Like the Phoenix From the Ashes

Tuesday:

I spent most of the day on Tuesday working on the first layer of whites for my second painting, which I’m very happy with. The fact that I had no emotional charge left from the previous day’s “disaster” was key.   I actually painted something that looks real!  Definite progress thanks to some very good coaching and lots and lots of practice drawing my hands in the weeks leading up to this. Yay!

I chose to do these using Titanium white oil paint again, but this time using Maura’s Medium (a formula that Maura, one of my future teachers, has developed). The base coat for this one had been created using Liquin and a mix of Phtalo  Blue and Ultramarine Blue that were swished around with a sheet of acetate (something similar to what I liked to do with acrylics).

• By the way, I’m grateful to our teacher Aloria, who has been spending time in recent days looking up health & safety information on several products that we’re using.  A lot of companies don’t actually list ingredients on bottles to help preserve trade secrets, but with a bit of research, you can find the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for each product, a legal requirement.  With the help of the Internet and a few books we have in class, she discovered that the quick-drying Liquin we were using is extremely toxic, containing 2 known carcinogens, amongst other nasty things.  Her conclusion, which comforted me somewhat, is that the mediums developed by our teachers as well as our chosen cleaning agents, mostly made from the sap of trees (turpentine, balsam, white spirits, etc.) are actually less harmful.  Skin contact isn’t recommended, but the fumes, which can be pretty strong, aren’t necessarily toxic.

Late in the day, the grand master Professor Ernst Fuchs dropped by the studio, and when Laurence showed him what happened during my first glazing, he said that wouldn’t be a problem at all.  Reassuring.

I also spent a lot of time on Tuesday practicing using egg tempera (harder to apply than oils) with a liner brush (a brush with only a few very long hairs).  After seeing my results, David recommended I use it for the second layer of whites on this one.

Wednesday:

Like the phoenix from the ashes, I brought my image back with white egg tempera, which you can apply to a glaze that’s still a bit tacky, unlike oils.  I spent 8 solid hours in the flow (with a 10 minute lunch break and skipping the nude model drawing session) mostly using my liner brush hatching and cross-hatching with tiny little lines. I quite enjoyed this meditative process.  I also did some stippling (smushed dots with a dry brush), especially on the main figure and then more lightly over my hatches in the tree.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite see the previous shape of my angel and turned him into a Pillsbury Doughboy. Egg tempera dries almost instantly, bonding to the tacky glaze, so I couldn’t do anything once I’d put the paint down. Luckily, I was once again told that with the Mischtechnik, that won’t be a problem.  I can bring him back in a subsequent layer.