On Day Three, Lynn demonstrated doing a value study in black and white oils. First she did a line drawing by “sight sizing.” Then she established a “bug line,” a term I was unfamiliar with. A Bug Line is the line where light striking a curved surface, divides into light and shadow. In the photograph Lynn was drawing from, the bug line was complex. Both Nanci Fulmek and I were doing side shots of our horses, so the shadows were mostly on the underside of the horse. It’s a little more difficult to see on my painting owing to the fact that Pelee is a bay rather than a chestnut and the sun was lower in the sky.

The images above are by Fred Senn, Jo Simmons and Julie Rauchwarter.

The images above are by Jo Simmons and myself. These pictures were taken at the end of Day Five. The procedure was to (1)trace the black and white charcoal drawings from Day Two onto a canvas, (2) block in the light and dark areas and the “bug line” with a turp wash, (3) paint in the correct tones and approximate colors with oils.

I, however, chose to work from a different image than I’d worked with on Days Two and Three because I thought the light and shadows of Pelee standing completely broadside were less interesting than they were in this more intimate scene of Geneia going out to halter Pelee in the paddock. This was the one image I did not blow up into an 8×10 before attending the Workshop, so after Lynn’s demonstation on Thursday morning, I decided I must drive to Target with my camera card to enlarge this image, and as is my typical experience, I flung my self in my car and rode off madly in all directions, which of course resolved itself into the wrong direction. Soon I was headed with great speed down 280 (which was unhandily closed in an actually useful direction for arriving at the Atelier mornings). It took me at least an hour of navigating my way back. Thereupon I consulted the map which Lynn had kindly drawn for me and arrived at Target without further mishap.

My painting reflects a little less worktime owing to my recurrent adventure on the Minneapolis highways. Also, I did not trace this picture from a charcoal drawing, but drew directly in paint on the canvas. I used the same principles of comparative measuring, but it does save time to correct mistakes in draughtsmanship with charcoal, rather than doing it paint. As forgiving as the medium is, correcting in wet paint is messier than charcoal and eraser.

The above images are of our paintings at the end of Day Five (about 9 hours of work). The tones and approximated colors have been laid in. From top to bottom we have Nanci Fulmek (her Arabian gelding, Low Carb), Julie Rauchwarter, Yorke McGillivray and Fred Senn.

It’s amazing how quickly a painting can come together with just a few hours of painting. I’ve decided to walk away from After the Descent so that my eye can view it afresh, before I finish it.

I was so relieved to have found some pigs for my Traveling Salesman (Odysseus) painting a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, I drove the 45 minutes to their location, hoping to take my photographs. The sun was high; the light was good. The pigs weren’t out though. I didn’t know what to do beyond wait a few minutes outside the pen. No one was home up at the house, so I didn’t know what I could do beyond that. Getting pictures of these pigs may be harder than I thought. Now that weather’s grown warm, they may spend all their time sleeping in their barn. It’s a little out of my way to run up there very often, so I may have to start working on something else next.

Here is an extract from a poem, The Heart, by Francis Thompson. I’ve known the last two lines in particular for years and used them as a chapter heading for the novel I’ve been working on.

Correlated Greatness

O nothing, in this corporal earth of man,
That to the imminent heaven of his high soul
Responds with colour and with shadow, can
Lack correlated greatness. If the scroll
Where thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyph
Be might through its mighty habitants;
If God be in His Name; grave potence if
The sounds unbind of hieratic chants;
All’s vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm
Nature is whole in her least things exprest,
Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm.
Our towns are copied fragments from our breast;
And all man’s Babylons strive but to impart
The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.

See next blog for the painting in progress. Here’s a poem about Orpheus by Sir Robert Sitwell:

ORPHEUS

WHEN Orpheus with his wind-swift fingers

Ripples the strings that gleam like rain,

The wheeling birds fly up and sing,

Hither, thither echoing;

There is a crackling of dry twigs,

A sweeping of leaves along the ground,

Fawny faces and dumb eyes

Peer through the fluttering screens

That mask ferocious teeth and claws

Now tranquil.

As the music sighs up the hill-side,

The young ones hear,

Come skipping, ambling, rolling down,

Their soft ears flapping as they run,

Their fleecy coats catching in the thickets,

Till they lie, listening, round his feet.

Unseen for centuries,

Fabulous creatures creep out of their caves,

The unicorn prances down from his bed of leaves,

His milk-white muzzle still stained green

With the munching, crunching of mountain-herbs.

The griffin, usually so fierce,

Now tame and amiable again,

Has covered the white bones in his secret cavern

With a rustling pall of dank dead leaves,

While the salamander, true lover of art,

Flickers, and creeps out of the flame;

Gently now, and away he goes,

Kindles his proud and blazing track Across the forest,

Lies listening,

Cools his fever in the flowing waters of the lute.

But when the housewife returns,

Carrying her basket,

She will not understand.

She misses nothing,

Hears nothing.

She will only see

That the fire is dead,

The grate cold.

But the child upstairs,

Alone, in the empty cottage,

Heard a strange wind, like music,

In the forest,

Saw something creep out of the fire.