Arting Around

My drawing below of a buffalo skull will be on display along with the work of several other Austin Artists at the Pedernales Lofts at the Holly Community Center in downtown Austin. Time and address of the show are listed below the picture.

Tatanka: 24"x19" Charcoal heightened with white on Gray Ingres Paper

The Interdependence Project's Contemplative Art Show, November 5 – 8

• Thursday and Friday – 5PM to 9PM
• Saturday and Sunday – 11AM to 3PM

Location: 2401 East Sixth Street, Loft #2017 [ map ]

Click HERE to visit my art site and view more work.

I was inspired to sketch our 16th President after reading Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about the political genius of Abraham Lincoln. I got the idea for the title of the piece from something Carl Sandburg said in his trilogy on the life of Lincoln.

     

Lincoln was 54 years old on November 9, 1863, when he stood for my drawing's souce photo. The Civil War was raging well into in its second year with no surety at all that the North would win. But, on April 9, 1865, Lee finally surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. On April 11 Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks to an audience that included John Wilkes Booth. On the 14th, Booth shot him. On the 15th, he died. In December, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified and slavery was abolished in the U.S.

A Digital Reference, an Abbreviated Grid – and a Big Mirror
Once I found a suitable image of Lincoln on the Web, rather than print what was bound to be a low-resolution copy, I decided to work directly from my laptop screen (gallery image 2). This was a first for me, and I have to say, it has its advantages.

1. I took the image into Adobe Photoshop and enlarged it as much as I could without causing serious pixelation.
2. I cropped it to a perfect square (which was all that would fit on my computer screen).
3. I added a Photoshop layer and drew an X over the entire image. (Normally, I'd put clear acetate over the source, and draw the X on the acetate with a Sharpie. In either case, I can easily lose the X when I've reached a point where I only want to see the unmarked image. I simply remove the acetate or hide the X layer in Photoshop.)
4. I lightly toned a 17" x 14" sheet of white paper using brown conte crayon, paper towels, and a chamois.
5. I needed to make a corresponding X on my paper. However, I wasn't using a square sheet because I intended to draw more of the torso than was visible onscreen after enlarging the image. So, I put light dots at four corners of an imaginary square starting 1/2 an inch down and in from the top of the page.
6. I pinched a thin edge on a kneaded eraser, and used it to lightly draw an X connecting the four corner dots. (Sometimes I draw the X lightly with the medium I'm using; but, lines from charcoal, conte, and other drawing media – however light – are hard to completely erase. This is especially true of a hard pastel crayon like conte. But, if the X is already an erased line, it eventually disappears completely into the drawing.)

When working from 2-D sources, I often use an X as an abbreviated grid to determine the general placement and relationship of the features without inhibiting the impulse to draw in a more free-hand fashion – or committing myself to slavishly copying the source. In lieu of a more complex grid, I use mirrors to check accuracy and perspective (gallery image 3). By simultaneously imposing distance and reversing the image, a mirror disrupts the context of a work causing the mind to suddenly see mistakes not previously apparent.

Click HERE to visit my art site and view more work.

Several years ago, I had to cast two works in metal for a sculpture class. I'd already done a bronze casting (see Lost Wax and a Bronze Barbie), so I thought I'd change things up and preserve a pair of old hiking boots in aluminum. However, to use the lost wax process I'd employed for my bronze, I needed a WAX REPLICA of each boot !!

Under the guidance of sculpture professor Roger Columbik, here's how I turned canvas hiking boots to wax . . .

         

1. First of all, it was part of my bright idea to cast only the main body of each boot into aluminum – then, glue the original rubber sole, brand labels, and hardware to the finished metal version of each. Thus, my first order of business was to painstakingly remove these items from each shoe.
2. Next, I created a clay collar along the now-soleless base of each shoe – inset a little from its outer edge (as you can see in the top thumbnail of the first image above) – and used these collars to affix each shoe to a wooden board.

3. I partially filled each boot with newspaper and a thin coating of clay – creating something akin to the base of a bowl just below the tongue of each boot. (This hidden bowl is shown left in a finished boot. In the cast boots, everything below this "false bottom" is hollow.)
4. I applied several coats of varnish to each boot until it was as stiff as the board it sat upon; then, covered each one in saran wrap.
5. Using a rolling pin like device, I rolled sheets of clay like pastry into 1/4 inch thicknesses; then, cut them into workable pieces to lay across the shoes like blankets, molding each piece to the basic form of the shoe. (The saran wrap kept the clay blankets from adhering to the material of the shoes.)
6. Using a long thin strip of the clay, I built a flange (or lip) over the center and across the tongue of each shoe (shown in "Clay Blanket" thumbnail above). At the apex of this flange, I placed an additional plug of clay, which I'll explain in a moment.
7. When the clay dried, I coated one side of each shoe with plaster of paris up to the clay flange and let it dry.
8. Removing the clay flange, I coated the flange-edge of the first dried plaster section with vaseline. Then, I applied plaster to the other half of each shoe until it met the vaselined edge of the first section. (I had to be careful that the new section met, but, didn't adhere to the first section – so, I could crack open and slide the two sides of the molds off of each shoe as necessary. I also had to ensure that the plaster went around, and not over, the clay plugs – which would later provide needed openings into each of the plaster molds.)
9. I took the two finished sections of plaster mold off of each boot, removed the clay blankets and saran wrap – then, replaced the molds on the boots, using melted wax to secure each plaster pair to itself and to its wooden board. (The area that had once held the clay blanket was now an empty layer of space between the inside of the plaster mold, and the outside of each shoe.)
10. I sprayed the shoes and the inside of the plaster molds with a releasing agent; then, used a funnel to pour rubber mold mixture into the hole where the clay plug had been, filling the empty space between the shoe and the plaster with the liquid rubber.
11. When the rubber gelled, I removed the outer plaster mold, and the inner rubber mold, from each shoe. I was at last ready to create my wax models!!
12. I re-inserted the rubber molds into the plaster molds to steady them for the next step (tying the plaster sections back together with rope).
13. Turning each plaster/rubber-mold-unit upside down, I sprayed it again with releasing agent – then, carefully drizzled a coating of wax into each mold, swishing it around to form a thin but solid layer (just like making a hollow piece of chocolate candy).
14. Removing the rubber molds revealed two perfect wax replicas of my beat-up old hiking boots – with all the characteristic seams, folds, scars and textures of the originals!!!
15. All I had to do now was sacrifice these hardwon temporary works to the remainder of the casting process – which, from this point forward, followed the exact same steps used from the get-go to create Suburban Odalisique.

Click HERE to visit my art site and view more work.

         

I often take a traditional approach to oil painting that begins with a monochramatic underpainting, followed by successive layers of color. This approach requires me to follow the "fat over lean" rule: an under layer should be leaner (have less oil) than its over layer.

This procedure not only allows the first layer to dry faster (so you don't have to wait as long to apply the second layer); more importantly, it results in a stronger bond between paint and painting surface – while the reverse creates a weak bond resulting in much, much quicker deterioration of the work.

In deference to the "fat over lean" rule (a law of chemistry, actually), traditionalists usually dilute the paint used for the first layer (the monochromatic underpainting) with thinner. In the past, this was invariably turpentine – the very smell of which so intoxicated Vincent van Gogh and other artists of history that they reportedly wound up drinking it.

Thus, I prefer to avoid even low-toxicity thinners, and begin each oil work with an acrylic underpainting followed by oil glazes and impastos (which adhere well to an acrylic base). Acrylic paint not only dries much more rapidly than the thinnest standard oil paint – it goes beyond lean to FAT FREE, since it contains no oil in the first place.

I used this oil-over-acrylic approach to paint Dreamcatcher, the still life shown above. Click through the gallery to follow this work from acrylic underpainting to finished oil.

To clean my brushes during the oil-painting part of this process, I just use clean rags or thick white paper toweling (such as, VIVA). I never park my brushes in thinner, and use only soap and water to clean them when I'm done for the day. Even when I was using thinner, I washed my brushes this way. You don't want to leave any thinner in a brush; it will eat away at it.

BTW: Never use acrylic paint OVER a layer of oil paint. This flies in the face of "fat over lean," and could lead to rapid deterioration.

Click HERE to visit my art site and view more work.

Ever wonder what sculptors mean when they use the term "lost wax"? Below are highlights of the lost wax process I used to create a small bronze piece called Suburban Odalisque (see historical art references).

       

1. First, I sculpted the wax figure, and attached hollow tubes (called "gates") and a cup-like structure to the bottom of the work.
   
2. Then, I dipped it into a liquid mixture called "ceramic shell," followed by a sand bath. When the shell had air-hardened, I set the coated statue at an angle and blow-torched it to melt all the wax – which then ran out through the tubes and cup, leaving the ceramic shell empty. In other words, I LOST the WAX!
   
3. Next, the empty ceramic shell was kiln-hardened to withstand the molten bronze that was then poured (via the cup and tubes) into the space previously occupied by the lost wax.
   
4. Once the bronze had cooled and hardened, I hammered and whacked at it until the finished statue emerged.

The Chair and the Bathing Suit

I found instructions for building a full-size lawn chair/lounger on the Internet, then, just made everything really small. I actually built the chair first, then covered it with saran wrap so I could sculpt the wax against it – insuring that the finished figure would lie perfectly in the chair. When the bronze version was done, at the suggestion of my husband, I added a reinforcing strip to the back of the chair (shown in the last picture above) to better support the dense weight of the finished work.

I made the spandex bathing suit from my own pattern, and sewed it right onto the figure – a surprisingly difficult operation, thanks to the tiny size of the model coupled with its extraordinary weight. She's so-o-o-o-o heavy!

Click HERE to visit my art site and view more work.

           

The first work shown in this image gallery is "Good Hands" – the latest in my Charcoal Scenario series, featuring friends Leah (on floor) and Tanya (in chair). The rest of the works in this series are shown in the following order:

• Son Joseph and his new wife Kristin in "The Newlyweds" (2008)
• Friend Jay (seated) and husband Jerry (standing) in "Firekeepers" (2006)
• Daughter Rose and her husband Charlie in "Game Plan" (2008)
• My husband and I "YouTubing" (2008)
• My son and his two male ferrets in "Beautiful Boys" (2008)

Details for all works in this series: 18" x 24" Charcoal on Strathmore paper (some heightened with white).

Click HERE to visit my art site and view more work.