a 10-foot pop-up canopy in my  back yard.  Paint cans filled with concrete provided anchors.  I hauled a studio easel downstairs.  I set it up near the crocosmia.  A portable vinyl table and a lawn chair completed the studio furniture.

A recycled pastries tray from Costco is my palette.  I spread out a half-dozen tubes of Charlie's paints.  I circled the tray with my basic colors.  I diluted a  green oil with turpentine and lay what I'd thought was a thin ground on a stretched canvas.  Apparently it was not thin enough.  Three days later it was still damp.  And it still stunk.

When I paint plein air with my acrylics or oil pastels, I seldom sit long at a canvas.  For better or for worse, i lay the pigments down with almost rhythmic deliberation, often bypassing the palette to blend paint right on the canvas.  I work from horizon to foreground.  That's the beauty of acrylic--paint dries to the touch within minutes, especially in this warm summer weather.  I need not imagine my "whites" in advance.  I can change composition as I go.  Or paint out problem areas and start over.  In any case, in two hours I pack up my kit and I'm gone!

But I've been 10 days into this one painting.  I began with a white ground and thinned the oils with an odorless mineral spirit.  I work as far as I can over dry areas and then walk away, usually until the next day.  A few times I paint both morning and evening.  For all the attention I'm able to pay to the different lights, I may as well be working from photos.  But I'm slowly filling the canvas.  And if I didn't believe I will have something worth hanging at the end of this summerlong journey, I wouldn't continue.

Yesterday morning, I was outside about 10.  The sun wasn't high enough to light up the scarlet blossoms, but I had plenty of background to lay in.  Across the street, a neighbor practiced her scales on an alto recorder.  jFrom two blocks further, I could hear the young voices of a cheerleader camp, under weigh at the university.  And suddenly, these sounds were drowned by the whirrrrr-whirrrrr-whirrrr of a hummingbird's wings as it fed from the crocosmia. 

The bird hovered, darted, backed away, dived in again.  And then it spotted my reddish-colored shirt.  It came within a foot of my shoulder, slid sideways a few inches, then back, eyeing me all the while.  Deciding I was not a flower, it buzzed away in a grand loop, out through the arched sidewalk gate and to the red feeder outside the kitchen window.

Each day I return to my palette, there seem to be fewer crocosmia.  It must be near the end of their season.  But even if they're not around to let me finish my painting,
I'll have that hummingbird's visit to remember.


Wednesday, July 17, 2013

The old Dash Point dock

The old Dash Point dock in 1964
When I moved from the sandhills of eastern Montana to Dash Point in 1964, Puget Sound was a grand and welcomed lake. At first opportunity I hauled a piece of plywood and my latex house paints and tints to the shore beneath the dock in the county park.

This was my first major work.  I have dabbled in tempura and watercolor all my life but this grand structure, glowing in the late-afternoon light, had captivated me.  A half-century later, I remain entranced by the composition, the color, the repetition of the pilings.

I must have been a fast study with my paints.  Using a household latex satin interior paint, I colored the basic white with intense drops of tint.  These came in metal tubes, common before the "espresso machine" automatic mixers of today.  I had acquired them from paint stores that discarded them in favor of the more accurate mixers.  I blended my colors right on the canvas--or in this case, plywood. 

You can see that the upper sands have dried out, indicating that what is pictured is an incoming tide.  Well, it wasn't incoming when I set up my easel, I remember that.  But it was certainly incoming when I hastily ended my plein air session that day.

It was a week before I had an opportunity to return to the dock, to complete the painting--the water needed attention, and I had hoped to add the feet and legs of some people up on the dock.  But a week later, as any Northwesterner would know, the tide was already in.  And the unfinished painting was pushed aside in the trailer where I lived above the state park, and later in the beachfront home where Virginia and I made our first home together.

A friend who is curator of a small art gallery was left high and dry last week by his scheduled artist.  I came to the rescue with a dozen small acrylics and oil pastels I've done in the past year or so.  And there, behind the door in my studio, was--the old Dash Point dock!

I touched it up a little and stapled on a quick frame.  I'm sure it won't sell, and it won't win any prizes. 

But old friend, it is good to see you again!

Among Old Friends

By Jim Erickson
Two Bobs and an eagle-eyed friend
Meeting old friends over a cup of Joe,
Gets thoughts percolating, then stories flow,
The yarns are really all over the map,
Literally and figuratively, as we yap.
Tall tale ideas of a Narrows dam
Swinging out, Gig Harbor to ram,
Flooding the Legislature in its wake,
Maybe that's a good thing for us to take.
Salinas Valley of Steinbeck's book
Gets more than just a passing look,
Virtues of California's lettuce growing
Mixes with robot machines for sowing.
On to Buffalo, New York, we turn
And about Maxwell Parrish's art we learn
That some critics couldn't grasp his themes,
And lost sight of incredible colors, it seems.
Scary moments on ledges in the West,
Dropped pebbles unheard ending a nightly quest,
But a rewarding sunrise glorious at best;
Sidewinders singing in the dark,
Their rattles like serenades in the park;
Moving, hat by face, to prevent fangs' mark.
From ledges, we leap to a rocky old face,
A man on a mountain in a New Hampshire place;
The Great Stone Face,” Hawthorne's book,
Told the story of a boy who achieves the look.
The face, honored on a coin, no longer around,
Eroded and weathered, it fell to the ground.
We wrapped up with snippets on cowboys and guns,
Shooting snakes in noon day suns;
B17s, Leathernecks and war stories galore;
When we meet again, we'll discuss them more.