ClemensArt

I couldn’t post this picture last night because the internet cut out for a while.  So here she is, wings detailed.  I also put a little blue shadow in her bushy tail and a little bit of shadow where the wing rests on the fur.  The final step will be to spray the piece with Kamar Varnish.  I used to brush acrylic gel medium onto the finished pieces (if they were completely done in acrylic), but Kamar is much smoother and doesn’t leave brush strokes.  Why varnish?  It makes the colors pop a little more and it protects the art.  Twenty minutes after varnishing, she’s ready to be framed! 

I’ve laid in the shape of the wings.  Now comes the shading, which is really important and proportionally difficult.  Getting smooth effects in acrylic without an airbrush is a delicate operation.  I may switch over to colored pencils, which work very nicely.  Sometimes I finish off a piece in oil, to smooth out details and soften things like fur.  But once you paint oil over acrylic, you can’t go back.  You can’t paint acrylic over oil because of the different drying times.  In several months you would develop cracking.  So colored pencils it is.  Why not just get out the airbrush?  Call it pride.  Okay, call it laziness.  I’d rather find other options than get it out, make sure the compressor line is clear, cut friskets, mix my colors, make sure the needle isn’t bent, etc.

I always save brushes that don’t come to a point any more.  This one is great for doing fur.  I use it to do dry brush technique and it has an amazing amount of control.  On to the wings.

I always seem to detail the face first.  If I do, the rest of the painting follows.  I think the colors are different enough for the cat to stand out from the background and not make it more busy.  On to the rest of the body, then the wings.

I’ve laid in the underpainting, which is deliberately dark.  Even the white fur is a deeper color.  The fur texture will be painted on top of this in lighter strokes.  One of the challenges here is that the stone is very busy.  The cat shares some of the same colors, and you don’t want her to do a Cheshire act and just disappear into the background.  I think I’ll make her a steely blue, with accents of brown.  We’ll see how that works out.

I shot a picture of this magnificent Maine Coon cat at the house of a friend who does cat rescue.  I’ll probably use this image more than once, it’s just too wonderful for one painting.  Anyway, I’m working on several stone slab paintings to send out to shows, and I’ll try to chronicle my efforts.  At this point, I’m just calling this kitty “Her Majesty” for obvious reasons. 

I’ve picked out a lovely slab of agate conglomerate to paint on.

I’ve transferred the image to the stone and put down the first coat in acrylic gesso.  Traditionally, gesso was made from chalk and animal glue to prime wood panels for painting.  Modern acrylic gesso is actually a combination of calcium carbonate with an acrylic polymer medium latex, a pigment and other chemicals that ensure flexibility, and ensure long archival life.   This is the base coat, I now put my gesso away and get out the regular acrylic paint kit.  We’ll see how much I can get done today.

 I love to take pictures out of the plane window as I fly across the country, and some of the things I shot going from Phoenix to Boston I didn’t identify until I got back home and looked at the pictures.  The landscape is so dramatic out west, brazenly beautiful. 

Meteor Crater is east of Flagstaff.

When I can make out a road below, I find myself wondering who is travelling through this rugged terrain, so early in the morning, when it’s so cold.

I loved the look of the canyons in the sunrise, spreading out like cracks, and it wasn’t until I looked at the images later that I realized it was Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de-shay), a sacred place to the Navajos.  We’ve taken several trips into the Canyon.

I took a closeup of Spider Rock, though I didn’t know it at the time.  It’s a very sacred site.  You can just make it out, a spire of rock just beyond the big plateau island.

Beyond that, mountains in New Mexico.

Another lovely shot.

Then the land flattened out and it looks really, really cold down there!  Which is funny, coming from someone at 30,000 feet.

As we land at JFK, I shot New York, way out through the haze.

It’s fascinating to watch the terrain change from one side of the country to the other.