Questions I Ask Myself While Painting

    

When we work at tasks––cooking, cleaning, gardening, repairing––I imagine that all of us ask ourselves questions, whether consciously or not. Do I add more salt? where should I put this new plant? how can I fix this cupboard door with its loose hinge? will wood putty work? When I'm in the process of painting, which I've been doing for about 50 years (yikes!) I don't usually pay attention to the questions asked, decisions made; although they are constant, I don't focus clearly on them. Painting became like walking, where I don't have to ponder each muscle movement in order to go forward. 

But then, a painting ago, the questions became loud and clear in my head; I noticed them. The questions were about process, about the step by step making of a painting, and not anything philosophical: not why am I doing this at all, not what I'm trying to say. Just process. I imagine every artist has their own particular questions. A first question for me is the palette and which color pastes are to be laid out in the small cups: do I need Cadmium orange? which yellow should I use, Cad yellow medium or light? should I mix the greens I'll need? if so, which blues will come in handy? Ultramarine deep? Cobalt blue deep, or light or standard? maybe a green? Why oh why didn't I order more Chrome oxide green? Should I use some Phthalo green? if so, warm or cool? 

I use photographic sources for my work, so there are often decisions to be made as to how faithfully to follow the image. For this painting one large question was: what color do I paint the lower right corner? The source was green grass, which would not do at all. The warm brown you see sketched in above was many colors before it got to that one. Should it be dark green? blue? a warm earth red? maybe more yellow in that? lighter? darker? Each questioned color was tried and wiped off, to start anew. Should the color have transparency? or be more opaque? I actually thought this: should the color be dead or alive? I think my question meant how intense should the color be? should it recede, or pop, or be on the same plane as the shapes above? 

There are always questions about the composition: will I move the diagonals so that they touch the corners? what about that dark edge: put it in or leave it out? Should I widen the left rectangle? Where should I place the red circle? centered, or higher? And the biggest question: do I leave the arm coming from the left side of the red disk? And the protruding brown cylinder: is it be seen from above, as in the source image, or straight on? 

Here is a detail of that part of the painting, finished, with the questions answered.

Colors chosen bring up a litany of questions, for every color in every painting. Many years ago, when I was a student at Skowhegan, our rallying cry was "Hue! Value! Intensity!", the three qualities of color. Getting these greens––in shadow and light––to work required many layers of color answering how warm? how cool? how light? how dark? how intense do I want the color to be? which blue or green or yellow will give the hue I want? will the shadow color be more or less transparent? will adding white kill the color, or would yellow work? which yellow? maybe I should add lemon yellow to my palette? And the touch, or facture: do I want it to show a subtle painterliness or a more opaque surface? Will the green rectangle on the left be lighter, warmer than the triangular green? How about the lights? how warm, how light? One of the great qualities of egg tempera is its translucency, which allows for color mixing while layering paint. And after each layer, each new color: does it sit properly in space? does it carry enough light?  

 

Red Disk, 2021, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 7 5/8 x 8 5/8 in.

A final question: do I include a photo of the finished painting in this blog post? 

As I thought about why my list of questions moved to the foreground of my mind, I remembered that I'd recently read a wonderful poem by John Yau, "Fifty for Richard Nonas", the sculptor, which consisted of a long list of questions, questions that are enlightening, thoughtful, demanding, confounding, compelling, essential. I love this::

What is invisible inside this place you are filling with carbon dioxide? What besides air, light, and memories? 

(click to enlarge)

Making Parchment: An Ancient Craft

**This post might be upsetting for some, such as vegetarians. Parchment is made from animal skins, mainly calf, goat, and sheep; I use it for my paintings. Please do not scroll down if this will bother you.**

Before paper was invented, animal skins were used for writing and painting. The word parchment comes from Pergamon, the ancient Greek city in Asia minor; when papyrus became unavailable, in the 2nd or 3rd century BCE, the process of parchment making was perfected there. I attended a fascinating workshop last week, hosted by the Book Arts Workshop at Dartmouth College, taught by Jesse Meyer of Pergamena, which has been my source of parchment for my paintings for over 4 years. Jesse explained that his family has been in the tanning and leather business for over 400 years, since the mid 16th century in Eisenburg, Germany. The family moved to Philadelphia around 1830, then to New Jersey, where they worked with, among others, Steinway & Sons piano, and finally to upstate NY, where they continued their tannery work.

Jesse Meyer became fascinated with parchment, and because there was no one to learn from, he had to figure out much of the process by research, and by trial and error. The tool closest to us is one that Jesse made from a circular saw blade to use in scraping the stretched skin; the rounded blade is called a lunalarium from the word for moon. The long blades are used to remove hair––the wooden blade––and flesh from the animal skin. 

Jesse is holding up a goatskin that has been soaking in a lime solution, which is the traditional way to remove the hair. Now other, faster chemical and machine methods are used. The skin is fairly stinky.

The skin is placed on a beam and the hair scraped off using the wooden blade.

Then the skin is turned over and the long curved metal knife is used to remove any remaining flesh.

Jesse is holding up another cleaned goatskin that was soaking in water in preparation for stretching it. Notice how transparent it is.

Jesse designed frames for stretching the skins. Although some of the process can be done with modern chemicals or machinery, the stretching is still done in the traditional way. The wooden dowels are turned to tighten the skin on the frame.

This is the clever clamp used to hold the skin.

The next step is to scrape the skin of remaining flesh with the rounded blade you see above. As the skin is scraped it loses its translucency and becomes white.

There is still roughness on the surface of the skin after some scraping. The complete smoothing process takes some time, with wetting the skin and re-sanding or scraping so the fibers lay down. When it is finished, there is a smooth, velvety surface on the skin side. The hair side is more glassy smooth; it is the side I prefer to paint on, so when I order parchment, I get the hair––also called the grain––side finished. It is a deliciously sensuous surface to work on. I am looking forward to taking a more hands-on two day workshop at the Pergamena factory in Montgomery, NY, on November 14th and 15th. I love working with an ancient medium––egg tempera––on a very traditional surface––parchment––that have venerable histories in the making of art.

Making Hand-Toned Paper

With a hand-toned paper, using pigments and a glue size such as gelatin, we can have the most beautiful range of hue and value as background for painting or drawing. The irregularities of color and finish add character to the paper, just as hand dyed wool is more interesting than wool that is commercially vat dyed. I have a drawing project in mind (more on that soon) for these intensely colored papers. I will be using egg tempera, but I've used ink and gouache in the past.

I was thinking of Indian miniature painting while making these, and though I wasn't trying to copy their colors, they influenced me a great deal.

A glue is mixed with the pigment in order to fix it to the paper. I use ordinary food-grade gelatin, available in any supermarket. A small box of Knox gelatin contains 4 paper packets, each 1/4 oz. For this project I dissolve 1/2 oz gelatin, which is two little packets, in 18 ounces of water. So that it dissolves completely evenly, I heat the mixture gently over steam in a double boiler. It's useful to have some steam handy if the gelatin/pigment mixture starts to congeal, as it did several times during my work session. I just put the mixture over steam for a few moments and it liquified again. You don't want it steaming hot though.

My small enamel dye pots are perfect for this project, since I don't want to use anything that would later have food in it, which would not be a good idea. I put some pigment paste, here Caput Mortuum, into the pot; you can also use powdered pigments. I get all my pigments from a great supplier, Kremer Pigments; they have a store in NYC and also an online store here. For brushing the color onto the paper I have a couple of soft, synthetic hair 2 inch brushes. You can mix any color you'd like, dark or light in value. Many people like subtle grays, or light tones, which also look beautiful.

I add enough of the dissolved gelatin to make a fairly liquid paint, since it's easier to get an even tone with several thin layers than one or two thick ones. This is the paper with one layer of color.

And here it is with one and a half. I used some gorgeous handmade watercolor paper, with a rough surface, by Twinrocker, which I've had in my flat files for years. The paper curves while it's wet, but flattens quite well once it is dry, so there's no need to stretch it; that way you can paint clear to the edge, with no white border.

Here is one of my finished sheets, 15 inches square, made by painting 5 or 6 layers of the pigment/size mixture. Its imperfections and variations breathe life and air into the color, and make it a very enticing surface to work on.

A New Painting: "Black Cylinder"

 Black Cylinder, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 5 3/4 x 5 3/4 in. 

I'm not sure about this painting: I don't dislike it, but I don't love it; it's somewhere in between. I think the problem is that the large blue plane doesn't have enough visual weight. I deliberately painted it to sit alongside the lighter blue triangles, but maybe that is a mistake. I'm wondering: if I paint a thin darker blue line along the lower edge to indicate some depth, do you think it would work better? I'm thinking it might. 

I worked very concentratedly on the cylinder, which holds the painting in place; I like that little flaring lip at bottom, which gives the form a bit of quirky personality. I used some color variations in the blue, for physical presence and liveliness, continuing a thought I had with my previous painting, Black and White, where I wrote about layering color. In this painting I did just that: I loosely brushed some ocher and different blues as an underpainting for the blue, and some reds and yellows as underpainting for the cylinder. Because egg tempera is a translucent paint, initial layers can have an effect on the ones above. This is one of the great qualities of this medium (though at times I would prefer the simplicity of opacity), and its source of luminous color.

A New Painting: "Black and White", with Some Thoughts on Touch

 Black and White, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 6 1/4 x 7 1/4 inches.

While I was plying my brushes during the painting of this work––and, by the way, I use round synthetic bristle brushes, Rydal Gold by Stratford & York––I was considering how much variation I wanted to show in the "touch", the visible movement of paint. For me there's always a balancing act between achieving a clear sense of form and having the paint look lively and fresh. 

Irrigation Equipment (detail), 2002, egg tempera on gessoed panel.

When I began using egg tempera in 1995, paint handling seemed more straightforward: I used the traditional method of cross hatching to build the form with many layers of translucent, pencil-like strokes. A dozen years later I decided to leave this method behind, as I described in this blog post.

                                          

Untitled, ca. 2007, egg tempera on gessoed panel, 7 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches.

Around the same time I was doing a series of non-objective paintings, brushing on many layers of color for a shifting, atmospheric effect. I was playing with paint and having a very good time. Doing these works helped me to figure out the way forward with my representational paintings. 

In Black and White, the whitish part of the painting has smoother handling, while the black has a more visible varied stroke. Some of this is to express a difference in the surfaces depicted; some is a result of the pigments and how they demand to be used. The black pigment, Mars Black, did not want to sit still, calmly and opaquely;  I went along with a painterly stroke, which would provide a textural contrast to the quieter white, and add some physicality to the forward planes. These strokes don't come easily; I often repaint for a more graceful mark.  Seeing the orange abstraction again and thinking about its surface has made me realize that there are other ways I can enrich my paint handling, perhaps with more layering of color. I'm grateful for the learning process that comes with writing this blog. 

A New Painting: "Blue Circle"

Blue Circle,  egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 7 x 5 1/4 inches.

The painting gods were angry with me when I began work on this painting, just as they were with White Behind Red. After working on the painting for 2 or 3 days, suffering with dust and lifting paint leaving white spots, I calmly wiped the entire painting off, down to the bare parchment. My second attempt was a success as far as achieving the color and form I wanted, without any dust whatsoever. A mystery to be unraveled.

 This underpainting from my first attempt gives me a clue. I tend to want to load the paint on when I begin (as much as one can with the thin egg tempera), as I search for the correct color balance. Here, I'd put a light layer of color over a darker one, because white mixed with a color will make it more opaque; the blues are quite transparent pigments. But I went too light, so had a very hard time, using many layers of paint, trying to get to the colors I wanted. The more layers, especially if the paint is thicker, the more they seem to attract dust. The winter dust from my wood stove probably doesn't help matters.

In my second attempt, I decided to begin with darker, more saturated color, so that the transparent pigments I was using––ultramarine blue, cobalt blue light, and cerulean blue––weren't fighting the light underpainting. I worked with more thin layers, building them slowly, using the quality of the paint, its transparency, as a positive force rather than something to argue with. Yesterday I started a new painting, and noticed right away that I wanted to quickly layer color, one atop the other––warmer, cooler, lighter, darker––as I searched for my color ideas. I saw that the loaded brush brought dust with it, so began to work more slowly, in more transparent layers. Now I have to remember that lesson going forward, as it seems to keep slipping away from me.

This is a detail of the painting that gives some sense of the different hues of blue, and of the painting surface. For the darks which look close to black, I simply painted many thin layers of ultramarine blue and cadmium red deep, mixing the colors and alternating them. I put a teeny bit of cadmium yellow medium in there to warm it a little. You can see some of the layering in the process image above.

This composition uses a flat, frontal grouping of overlapping forms, an idea I work with occasionally (see for instance Red Construction). I think of cubism and of artists such as Liubov Popova, and of minimalist abstraction, in making this painting and in all my work. My challenge is to transform a group of abstract forms so that they have presence, and feeling, with or without the lurking metaphors.

A New Painting: "Blades"

Blades, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 6 x 7 inches.

This painting went through more changes, more uncertainty, than is usual in my painting process, and I'm still not completely sure if it works. I usually follow the composition of my originating photograph fairly closely, but in this case I discovered that I had to leave out a couple of elements, and change the value structure of the image. When I came close to finishing the painting, I thought to myself that it would have been a good idea to take photographs at each stage so that I could illustrate my thinking, but: when I make a change it's often impulsive and I don't stop to think, "gee, I should get my camera and shoot this before I wipe it out". Zoom, it's gone, and I'm on to the next thought. So because I don't have step-by-step photos, I thought I'd show you my reference photo, something I usually hate to do because the photograph is at home on the screen, while a painting is not; a photo of a painting seen onscreen is dimished, while a photo is as fresh as the day it was shot. Also, I am not trying to reproduce a photograph; I am not a photorealist.




Here is my source material. I think you'll notice at once that I left out the sweep of rust moving down the blue-green blade; I left out the fitting on the red one. Here's something of a timeline of my decisions:

• When I began the painting, the value of red and blue-green were much lighter. I put in the rust sweep, took it out, put it back in. The composition felt pretty uncomfortable to me.
• I then had the thought to darken the red to the color you see now. Which meant I had to darken the blue-green for balance. That immediately gave the light area at the top left more presence and the whole composition felt more dynamic.
• I worked for a long time on the curved area of orange rust but never felt quite comfortable with it. There was also a light band of shiny metal that I had painted along the bottom of the upper blade. When I began to work more carefully on it I started to have that oh-no feeling, that it just wasn't right.
• I had one of my impulses and painted out the light band by painting the orange to the the edge of the blade. I breathed a sigh of relief; it looked much better.
• But then, it looked like I didn't need the orange curve in the middle of that blue-green, so I painted it out.
• Okay, it looks like that works. (maybe)

A New Painting: "White Behind Red"

White Behind Red, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 6 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches.

I had a terrible time with this painting. It looks calm and rational, but its lower third fought me tooth and nail, forcing me to wipe off a full day's work twice. The upper part of the painting went fine, with me trying to work slowly and attentively, as I described with my last painting, Gray Cross. I mainly used a very small brush, a #2 round, and built the subtle variations in the surface color bit by bit. The wonderful thing about egg tempera is that because it's translucent, I can make color changes very easily, by lightly glazing or scumbling one color on top of another. I shifted the shadow blues many times until I was satisfied with their hue and value.




It was the red rectangle at the bottom of the painting that gave me all the trouble; it wasn't because of color, but because of lowly dust: for some reason the paint attracted every stray bit of dust, every tiny hair floating about. I began working on this section of the painting as I did on the upper part: after laying down a couple of layers of paint with a larger brush, as you see in the photo above, I worked carefully and slowly with a small brush to build a wall of color. My aim was for it to have weight and presence, with a slightly varied color surface. I don't know if it's because these earth colors are fairly transparent, but I needed many layers of paint to get the effect and color that I wanted. I would work for a while, then go downstairs and do something else for a few minutes in order to see what I'd done with a fresh eye. Over and over again it looked off; over and over again I picked out pieces of dust with a sewing needle I keep on hand for this purpose. Finally, after 5 hours, I looked at the painting and said "ah good, it looks velvety". But but, there was the dust, which mucked up the surface and lifted the paint when I tried to brush it off. So...trying to maintain my sense of calm, I wiped all the red off, down to the parchment, and began again the next day.

White Behind Red, detail

The second day of working on the red went much the same as the first: many layers, finally being happy with what I'd done, realizing it was too dusty and wiping it all off. (I wish I'd taken a photo of the dusty surface to show you, but documenting it wasn't on my mind at the time.) By the third day I felt I had to try a different approach; it was almost as though the painting was insisting I try a different approach. Instead of the small brush, I used a larger one, and went back to a tried and true technique of building a solid surface: cross hatching, layers and layers of it. When the shape looked opaque, I then went in and worked some varied color on the surface, with a larger, #5, brush and a light touch. And that, finally, worked. The lesson in this for me is that I must not have a fixed idea as to how to proceed, but adjust my technique as needed, and as the painting seems to ask.

A New Painting: "Gray Cross", With a Lesson Learned

Gray Cross, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 6 x 7 inches.

In between my last painting, which I wasn't happy with and you can see here, and this one, I rediscovered my love of Tantric painting, and it has changed the way I am approaching putting paint to surface. I had received the new book Tantra Song as a gift and spent many hours poring over the images, and then writing a blog post on them: "The Quiet Depth of Tantric Paintings". Just like the first time I saw these works, at the Drawing Center in 2004, I was inspired to try to somehow make them my own, copy them in some way. Back then they were what encouraged me to begin making small textiles for the wall, when all I'd done before were rugs for my house.




Last week, I wanted to actually paint those paintings; I wanted to possess them, to understand their making; I wanted to capture the deep calm, the quality of the essential, that I found in them. I took out a couple of pieces of parchment and sat there looking at them for a while, conscious that the Tantric artists took advantage of irregularities of surface. I tried to breath quietly, to become calm and quiet, to get close to the best of how I feel when I meditate. And I began to paint a blue circle, being as attentive to brush, the paint, the mark, as I could be. Then I felt the circle needed a companion square, so painted that. I approached the dark green rectangle with the same intense level of concentration, balancing it with a soft haze of red.




I then decided that I was going to paint on scraps of parchment left over from the stretching process; it would be like doing musical scales, practicing a little each day, reminding me of the feeling of quietly contemplating each shape.




After my little homages, I began this painting with a very different attitude. I felt that I'd become a little lazy, a little impatient, a little rushed. So now I slowed down, worked with smaller brushes, attempted to get more subtle shifts of form and color. None of this is for the sake of "realism" but in order to have a deeper relationship with each shape and each color that I paint. It is so that I pay attention.

A New Painting: "White Triangle"

White Triangle, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 6 5/8 x 8 inches.

This is a very simple image, which nonetheless required a lot of decisions along the way, beginning with how large to make the painting. At first I had the horizontal dimension at 7 1/2 inches, but thought a slightly larger size would work better; it's surprising how a small change – in this case only 1/2 inch – can make a big difference in the scale of pictured objects. The second big decision was how much texture to include in the painting: in my reference photo the upper part of the blue was a rust red color, variegated reds with some blue mixed in, which was also the case with the blue vertical bar. There was also a good deal of texture in the white; it was torn and uneven.




I kept some variation in color and value, but it's pretty subtle compared to the original; I chose to have a strong blue/white image. To achieve an opaque white I had to paint many layers of color, using a large round brush and freely mixing slight hue and value shifts on the surface. My aim is to have a lively surface enhance the minimal composition, to give a sense of weight and presence to the forms, with the two bolts holding it all down.




This photo, shot with the light at an angle, shows the uneven surface of the parchment. Because my calfskin painting surface came from a living being it sometimes is not completely smooth. I bought one skin that had a "natural" finish and more obvious veining than other skins I've used. So I am using it in paintings where the surface irregularities will add to the painting and not be a distraction; I think that this surface works for this painting, and its silken feel is very luscious to work on.

A New Painting: "Overlap"

Overlap, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 6 x 7 1/4 inches.

When I began to work on this painting I had something like a minor fit of anger towards it: "No, no, I don't want to deal with this, with this level of detail." I planned to set it aside, wipe it out, and began a very lively discussion on facebook about abandoning work that you've begun, which you can see here if you're interested.




The work started well enough: I liked the composition, the overlap of curving forms with minimal color. I always start my paintings with a very loose underpainting, and develop the form, color, and detail from there. I have to admit that I had no idea how I was going to move forward with this painting; how in the world was I going to tackle all those lines on the hoses? I couldn't just leave them out because they're a key to the energy of the image. So, when I got back to work the next day, I first started getting the forms in the right place and correct proportion, but the thought of the detail sent me into something of a nervous breakdown. I felt like throwing the panel across the room, but instead set it aside, and began to work on something else, the painting Middle Squiggle.

One friend, on the facebook thread, commented that it sounded like I needed a day off. When I thought about this, I remembered how I had a similar feeling while cutting back a flower border: "I don't want to do this! I want to be doing something else, like painting!" A couple of days went by and when I went back out to the flower border, I was determined to enjoy what I was doing then, to accept the moment and not bemoan it. It made a huge difference in my feeling of pleasure, so once I finished Middle Squiggle, I looked again at Overlap and saw that I could complete it, if I calmed down and approached it with patience.




What I finally understood was that I had to think about light, rather than detail; light would be the essence of the painting. Once I realized that, things went more smoothly. First I painted the wall behind the hoses, putting layer upon layer of warm and cool, darker and lighter color, until the surface looked like a solid plane and had weight and a presence in space. Using some warmer color in the highlights gave an added sense of luminosity.




I was determined not to measure the lines in the hoses, but to paint them freely, eyeballing the distance between them; the most important thing was the quality of light, created by the relationships of color and value. I painted the lines in lighter paint, then painted over them, as part of the entire columnar form, again and again, changing color, making it lighter or darker, so as to get the sense of opaque and transparent light. Because egg tempera is a translucent paint which dries immediately, it lends itself beautifully to this kind of handling. I wish I'd made the image a little larger, but I'm glad I pushed through with the painting, learning something along the way.