Under the Influence

 I'll get to the meaning of the post title in a bit -- first, I'm sure you all want to see how Pippin is doing.

On Wednesday he got his sutures removed -- yay!

The vet did some basic neurological tests, and said Pippin looked great.  However, he still has another two weeks to go in the pen just to be sure he doesn't have a relapse.  This does not make him happy.  He howls every morning between 3 and 5am to make sure that I know how unhappy he is.

The pen is next to the dining table where I work on my art, and he gives me these guilt-inducing looks whenever I'm over there. 

Sometimes I let him out for brief breaks on the sofa, closely supervised.  Here he is trying to tell me that he would rather chase real squirrels in the yard than this poor substitute.

Meanwhile, Truman has been lobbying for equal photo op time.  

So here he is on the recliner, showing how well he coordinates with the new throw.

Okay, enough with the Hounds.  On to art!  I'm almost to the post title explanation, but first, there are the usual sketch practice pieces.  At one of our sessions we drew this European street:

Then one day I did some experimenting on my own, and produced this weird thing that I made up as I went along, just for fun.  I was testing how to use a watercolor medium called Gum Arabic, which can produce some cool effects when used wet-in-wet.

For another sketch group session, I painted this lovely canal in Denmark, and was quite happy with the reflection of the clouds.

All right, that's it for the usual stuff.  Now, finally, the reason for the post title:  Under the Influence.  What does it mean?  Well, basically, it has to do with how easily influenced I can be by Other People's Art, which sometimes results in large expenditures on supplies that get used once or twice before winding up in the Closet of Forgotten Obsessions.

Here's an example:  last year, after becoming a diehard fan of Good Omens, I was looking at art produced by other fans, and saw some stunningly beautiful portraits by a fan who used black, gray, and white colored pencils on toned paper.  And being easily influenced, I thought, "Hey, wonder if I could do that?  Only I'll use all the colors!"  

And the next thing you know, I had spent $$$ on colored pencils, paper, sharpeners, erasers, solvents...just because of seeing that one fan's work.  Luckily, this turned out well, and the colored pencil pieces I did were pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

So what happened next?  Well, a few months ago, I ran across another fan who was producing stunningly beautiful Good Omens portraits in oil paints.  And I thought, "Wow, wonder if I could do that?"

Uh-oh.

Yes, I went and bought $$$ worth of oil paints, brushes, canvases, mediums, palette, etc.  And managed to create nothing that I liked at all.  Sigh.  I mean, the whole colored pencil thing had turned out great -- why hadn't oils?  

Well, I'll tell you.

The thing about oils is that they take time and patience.   And it turns out the reason I like working in watercolor and colored pencils so much is that they're quick and immediate.  And while some patience is involved -- it did take three days to draw Crowley's silly throne chair -- it still doesn't take the patience required for oils, which can take days and days to dry between layers. 

I hated waiting for paint to dry.  

Also, the solvents are toxic, and the non-toxic alternatives available for cleaning brushes don't work very well, and I really really hated having to struggle to get a clean brush between every single color change -- when painting a portrait, there is often a constant back-and-forth between colors.  It got frustrating very fast.

So, I decided that oil painting is not My Thing.  Sigh.  The next time I see another piece of cool art using a medium I don't currently own, I do hope someone will stop me before I say, "Ooh, wonder if I could that?"

Anyway, it was fortunate that I bought only a handful of oil paint colors.  After failing badly with oil portraits of Crowley and Aziraphale, and not having a lot of paint left, I decided to go ahead and use up as much as I could on something completely different:  a copy of a master work.

You might recognize this as Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring:

I drew it onto a canvas that I'd painted with a mid-tone yellow ochre ground, not entirely accurately (as I'm sure you can tell), and used up lots of burnt umber and ultramarine blue on the background and on a value study.

Then I spent about four hours painting the face.  This is not how Vermeer would paint a face.  Nor any other master oil painter, probably.  No, they would spend weeks and weeks doing layer after layer and glaze after glaze, and they'd spend lots of time waiting for paint to dry.

Here is my set up on the dining table, with the original on the laptop.  I wanted my dining table back for other art work (in WATERCOLOR and COLORED PENCIL which is what I should STICK to), so I did not paint this the way one ought to when using oils.  

Instead, I just did it alla prima (wet-in-wet without letting earlier layers dry).  I did the whole thing over two days, in around eight hours total. Then I put what was left of the oil paint supplies into the Closet of Forgotten Obsessions and called it good.

I am now happily back at work on a colored pencil portrait of Crowley sitting on his throne chair.

Whew.

That's all (that's enough) for today.  May you all have lovely weeks that are free of howling dachshunds, and may all your obsessions be fun ones.