Case Study #2 - Frank Playing Guitar

"Frank Playing Guitar" oil on canvas 30"h x 24"w

An alla prima guitar?
I don't think so. I have to lay this one in first.

I am trying to work on two bodies of work concurrently. I have the large plywood with the canvas ready to go. I am just at a roadblock as to what to paint on it with perhaps too many ideas running through my head. So, while I ruminate about the large canvas painting, I thought it would be a good time to get back to work on my NF Tribute portraits. I have been in contact with Frank Moore about painting his portrait for a couple of months now. I met him on Facebook just like Reggie. Even though Frank has had his leg amputated from NF complications, that doesn't seem to stop him from getting outdoors and hiking. He also enjoys heavy metal music and playing guitar. He seemed like the perfect candidate for my next painting.

Frank, like Reggie, does not live anywhere near me. Reggie lives in Houston, TX and Frank Moore lives in Clifton, Colorado. So, this time I had to ask him the favor of asking a friend to take pictures of him playing guitar. Frank was happy to help. The first images he sent were of him playing guitar but the flash had completely wiped out any color differences or subtleties on his face. I asked him to set up a photo shoot with a friend and go outside and make sure the sun hit one side of his face while he played guitar. It is kind of strange to art direct a photo shoot via FB messages, but he and his friend did a great job and got me some really good photos to work from. I settled on one that showed most of his torso while he played guitar.

10 - 15-12 -
I had to do a grisaille under painting in order to
get the guitar and folds of the t-shirt to make sense

Because of NF, his arm has many tumors. Interestingly, Frank has a full tattoo on both his forearm and upper arm regions that seem to compliment the tumors as the drawings on his skin will wrap around the tumors. Whether that was intentional or accidental the end result looks very cool.

Originally I had thought it might be interesting to paint Frank doing something that showed his truncated leg and how he is able to adapt just fine with his prosthetic leg, but then it occurred to me that maybe he doesn't really feel like his ambulatory differences are all that important in the entire make up of his personality. So, I chose to just forego that idea in the thought that it might even seem exploitative of NF in general. And, by this point, everyone should know that is not my intent at all.

First lay in of color
"Frank Playing Guitar" - 24"x 30"h oil on canvas

I still need to go back and rework the Reggie Sipping Coffee painting as well since both my last mentor and current mentor thought I could improve the background on it. My advisor, Peter, had thought of coming up with a bit of text to accompany the paintings. Something that would explain who these people are when the viewer looks at them. So, I plan on getting something in writing from both Reggie and Frank when the time gets closer to displaying these paintings. I like that idea a lot as it gives the viewer an inside look into the personalities of the individuals portrayed. My advisor also said something to the affect of: Try to imagine what the exhibition would look like under ideal conditions. Ideally, I would have 17 of these portraits painted. Chromosome 17 is responsible for NF1. If I painted anyone with NF2 that is located on chromosome 22. I will concentrate on people with NF1 for now.

Frank getting his picture taken at the hospital

I also like painting adults with NF. Truthfully, in 2005 with the National Neurofibromatosis Foundation changed its name to the Children's Tumor Foundation it left many people with NF feeling isolated. I understand why the organization did that. It really is much easier to fundraise for kids with tumors than for 30+ year old people with tumors and in the end, we just need to find a cure. I happen to love this charity because they have done so much to raise awareness and help fund scientists to do clinical research. So, if it takes people seeing babies with tumors to donate, fine by me. But, it's never been completely fine with me for the adults with NF to think that suddenly no one cares about them any more. So, these portraits will all be adults with NF1.

Waiting

Well, once again I am working on a very large canvas. This time, I can say that I already like my idea and start to this one better. In fact, I think I will leave most of the gown just the gesso. If you look below you can see it was much longer initially and then I cut off about 2.5 feet in width. I decided to have the text be reversed out and in my own handwriting. All the thoughts that go through my head while I "wait". Probably the same thoughts that go through any parents head. It doesn't really matter what your child is going in for, you are worried and you wonder why. Why my son? On the other hand, I would never want it to be someone else's son either. I simply don't want it to exist. I digress. Formally speaking, I rather like the idea that the gown is still just gesso with only hints of oil paint on it and mostly charcoal drawing (which doesn't show up well in my photos).

"Waiting" oil and charcoal on canvas. 48"h x 52"w 

Earlier I had thought about incorporating the text on the forms that the parent always has to fill out while waiting for the doctor to come in. I sometimes think they just give us forms to keep us busy and to not notice how long we are waiting after our scheduled time. I think they then secretly shred them later or put them into a folder that will then get misplaced.

Initial Drawing - "Waiting" 4 foot high by 7 foot wide.
oil on canvas. As of November 27, 2012

As parents, we like to fill out forms because it makes us think we actually have control over our child's health care. Like most parents, I sit there calculating in my head what the cost should end up being depending on what our insurance covers. I also sketch all the time. I have done many drawings of waiting rooms. You can see them displayed at doctor's offices all around the Omaha area. They doctors love them and just hang them up in miscellaneous areas.

Often times I offer to draw a caricature in leu of paying the co-pay. The receptionists always laugh, but by now they know I am serious. So, if nothing else, I at least ask them to hire me for their company parties to help offset the copious co-pays. AND...drumroll please...That seems to always be a winner!

Ta - Dah! Who says you can't pay for your healthcare via art?

I'll trade you one surgery for 3 still lifes! haha....

Well...all kidding aside...right now I am "waiting" for my youngest son to get over the flu so I can continue to paint on this canvas.

Welcome to the Forum

24"h x 30"w marker and oil on canvas

I am part of an NF Forum on Facebook. People post their struggles and hardships dealing with a life of NF or being the parent of a child with NF. After awhile the posts start to blur, I forget whose child had what wrong with them, or which person is going to what doctor. Somebody is getting their leg amputated, someone's child has learning difficulties, someone has to pick between becoming deaf or dying, etc. It can be inundating, overwhelming and it never stops. It just keeps going on forever as people keep posting. The posts themselves look like a blur in my newsfeed. Sometimes I don't even look at the forum because I don't want to read about all the horrible manifestations about NF or whose tumor suddenly turned malignant. This week I discovered that one of the kids on my list of portraits to paint for my Many Faces of NF project is dying. I never painted his portrait because I have 15 people in front of him to paint. I felt terrible and now I feel like I should let some time pass for his mother to grieve because it would be in poor taste to start asking her questions about her son while he is on his deathbed. No, I can't imagine it nor do I pretend to know what that is like. It would be insulting for me to even pretend that I can comprehend that. I will now have to paint his portrait as a NF Memorial many many months from now. It's hard. It's just very hard.

Zoomed in so you can read the text

How does this relate to my artwork? I have been thinking about text a lot as it is incorporated with imagery. My advisor told me to look at the work of Sean Landers. I like his technique even though I am not all that interested in most of his images. I read many articles about them and I rather enjoy what he is doing and he seems extremely fascinating, but in the end, I still do not find his actual images to be ones that personally engage me. I should qualify a bit further that I think I enjoy his process more than I enjoy his final product. I think this is actually fairly common for me in art. Oftentimes it is the process or technique that is appealing even if the end result isn't what grabbed my attention.

So, in the spirit of borrowing, I decided to log into the forum and start meticulously copying all of the posts in the NF Forum (leaving out the authors). The forum on FB is completely open and public which means anyone can read these posts. Once someone posts in it, they know that anyone, including people not in this group, can read what they have written. This key element also gave me the sense that if people were comfortable posting these items, then they expect the world to read them. If it would have been a private group, I would have not used the posts.

So, up close you can read each text, but as you stand away from it, it all just looks like a blur of lines. This is really no different than the postings. They blur, I forget and sometimes I don't want to read them anyways.

Another zoomed in shot of the text.

The Combination of Two Ideas

22" x 28" oil on board

22" x 28" oil on board. +  Orange Head Study

Over a decade ago, I painted a still life with objects given to me while being apart of an art club. It was a fun idea and it got all of us painting the same items, but with our own interpretations. At the end, we had a group show and everyone could see the other artist's creations and arrangements of the still life objects. The show was called "Still Life in Motion". I did the following painting for it.

22" x  28" oil on board. Completed 2000

I enjoyed being apart of the show as it really got me excited about painting and gave me some creative parameters to work within. I also met some other artists. As an art teacher, I love these sorts of show ideas and projects because it gets me thinking and creating. The results are typically not quite as important to me as the process.

Many years later a friend asked me if she could hang it in her church's library. I gave it to her and quickly forgot about it for over a decade.

About 6 months ago, my brother said "Oh, I have a painting for you." I was genuinely interested because I had no idea what he could be referring to. Here comes this painting back into my life again. Apparently there were church renovations going on and the painting no longer had a home. My friend told my brother that she was worried that it might get damaged and wanted to make sure I got it back safely. That is very kind. But when I looked at it now, I thought "YIKES...this is really bad!"

I was just hoping people wouldn't mind the candelabra being uncomfortably cut right down the candle or perhaps that ellipses didn't really have to be painted convincingly. I was also unimpressed with my drapery which was a silky cloth that I just painted so opaquely that it looks more like a heavy bedspread. The candles were not lit because my husband wasn't so sure that I might not burn down the house since I tend to get distracted fairly easily.

I realized that it was time for this painting to go, but why would I want to burden a Goodwill with it? So, I took out my painting exercise from awhile ago: The man with the orange background.

16" x 20" color study

So, what would happen if I merged the background of a still life from my former painting life with the explorations of portraiture that I am currently interested in? Wouldn't that be the same as creating interesting texture in the background? Notice the color study has no interesting texture, although it has better brush handling.

Honestly, the first mark is the hardest. I had to take that still life out of the frame, clean it off, etc. Then I took an enormous amount of cadmium red light mixed with cadmium orange medium and started blocking out the head.

Then there is that moment when I realized that I had completely ruined the 'finished' painting. Now, since I hated it anyways, it started to become fun to get rid of those lame grapes. It was very difficult to paint a portrait over a dark still life without gessoing any of it. But I just kept at it.

Well...after much time and much cadmium orange....you can see the results.

Final Portrait - My studio assistant, Fred

May 25, 2012 - Finished one final portrait before flying off to Boston next month.

"Time Out" oil on canvas - 24"H x 18"W

The subject of the painting comes per a quote from my advisor:

"richard brilliant (my old professor at columbia) is an excellent resource for you on portraiture. and, as you're discovering, it's a hugely compelling topic in painting today.as i'm writing this i'm hoping you're experimenting with all kinds of portraiture--the husband, the kids, the family, the friends, the denizens of nebraska. don't limit yourself to one theme."

This semester, I have painted my son Henry, I have painted Reggie Bibbs and David Oosterloo (both of whom I met on FB through the different Neurofibromatosis forums located there) and I have painted my friend, Littleton Alston. My final portrait this semester is going to be of my youngest son, Fred.

There are many reasons to pick him. The first is the most obvious quote from the sitter himself, "Why did you paint Henry and not me?" The second reason is that I've watched him grow up too quickly before my eyes this semester. We have spent so much time together and next fall he will be in kindergarten. So, I am losing my wonderful studio assistant. The third reason is that I snapped this picture of him when he was in time out. I can't remember what he did to get in trouble now, but I do remember him saying "It's hard to always be good ALL the time, when you are only a little boy, Mama!"

Okay, that is probably true. However, I find that Fred is a "little boy" only when it comes to punishment, but a "big boy" when it comes to getting rewards, staying up late and other things he seems to believe are denied to him but not to his older brother, Henry. Ahh...I was also the youngest...I remember the unfairness of it all! hahaha....my older siblings would most likely rebuke that claim!

Here it goes:

Charcoal lay in drawing of Fred by the window

Underpainting / Slight color washes

1st pass of color work - nope, not finished

A portrait of my friend, Littleton Alston

Littleton Alston, oil on canvas, 30" x 24"

Now..finally..here is my portrait of Littleton Alston. I have been influenced by Tony Ryder's painting method, Mary Beth Mackenzie's textural backgrounds and the brushwork of Gregory Manchess.

Here are the phases of the painting as it developed:

Charcoal lay in on toned canvas

Grisaille under painting - Payne's gray and white

Light wash-in of color, similar to a watercolor in paint consistency

The Beauty of Six, David

"Six is a number perfect in itself, not because God created all things in six days; rather, the convert is true God created all things in six days because the number is perfect." Saint Augustine (The City of God)

I've always been attracted to the number 6. Perhaps it is from a youth spent playing board games and always hoping to roll a 6, I'm not sure. Maybe it is because there are 6 different physcial criteria to look for to diagnose someone with NF. One of those criteria is cafe au lait spots, of which one needs to have at least 6. Perhaps it is because the Pythagoreans defined the number 6 as the number of perfection and symbolizing beauty and I found that in the midst of my painting NF portraits the idea of perfection and beauty to be particularly relevant. Anyways, to finish from my earlier post about painting these 3 portrait pairs, I finally went back in and tried to thicken up the paint and do a bit more modelling with the flesh, while still keeping the bold color work I had previously. My mentor showed me the work of Karen Appleton and her portraits have life and color, bold brushstrokes and still retain a high level of representational qualities. She is who I modeled my painting approach after when I redid these. 

12" x 16" David on Yellow oil on board

12" x 16" David on Purple oil on board

12" x 16" David on Blue oil on board

12" x 16" David on Orange oil on board

12" x 16" David on Red oil on board

12" x 16" David on Green oil on board

Case Study #1 - Reggie Sipping Coffee

"Reggie Sipping Coffee" oil on canvas 30h" x 24w"

After my mentor meeting, we both agreed to make sure I tried to pick one of the poses where Reggie wasn't looking straight at the viewer. Since the idea is to catch a person just sipping a cup of coffee and doing something very natural, we didn't think having someone you didn't know staring right at you would have the right effect. It would create an awkward feeling, which isn't at all what I want the painting to be about. I want to show people with NF just going about their daily lives, routines, and habits and let the viewers be able to see them in very humanized roles. The idea is that the painting has much less to do with NF and much more to do with the person.

Here is the process so far. I started with this sketch. I decided after I drew it that I wanted to zoom in a little more because I really want people to see Reggie's face. I'm also thinking about getting rid of the letters on the back of the winder and just putting in some impressionistic background cafe objects.

I typically do not paint on canvas. I just prefer the smoothness of hardboard, but for the sake of shipping, it really makes sense to not paint on enormous and thick hardboards. So, I went ahead and prepared a 24" x 30" canvas and toned it with burnt umber. I then zoomed in on my thumbnail and sort of moved my viewfinder around until I found the cropped version I liked best. So, I want Reggie's face and the coffee cup right in the middle of the composition remembering the 80% interior rule vs 20% perimeter rule that every painter knows. I had to really check my proportions on the hand and cup several times to make sure I didn't make it too big or too small. So, it is finally just the right size.

Next, I thought I would do just a light wash with turpentine which somehow turned into doing an entire underpainting. I can't really even recall the last time I did this. Maybe it's because I've been reading about Ingres and the Academie painters in all of my critical theory readings. Of course I am reading about how all of these people broke away from that and were tired of ateliers and so forth, but for some reason I can't shake the beauty of the craftsmanship and lure of the imagery, even if some of the content on those paintings is not all that compelling.

About five or so years ago I studied drawing with Tony Ryder. I never did study painting with him but I remembered his technique of doing light washes with oil first after the charcoal drawing, almost similar to watercolor. I think I am going to do that next and then once I get done with all of this work underneath and have a good solid structure, I will have the foundation to actually start to use all the color work and brush stroke techniques I have been working on this semester.

I realize folks like Richard Schmid can just attack their canvas alla prima, but for now, if I want alla prima to work for me, I think I need to alla prima over a solid underpainting.

My mentor gave me a book written by Ken Howard who is an artist that I would classify as using an impressionistic technique. His beach scenes show little blobs for people in the distance. When I worked on the color portion of this painting, I tried to remember what Ken had written about forgetting that the people behind Reggie are people and just thinking of them in terms of shapes and color. I also tried to remember his discussion of the beauty of grays with just slight color variances. This also helps to offset the foreground elements compared to the background.

Café au lait - I'll Take Six, Please

The term Café au lait is French. It translates to "coffee with milk". Most people upon hearing the word assume that it is time to order at Starbucks. If ordered, you will receive a dark French coffee with milk added to it. When that combination happens a light tan color forms.

The term means something completely different within the NF Community. The term is used specifically because it describes that tan color of birthmark seen on people who have NF. Specialists initially used the term as an adjective to describe the type of birthmarks that are NF indicators. So, you would hear people say Café au lait spots. Now the term has evolved from an adjective to simply a noun as in "My child as about 15 cafe au laits around his torso". This word change is very common if someone is familiar to the disorder, it is very strange when someone is not. So, if your child has been diagnosed and the geneticist is talking to you about how many cafe au laits you think you might have, there is a slight awkward pause until he or she realizes that they need to redefine the word in medical terms.

The first time I heard it, I felt the genetic counselor was going to walk in with a tray of hot coffee and milk for all of us to sip while we discussed neurology. That has always stuck with me. So, using David again, as my model, I decided to start my Cafe au lait painting, similar to the signs you see for coffee shops. In his sweater folds, I have cut out the entire section of the NF pamphlet that discusses the need for at least 6 or more cafe au lait spots in order to help confirm the diagnosis.

I went ahead and painted in his face but left the sweater alone for the most part. The background will be left intact, as I want it to look similar to those painted signs and also those be reminiscent of those silly ads from the 1950s. You remember those ads where there would be some grinning good looking man smiling with a nice hot cup of coffee near him and a cheery sunrise in the background. I don't know why, but those ads have always made me giggle, even as a kid. I always wondered "Were people in the 1950s really that thrilled with....coffee?" Additionally, I also painted the 6 spots, on that white porcelain cup. I had to make sure to paint them irregularly and not try to turn it into a pattern which is my natural tendency. In order to be an indication of NF, a person must have at least 6 cafe au lait spots. Fewer than six means that the person probably just has a few birthmarks, more than six, and the person most likely has NF.