Well, the 3rd story on this week’s This American Life podcast, the Perils of Intimacy, just wrecked me. Thanks for the kick in the face during my morning commute, NPR.
Here is a man with an owl instead of underpants.
We have all had this classic dream of showing up to class with only an owl on. Relatable.
The man has been getting weird about demolishing the fish pond in the back yard for the last few months, and the disappointment of not finding any dead bodies in the dirt-filled walls is outweighed by the horror of the growing rock pile we have no way of bringing to the dump.
Went outside and realized he had bashed away the concrete pillars holding the roof up and replaced them with a couple of 2x4s.
Turned around and went right back into the house. He can yell when it’s time to call an ambulance and a backhoe.
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I’m trying a very old painting method that is the art equivalent of steeking.
Steeking is when you knit a complicated colorwork sweater in the round like a tube and then cut it in half with scissors to make a cardigan.
Glazing a grisaille is when you thinly paint the figure in brown, then thickly paint in white where the light is, let that dry for a week, and then paint the entire thing black before carefully wiping it away to reveal the lights and darks underneath. If you can do this without panicking and ruining it, you can paint as you normally would after it’s dry, and your painting will have a lovely translucent quality. This is how to built up layers without having to oil in; you only do the color in the last sitting.
So far the white-smeared paintings look really weird and I’m going through the “I’m a fraud who sucks at this thing I have no business trying to be a part of” phase of learning.
I’ll take a video when I paint them black. Maybe it’ll be amazing, why not.
In the meantime, I’m still painting in the break room over lunch.
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My editor wants me to illustrate another book in 2021, which feels like magical thinking right now.
The cat is still dying. He's comfortable right now, but the tumor is growing back and has spread to his neck.
The case numbers are going down. Visitor quarantine ends on October 15th, if anybody wants to do their remote schooling on the beach.
Breakthrough: I have figured out how to oil in.
What is oiling in? Gross.
As paint dries it sinks into the surface and becomes dull, making it impossible to match colors the next time you sit down to work on it. You have to wait for it to dry completely and then rub oil back into it to bring out the color. This sounds easy - because it is - but I got weirdly defensive about finding out why it wasn’t working for me. The oil beaded up, my colors were all wrong, the painting dried weird, it was awful.
So here it is:
Slow down, use less oil, rub for longer.
I’m sorry to pair that information with this image, but that is what you have to do, and I finally did it correctly, and it is just a terrible coincidence that I was painting romance paperbacks in the break room when it happened.
Tests are all negative, we win.
Lockdown extended another 2 weeks. Case numbers dropping slightly.
My friend’s house in Talent, OR burned down in the wildfires this week. Here is some current satellite imagery of the west coast fires to worry over (more at https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/satellite.php).
Ruined some paintings over the long weekend. Thinking about it, working out where I went wrong and how to fix it. Staring hard at everyone’s shadow shapes and facial planes.
Haven’t done a yearly self portrait yet, and the months are getting on. I don’t see how I can get away from this year without including the mask, but I just don’t want to. I already spend ten hours a day in it, I don’t want to sit in it for the next hundred years. Tried posing in it anyway.
