The Making Of A Painting Painter

Tossed away.

In fall of last year I had an opportunity. A gallery owner in New York City saw my doodles on Flickr and invited me to join a group show in spring 2009. (Several artists on Flickr were asked to join.)

I rejoiced in being invited yet hemmed and hawed about whether I’d accept. In the end I signed up, making a vague notation in my brain about April being a key month for getting the paintings done. Then I went on with my life.

Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went, as did the new year. I made the intention to Finish what I start. President Barack Obama was inaugurated. I rejoiced again.

I bought canvases for the art show, gessoed them, set them aside in my writing room. Looked at them most days, noted that it was time to begin painting, procrastinated.

In early February I decided to get serious about starting the pieces. I cleaned off my work table, filed three months’ worth of bills. We took on a Mexican exchange student from February 7-21. A pinched sciatica kept me in bed for almost two weeks.

By the time I sat down to paint, I had frittered away four months. I looked up the date when the paintings needed to be in Manhattan. February 28. The show was in early April. I missed the deadline. 


Second chances.

I have a new opportunity. Our community, which boasts an inordinately large number of artists and craftsmen, holds an annual art studio tour. This year the tour happens the weekend of May 2-3. I will be showing in a gallery with a handful of other artists—real artists.

Here is my chance to make the leap.

When Obama was inaugurated, I did a quick doodle. As soon as I finished it, I knew I wanted to do a series of Obama faces on 12″x12″ canvases for the New York City art show. My problem was never a lack of ideas; rather, it was a lack of follow through.


Showing up.

I picked up the paintbrush in March. When I started, I painted to the tempo of a little voice saying, I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never painted on canvas. If gessoed, I figured, canvas should act similar to gesso on wood. I was wrong.

Painting is a process. This painting, the first in a series, is a work in process. I thought it was almost done, but then I realized that I hadn’t learned how to control—or, rather, let myself lose control—of the paintbrush. 

When I began thinking about painting on canvas, QM suggested that I do a post about my process. I agreed even though I had no idea if my ideas about process would work. I’m not done with this painting, but I can tell you this—it’s not the actual process that’s important. What matters is that you have one. 


Learning process.

My original "quick and dirty" Obama doodle, done with pen and ink on graph paper. I enlarge it to fit my canvas, add a background, and draw the outline onto tracing paper.

I transfer the image outline to the canvas using good ol' carbon paper, the kind used in days past for typing mimeographs. This prep work takes a lot longer than I expect, about half a day.

I paint the first layer of gouache (watercolor) on canvas, starting with Obama's face. I don't like this color of blue; it's too purpley. I still haven't figured out how to mix colors to find the right one nor how to use my brush as a tool versus an obstacle.

I paint slowly. I'm afraid to make mistakes, and I notice that when I go bold I end up adding too much paint, like in the orange portion of the circle beside his head. I need to dig in but I'm stuck at not wanting to mess it up. I procrastinate again.

Finally, I pick up the brush after a hiatus. I add more and more paint and texture to the face. To create dimension---shadow and light---I go in dark with shades up to black and then use light paint to take away the dark. Now that the face is coming into focus, my ideas for the background are changing. Good thing gouache is maleable.

While watching American Idol, I loosen up. I'm trusting that I can fix mistakes, that nothing is permanent. Also, if the room is kind of dim, I have a better time seeing contrast. I notice that I have too much light paint on the tip of Obama's nose. I'll go in next time and put in more shadow at the bottom.

In my original doodle I forgot to capture Obama's mole next to his nose. I got it this time, although I'm not sure if I'll change it to blue to match his skin. I notice his eyebrow is too dark, but I can go in, lighten it and add texture to make it look more natural. (Although, is "natural" a consideration when his entire face is bright blue?)

His mouth needs work; it's clownish looking to me, and I've barely touched his teeth and gums. But I am enjoying his cheeks and those deep crevices he gets when he smiles. Also, I experiment using the brush the way I would a pen. Amazingly, painting is not that different than drawing.

Overcoming fear.

Here’s what I know. I’m the only person who’s ever stopped me from realizing my dreams. I’ve gotten out of my own way this time. Next time I might be right back in the middle of the road with my hands out in front of me yelling STOP! But not today.

My goal is to paint six pieces for the early May show. I have less than a month to go, and I can only paint in the evenings and on weekends. I went to a carpenter and asked him to make me wood boards to paint on. Canvas works, but I still like wood best.

Just painting.


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Gouache postscript.

Thanks to QM’s curiosity, I’m adding these excellent links on the topic of gouache.

• handprint.com: gouache and bodycolor —includes a history of gouache
• Kathy Robbins: Working with Gouache—an excellent process post on how one painter works with gouache
• Tate Collection: gouache—from the Tate Collection’s glossary, gouache defined plus some great pieces of art done in gouache

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Under Your Voodoo

By Sharon Sperry Bloom



Under Your Voodoo, 27″x 22.5″acrylic on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Sharon Sperry Bloom. All rights reserved.


           
            Vloop, 18″x 24″acrylic on stretched canvas, painting © 2007
            by Sharon Sperry Bloom. All rights reserved.

Untitled, 20″x 16″acrylic on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Sharon Sperry Bloom. All rights reserved.


           
            War, 18″x 24″acrylic on stretched canvas, painting © 2007
            by Sharon Sperry Bloom. All rights reserved.


          
          “Love & Happiness,” 18″x 24″acrylic on stretched canvas, painting 
          © 2007 by Sharon Sperry Bloom. All rights reserved.


Making Art, An Essay by Sharon Sperry Bloom

When I was a young child, I took ballet. Not to the level of standing on point, but there were recitals at the elementary school multi-purpose room and my mom sewed costumes with fluffy tutus and glued sequins on ballet slippers. I never got to be in the front row of my group. It wasn’t because of poor technique; I could plié like nobody’s business. I just couldn’t remember the sequence of steps. I was a follower in ballet – a back row ballerina.

One recital we all had itchy gold costumes with red-trimmed tutus and red plastic flowers in our hair. The music was vaguely Spanish. During recital, those flowers flew right off my head. After our dance, the instructor and my parents were beaming at me. Me! From the back row! They were full of praise because I ignored the errant flowers and kept my chin high as I continued my performance. Truth is, I never noticed the flying blooms.

The ballet lessons ended when my dad was laid off from his job with General Motors. Dad worked as a technical writer, and I can remember him changing jobs every few years. Sometimes he wrote owner’s manuals for cars; other times he wrote specifications for army tanks. Once he had a big glass-walled office in a tall building, and my brother and I got to visit him there and watch cars and trucks go around on the freeway interchange below.

Mom told me years later she worried I would be upset about not being able to continue with ballet lessons. Truth is, I never noticed.

These were the days before we had soccer. I was always doing something though. There were swimming lessons, from Guppies and Minnows all the way on to synchronized swimming. Brownies and Juniors and Girl Scouts. Piano lessons all the way through Grade 4, the Brown Book. And finally, art.

In middle school, someone told my folks about a woman a couple of miles away teaching young teens drawing and painting in her basement. Mrs. Marinello had about 6 of us at her home after supper on Tuesday nights. We drew and painted, and each of us worked at our own speed. She supplied all the paper and paints and props.

This lady was a beautiful, talented artist whose work hung in big museums and private collections and she loved sharing her time with kids. She painted intricate hunt scenes showing dozens of people on horseback with black-and-white dogs in lush woods. The paintings were gorgeous and huge. She always hid the fox in the foliage.

I painted a little in high school but never really got along with the art teacher there. I should have had art classes in architecture school, yet weaseled out of them by showing my portfolio to my advisor. My last paintings were on the walls of my parents’ basement where I later set up a studio while in architecture school. They were mainly doodles, some nudes, a Buddha, the logo from Woodstock, and one giant copy of the album cover “Quadrophenia,” which I did all in Payne’s Gray (more a deep blue/black color than gray).

I satisfied my artistic side in other ways over the years. But I never threw away my paints. Early this year I got them out again and started painting. I could not believe how great it felt. At first it was awkward, but talking about it with other artists helped me work through the weirdness.

I am trying to lose some of the perfectionism of my architecture career and embrace more serendipity in my work; hence, most of my work is abstract. That is not to say it is random paint on canvas. It’s just that rather than create something dependent on outside constructs and limits, I let the design come from the painting itself.

It’s a technique a good friend and talented artist taught me: step back and see what the painting has to say, then elaborate on it. I’m starting to get it. And I really enjoy it.



About Sharon:  In the ten months that Sharon has rediscovered painting, she produced 22 paintings — while holding down a full-time job! You can see all of her paintings on her Flickr account, bloomgal.

Sharon will join other artists at the Black Market Goods art show in Albuquerque on October 20. Black Market Goods is organized by Josh Jones, whose motto is “Bad ass art for bad ass people.”

These are dynamic, emerging artists whose work will tantalize and inspire. If you live in Albuquerque, get yourself to the show. Support art and artists in this city.

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My Brain On Art

Today is the 12th of July, one of those days smack in the middle of summer where all I can think about is how much I’d rather be doing anything other than working in an office for a living. I’m supposed to be writing about an object from Frederic Remington’s studio, but the place is so packed with stuff it’s hard for me to focus. There are saddles and chaps and spurs, seven paintings of a single horse standing on a Kentucky blue grass lawn, mounted antlers, a mounted rifle, a hat, masks, a bed with Mexican blanket bedcover, chair, easel, desk. I am overwhelmed, and it’s not so much Remington’s space as it is my own filled-up brain. 

There’s an analogy that’s been bobbing around with the other flotsam in my head all day. It has to do with physical space and buildings. I want to say that if my brain were real estate, it would be a multi-use complex. Or an outdated apartment building with rooms that are too small; some empty, most filled to the brim, none orderly.  

I have an urge to evict my biggest tenant, Work. Remember, this is my brain I’m talking about, and so what I’m really trying to say is, Work, you take up too many floors. You are at times an over-bearing tenant. You demand all my attention, value efficiency over creativity, and you use way too much white paint. What’s your problem? Can’t you try just once using eggshell or antique white or a velvety cream? 

Ah, she longs to work with People of Color, you might be thinking, and while it’s true I wouldn’t mind working side-by-side with a blue woman or a green man — I’m not afraid of aliens — I’m really using white paint as metaphor for lack of curiosity. My main tenant — with its miles and miles of gray cubicles (gray is the new white where I work), its Outlook calendars and inboxes, Blackberry pagers, and snazzy teleconference calls — is boring. Even my United and Southwest frequent flier miles have lost their draw.

My heart’s desire is to turn over the whole kit and caboodle to Art and its roommate Writing. Let them spill into the entire building. Give them free rein to paint the walls whatever colors they want. I trust Art and Writing’s aesthetics so much, I’d even let them gut and renovate the place. Make it into a single-story loft with lots of light and natural woods.

But then I ask myself, what am I thinking? I don’t have money to renovate. That’s my Catch-22. The job I’m hating this very minute is the whole reason we have shelter to begin with. Which means my brain’s going to resemble an overcrowded shopping mall for some time to come. Work and Art and Writing, and I haven’t even touched on Mothering or Being Daughter To My Aging Parents or Friendship or Gardening. I won’t mention the three pieces of furniture I want to refinish.

Just now it dawns on me, it’s not work I mind. In fact, when I’m producing art and writing, that’s all I can think about. I’m consumed by it in a way no other job has ever held my attention. I always tell people that if we gave the same amount of energy to our passions as we give to our day jobs (which, for most of us generally are not our passions) then we’d be wildly successful financially speaking. I honestly believe that.

So what’s holding me back? How do I get from here to there without the aid of an art patron? (Art patron, if you’re out there reading this, I will have no compunctions about accepting your generosity.) And here I have to admit, I’m stuck. People keep asking me, when are you going to do art full-time, or when are you going to write full-time? My only answer is, I don’t know when. All I know is to keep producing, one piece at a time. Just keep putting it out there.


–Related to Topic post, Remington’s Studio.

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PRACTICE: Essay – 20min

I was making a second cup of Earl Gray tea, waiting for the water to boil. Thinking about my essay. How I feel stuck. How yesterday I thought it might help to go back to the compilation of Best American Essays from 2005. How that only served to make me feel like there’s no way in hell I can ever write an essay.

Something about those essays’ voice. The people who wrote those essays. I notice the voice is calm. I notice that right away. I flip to the essays I especially liked. Ted Kooser’s Small Rooms in Time. Melancholy, I wonder if one always gets melancholy for first wives and homes and places we had our children. I can’t imagine starting life over with a new spouse and thinking back to these homes. Anyway.

Then I flip over to the baseball guy, Roger Angell. How he starts out with a memory of peeing in the garden of a wealthy famous person, a baron or something. I flipped to the essays I didn’t read, just to see how they start. The ones about cooking. The one about a dog. The about David Sedaris’ boil.

They’re all so concrete. That’s the other thing about them. Their voice and their, what’s the word I’m looking for? The first paragraph immediately grounds you in reality. Is there a word for that?

Then I’m thrown into a tizzy. I’m thinking now of my essay. Do I have a voice?

Ese, pronounced just like Essay. Ese, dude. Ese is what the vatos say to each other, or used to when I was in high school. Oye, ese. It means you, hey you. Ese vato. You, vato. Hey you, vato. Orale. I like those words. I like that I know what they mean, how to use them. Orale ese, you sapo’d out.

I remember this guy Charlie who worked behind the desk of Fort Marcy rec center in Santa Fe. He wore thick, thick glasses, had reddish hair, one of those light-skinned vatos. He poured all his energy into his body.

Fitness. You could tell he wasn’t used to female attention. I realize now I gave my attentions to anyone, I didn’t discriminate on the basis of looks. What was I looking for? Friendship, I guess. I never slept with him or even made overtures to sleep with him. But I did glom on to him. I insisted on him riding with me on 20-mile or 40-mile bike rides.

I insisted that we both register for a running/walking race in La Tierra. He was the runner, I’d be the biker. Two-man race. He was so much fitter than me, he must have felt like he was training a novice.

We did eventually do the race together. It rained that day. We did poorly. I blew it on the bike. I still can see rain dripping from his bangs down his face. His glasses completely blurred as he stood there waiting for me. Like he was peering into fog, Where is she?

What made me think of him was how he was an artist and I was an artist. He once told me he wanted to do a show called Sapo Art. Do you know what sapo means, he asked me. Sure, I said, it’s like when you throw a basketball and it swooshes into the hoop without making even a sound. That’s sapo. You’re right, he said.

The Sapo Art show was going to be art that came easily. Graffiti art, art that you just sit down and spout out. Nothing you labor over, just easy art.

I went to Spain before we could do our Sapo Art show. It took me almost the whole year to finish the one drawing I really loved. It’s four small panels, each features an ogre that in hindsight looks like a prototype for Shrek. I wrote a poem to go with it: My Monster Eats Small Children.

I was the monster. I was so lost in Spain. I didn’t know what I was doing, just that I was there. Was I a writer? Was I an artist? Was I a drunk? I didn’t want to be who I was, that’s for sure.

I still think of that ogre drawing as Sapo Art, even if it took me a long time. It came easily, I just couldn’t bring myself to produce. I remember one time Almudena came up to my piso and asked what I was working on. I showed her. Dibujas de puta madre, mujer. “De puta madre” was one of those words that means exactly the opposite of its literal meaning, like “bad” when you want to say “good.” You draw like the mother whore, was the literal meaning.

Ese, dude, I really need to just let this essay come out of me without worrying what David Sedaris says about boils. I guess it’s becoming a little a bit clearer what I want to say. What experience it is I’m trying to recall without coming out and being literal about it. I wonder if I’m just scared that whoever it is I am is not the person I want to be.

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