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.

I thought I might get through the season without getting the nasty cold that practically everyone around me has had at least once already this Fall. Sugar, however, is a well-known immune suppressor, and I’ve had quite a bit of that lately, so alas, it’s my turn. That’s OK.  I was going to go hiking in the outskirts of Vienna, but instead, I can finally catch you up on what’s been happening at the Academy (in between naps, German TV, Czech movies, and the ingestion of healthy food and supplements).  By Monday (if not sooner), I’ll be back on track.  I don’t want this to stretch on for a month as it did for my roommates.

I realize it’s been weeks since I’ve written about classes.  Back in Canada, I would introduce people to new paintings almost weekly (especially during my blissful marathon phases).  Working the Mischtechnik with oils, however, is a much much slower process, so I had better not wait until I’m finished a painting or else my post would be 10 times longer (I can hear you groaning).  So this is what we’ve been up to.

In addition to shopping for our materials and sessions on:

• Sacred Codes by Laurence Caruana (Carved Stone: Gothic Worldview and Legends of the Netherlandish);
  
  

  
• priming panels with rabbit skin glue (3 coats of clear for the back / 4-5 coats with white Titanium pigment for the front, sanded in between) – luckily, nothing resembling a live rabbit was brought into the class for this, but it was smelly;
  
  

  

  

  

  
• imprimatura (base coat of paint) and transferring of images;
• the making of egg tempera – yup, a real egg was brought into class for this one;
  
  

  

  
• the Mischtechnik, applying whites, the monochrome underpainitng, colour theory (layering colour);
• alchemy, chemistry, and Laurence Caruana’s Quintessential 5-part Painting Medium,
• painting materials and mediums by Timea Tallian (chemistry, brush cleaning, workplace safety) – this class was very smelly and I had a bit of trouble breathing that day… this is the main reason I can’t imagine pursuing with oils after this course, but we’ll see…;
  
• 2-3 Life Drawing Sessions a week (I’m slowly improving  – these are my best ones so far – it sometimes takes minutes of staring at the model for the differences in highlights, mid-tones, reflective light, core and cast shadows to reveal themselves to me – the greater challenge is still to draw them once I can finally see them… but I am improving!)
  
  

  

  

  

  

  
• and Museum Drawing;

we’re slowly progressing on our trimester paintings.

My Trimester Painting Concept: An Exercise in Self-Revelation:

I’ve already introduced you to one of my painting concepts – the one with the hands.  It’s slowly evolving, but I haven’t spent as much time on it as I have with this, my primary piece.

I worked on the drawing for this painting for about a month, in between all of our lectures and special sessions.  I invite you to look at it for a while to discover what it might mean to you before I tell you all the personal symbolism that went into creating it.

This drawing evolved quite a bit since its initial stages. It’s very much a self-portrait, albeit not in the traditional sense (I haven’t had long hair in years, but I’m definitely pear-shaped).  Many of you are familiar with my many paintings of yoga tree pose ladies. I seem to have an obsession with painting trees as a representation of our Selves –  present in the here and now, yet rooted in Mother Earth and stretched to the Heavens, constantly evolving (I gave a 30-minute presentation on the symbolism of trees during my Treedom exhibition, which I won’t repeat here).  In this drawing, the tree-woman is the main character (although I realize that the higher contrast at the bottom draws your eye there at this point – that will change).  She was modeled after the woman at the center of Ernst Fuch’s painting “Job and the Judgement of Paris” (breasts were significantly reduced, though) after I saw it in a book and realized she was in exactly the pose I had seen in my vision for this painting. My attempts to draw this pose from a live model weren’t nearly as successful as basing her on the drawing in the book. Her bark/body will be covered in sigils, sacred activated symbols that I developed during our 2-week intensive and since, relating to the theme of this painting.  Interestingly, my spiral trees (especially this one) look a lot like Klimt’s tree of life, which I hadn’t seen until about 1.5 years ago (that I recall – who knows… I may have seen it and been influenced by it in my youth).  Of course, being in Vienna, I am surrounded by Klimt’s art – both in museums and every souvenir shop in town. My decision to add the sigils to the bark came out of my wanting to honour some of Klimt’s work that I really admire without copying it.

The tree-woman’s roots are fed by her Divine Connection to the Source, a spiral of light in the distance.  This touches not only on my beliefs in something greater than life here on Earth, but also in the power of guidance/intuition that runs through our very being like sap through a tree.

On her roots rests 4 stylized animals – the panther, boa, horse, and hawk.  These were my power/spirit/totem animals from the age of about 10 all the way until my mid-twenties.  I could fill books with the stories of our adventures together (I spent a lot of time on my own walking or on buses – never a dull moment – and the many chapters of my “imaginary” hero’s journey definitely helped me cope with the realities of this world).  Instead of trying to paint these animals as they appear in nature, however, I’m choosing to make the look of this painting a mix of 2-D and 3-D – partly due to my skill level, but mostly because of my preference for this style over totally realistic work (seeing so much of Klimt’s work here has cemented this preference). Also, the fact that these animals weren’t quite real to begin with (according to the popularly accepted definition of that word) seems to fit this style better.  These four, therefore, represent the main character’s guardians, helpers, connection to all life, qualities of character, and lineage/past.

So what about the angel?  It was definitely inspired by my love of Antonio Canova’s “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss” – a sculpture I saw at The Louvre as a child and sought out again (both in Paris and somewhere in Italy) during previous trips to Europe as both a teenager and adult.  I have carried a postcard of it during my many moves since I was a teen.  This is highly significant for someone who isn’t very fond of museums and who hasn’t paid much attention to other people’s art, no matter how famous they are (I’ve never been an art history fan).  This piece definitely struck a chord with me – a representation for me of Love as the harmonious union of Heaven and Earth (not that I’m waiting to pair up with an angel despite my beliefs in soul mates and twin flames).  In that sculpture, Cupid revives Psyche.  In my concept, he is still with her beyond the moment of awakening and throughout her physical and spiritual evolution. Intriguingly, the pose of the angel in my painting resembles more the one in Canova’s sculpture in the church across the street from our school – that I went to look at after a teacher told me about it. In the original mythology, he is her true love and lover.  I won’t deny that that story is still present in my concept. In addition, the angel here represents divine presence, assistance, and guidance (my belief in guiding spirits and angels)- we’re never truly alone on our journey.  The main light source in this painting will be in the union of their hands – representing their co-creative energy and potential. Growing up, I can’t tell you how many dreams I had of running scared in slow motion and knowing that if the person in front of me simply took my hand, I could run at normal speed to escape the dangers.  These dreams had a definite past life feel to them in addition to reflecting my fears at the time.  The union of hands, therefore, is personally very significant beyond its romantic symbolism and its representation of the union of two worlds.  As you can tell, therefore, this piece is highly personal (there’s enough data in this post for you to conduct your own analysis of my psyche), yet I believe it holds within it Universal themes that will speak to many.

The Creative Process:

1. First came the many stages of developing the drawing based on the armature of the 2:3 rectangle.
   

   
2. Next, I placed a tracing paper over the original drawing (not to ruin the original) and drew a grid (3×3 cm squares).
   
3. I then divided a paper the size of my final painting (50 x 75 cm) into the same number of squares and carefully scaled my drawing up in size by copying it square by square.
   
4. With white transfer paper I traced over that drawing, leaving a white imprint on my Mars Red imprimatura (base coat).
   
5. Using Laurence Caruana’s Quintessential Painting Medium, I started painting in the whites, slowly building up the image with Titanium Oil Paint. It’s much easier to get the desired transparent effect with the oil paint than with the egg tempura or Pelikan Plaka cassein (milk based), which I may use in later stages.  It’s even easier with Lead White (which is banned in Europe, but still sold in North America, which some of my classmates have chosen to use.  Since the teachers are well aware of my chemical sensitivities and fears of toxic fumes, etc., they wisely recommended the Titanium White instead.)
   
   

   

   

What’s next?  Once my first layer of whites is complete, I will be covering it with a thin glaze, probably in yellow.  Then comes more layers of white, different coloured glazes over each, localized glazes over more whites, and localized colour.  This is what the masters’ Mischtechnik is all about – probably started by the Van Eyck brothers in the mid 15th century, revived by Ernst Fuchs after WWII, and passed down to my teachers in the last couple of decades. Its goal is to achieve superior light and transparency, 2 cherished elements in visionary painting.  Here’s a link to a short video (1.5 minutes) by our director demonstrating the effect.

So that’s where I’m at.  There are days that I think about how nice it is to not be working this year, and then there are days when I think how much harder I’m working than if I were teaching ESL part-time and painting on my own.  It’s true that this learning process is not as fun as if I was simply doing my own thing in my studio 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.  This style of painting is challenging for me and some parts are less in synch with who/what I am than others.  The fumes are especially challenging nowadays. However, I’m learning so much, and I’m 100% sure that it will inform what I do in the future in my own artistic practice. I’m not an oil paint convert yet, but I am definitely looking forward to seeing how this painting evolves.  I’m practicing non-attachment though – fully aware that this is an experiment and learning process.  Again, I’m embracing the mystery and moving forward.  Stay tuned!

This week, our focus has been to complete our drawings for the paintings we’ll be starting next week.  For one of my designs, I’ve decided to do something I’ve never done before  – draw hands.  The concept is still in progress – it combines a few of the personal mythology symbols I came up with last week, representing my life’s purpose of both exploring and expressing my love of beauty and the beauty of love.  I’m not super excited about the composition yet (I only came up with the idea on Monday), but it’s a great opportunity to do something very different than my usual style, plus it has me spending several hours drawing the same subject for the first time. The great thing is that the more I practice drawing hands, the better they get (funny that!).  Indeed, I’m learning a lot about drawing techniques (with lots of one-on-one coaching), patience, and more.  I’ve had discussions with a couple of my teachers about the fact that although my left bottom hand in my third draft was based on a photo of my hand and looks quite real, three of the fingers look clumped together – not the most elegant look for a painting.  An earlier version only had 3 fingers showing and that didn’t look good at all – sort of claw-like. So it’s not only about getting it to look real, but getting it to look good.  It makes sense, of course, but all I was thinking of at the time was making it look like what I saw – an accomplishment in itself.  I can certainly see my progress from these 3 drafts alone (they were in hard pencil, so quite pale – I had to darken the images for you to see, but you’ll get the idea). I’ve got more work ahead of me with poses that fan out the fingers in a more visually pleasing way.  I spent over an hour today learning how to do that from my live hand (vs. photo) as David explained the advantage of two eyes over one lens.

Interestingly, this whole exercise has me focusing a lot on my hands all day since I’m posing as my own model. I can’t say I’ve been enjoying looking at my hands much this week.  My body has been talking to me loud and clear since last week – it’s not happy!  My eczema is back and it’s quite painful – the burning, itching, cracking and bleeding…. not much fun.  This kind of nummular eczema is usually caused by environmental toxins and irritants (which there are plenty around despite my efforts to use only perfume-free soaps, detergent, etc. in a shared living space and laundry room), but I have a feeling it’s also diet based.  Years ago I had tested sensitive to a variety of foods which I’ve been overindulging in here: tomatoes, onions, dairy, wheat, sugar, etc. (you’ve read my stories of pizzas, pastries, and Pakistani buffets).  I’ve therefore cut all these out since Saturday in the hopes that it clears up a little before my trip to the Czech Republic this weekend – 3 days of restaurants will be hard on the system (but oh so delicious…. I haven’t had a breaded deep fried brick of Edam cheese in 20 years!)

I am so grateful for these hands though – as my concept for this painting is evolving, it has me reflecting on the receiving, giving, creative, and healing nature of hands, as well as deeper symbolism I’m still exploring in both my waking and dreaming time.  It’s quite intriguing, therefore, that they should be so sore and unattractive these days – I’m quite self-conscious about them, but that isn’t stopping me from sharing this part of my process with you.  I know there’s something bigger to this picture.  Still working on figuring it out though…

sigils taped to my water bottle to practice perspective for the arm

I’ll introduce you to my other concept another day – it’s one I’ve been working on for over a month and I’m loving it.