Webster Art

I recently enlarged a 12 x 16 plein air oil to a 24 x 36 inch painting. I liked the unhurried studio experience so much I painted it again on canvas, but with a palette knife. It’s so nice to work at my leisure in the studio. There’s time to sort out form, lighting, and color choices. Painting plein air is lovely, the views are captivating and being outdoors is wonderful. And capturing that view over the course of 3 hours is very satisfying.

Tourists are always hiking by and taking photos of me working. I may be deluded…but from my perspective, cameras are cheating. Nevertheless, there are always problems working plein air due to the sun racing across the sky and the resulting movement of shadows.

In the studio, I can take the flawed plein air painting and fix it’s problems. I have my iPhone photos of where the shadows were, and my painting showing my interpretation of the colors. Cameras can’t begin to capture the colors my eye sees and imagines. I choose colors almost randomly. For example, my thought process might go like this:

Hmm, the drawing looks accurate, now what color am I going to paint all that white snow? It can’t all be shades of light blue or grey, that doesn’t look right. There is blown dirt on that snow, and some of the brown gray rock is wet from snow drainage, while some is bone dry and sand polished. If I can’t mix that exact color, would another color of the same value work?

An old saying in portraiture is: “Any color will work if the value is correct”. An example is a portrait painted with very wild colors. Meaning the flesh tones are barely seen, having been replaced with purples, greens,blues, you name it. But when you take a photo and convert it to gray scale (black and white), the portrait looks like normal skin. The values are correct, just not the hues. And this is where the art comes in. I have, on a good day, a gift for color.

I finished the two 36 inch mountain paintings and then faced the challenge of framing. I’d never framed anything that big. They were not only large “over the fireplace” style paintings, but they were on two inch deep canvas stretcher bars. My moulding from home depot is 3/4 inch deep. I needed moulding 2.5 inches deep.

Off to Lowes I went to get 24 feet of .75 x 2.5″ pine. I built the frame but my son’s borrowed miter saw is out of adjustment. I had up to 0.125 inch gaps at the joints. That meant week joints so I put triangles in the corners, along with the strainer pieces. The strainer is what the painting sits on, or “floats” in the frame.

The painting fit with a relatively accurate 0.25 inch gap all the way around. But then I began the nightmare of varnishing the frame. On my smaller frames I simply paint them with acrylic paint and gold leaf. But these deserved a piano gloss varnish…being so large and hopefully expensive. I got some Minwax Polyshades Stain + Poly in Satin – Espresso color. OMG, that stuff is a nightmare!

I painted it on very carefully, wiping down the drips and oozes repeatedly as it dried. Two hours later, the paint film had experienced some kind of weird gravity ooze. Forming ugly drips. It looked like a 7 year old had varnished the frame.

I sanded the bad paint off. But my 21 year old sander wasn’t cutting it. I bought a new velcro style corded Dewalt. So much faster and better! I painted it again even more carefully and it dripped again. I sanded it off again. For my third coat I used a rub on Danish Oil. That went on nicely, no drips. But it was’t the “coffee” stain color I wanted, even after two coats. For the third coat, I mixed in a bunch of black artist oil paint. I used about a 3 inch bead of Ivory Black in one quarter cup.

Finally I got the shade and varnish I wanted, but it dried like an oil painting…as in slow. Plus the darn thing was super heavy since this first one is painted on a canvas glued to a cradled board, not just canvas alone. Before starting the next frame I looked at youtube and found other frame makers were using half inch board, and they glued the strainer to the frame before cutting it in the miter saw. In theory this makes a strong frame since you are chopping through an “L” shape and it gets glued + nailed, in two dimensions…the side, and the bottom strainer piece. But the saw was still out of alignment and my miters were awful. I was able to patch it with putty…but jeez, I am such a bad carpenter.

To wrap up this overly long blog entry…I took the two framed monsters up to my gallery at the mountain. I thought he’d flip over this new work. I was so excited after two weeks of full time artist labor. I was like, rah, rah, this is going to be awesome! I was dreaming about them selling for a grand each.

But when I walked in and asked him if he wanted to see some new work, he replied that he had no more wall space and hadn’t sold my last oil painting. It was still hanging on his wall. Basically…”nah, I’m good, but keep painting, those are great”. He did give me some good feedback, preferring the knife painting the most, and said my frames were just right. He likes the floater style.

After that I realized I’d been taking my art too seriously. At the end of the day, it’s just a hobby, like Sue and her perfect yard. She loves to tinker out there, watering and pulling weeds. She doesn’t try to sell her hobby. It gives her satisfaction and that is enough. So I started making leather hats. I’ve made four so far using a youtube tutorial. I’m not a bad hat maker.

I have a long history with a climb called Battered Sandwich. I sent Alex up it on one of his first trips to Index. I’ve done it with my niece Pam and her friend Kena. My daughter got a cam stuck on it while following. When she lowered me down to retrieve the cam, I rubbed the knot in the chimney and core shot our brand new bicolor rope. I’ve hung all over the route in the 3 unique cruxes. One is off fists in the first 40 feet. At 50 feet it goes from fists to a body slot, but the body slot is smooth with nothing to grab. You’ve got pro at your feet, but nothing above you as you try and rock up into the bottom of the 8″ body slot. It’s extremely insecure.

Then the 8 inch slot gradually widens over the next 50 feet. You can walk a four and a 5 if you still have them. I only had a 5 yesterday. It’s a no fall situation. When you are walking your only cam for 30 feet you are risking a 60 foot whipper. So the move was: flex, push the cam up, unflex, wonk your way up above the cam, flex, reach down and move the cam up, repeat.

Eventually the slot opens up into a left facing flared chimney with hands in the back. It’s imminently climbable for 30 feet but then the hands turn into reds and greens. Which for my big mitts mean insecure again and I have to press my back against the flaring chimney since the hands are so strenuous. The chimney meanwhile is arching over towards less than vertical. At a certain point, right when the green cam sized crack becomes ring locks, you realize that you can sort of stand on the bottom of the chimney wall by pressing upward with your back. It’s steep friction, but just barely works.

A couple moves of that on increasing less steep footing, one more maxed out green or purple cam and you can reach a good hand hold and stand up. So for my hand size, it’s three cruxes: the off fists, the body slot, and the off hands at the top.

With all those challenges, I avoid it like the plague. Many people just top rope it. The party before us led up from the top of Wild Turkey and got a top rope on it. But Lisa G and I have some climbing chops and decided to give it a go. She got it clean with only minimal grunting. I was super nervous at the bottom, thinking all the worst case scenarios, including down climbing and going home.

But the terror starts slowly. After the runout start (bring extra reds just for that) it’s very solid hands leading into friendly blues. Just when you are getting comfortable (love my big hands) it gets bigger than steepled hands but not big enough for fists. So I was doing diagonal fists which is both painful and insecure. Right about then all the face holds on the left vanish into a blank vertical wall. But by committing both feet to the crack splitter style I was able to grunt my way past the bomb bay bulge in the crack. I slammed in one of my fours and the crack, even though it was bigger inside than fists, tapers at the outside to make perfect fists.

I happily walked my four up 10 feet and then arrived at the body slot…where there is nothing to grab but a rounded one by four inch ledge. I put my five in at the bottom of the slot, which was great. But then I had to climb above it into the body slot. I’m an old chicken and do not like climbing above my gear, but I manned up and made it work with a tipped out blue for a top rope piece.

A week later I did it again with Julia but brought three fours, so I had a much safer top rope piece at the body slot. A few days later Chris and I did Rattletale and Peanuts to serve you. I hung all over Rattletale pitch two. I’m blaming it on the heat. My hands were greasing out of what should have been secure yellows. She also had trouble on pitch three, so maybe it was just low tide. Couldn’t be that we are getting older.

The next day was my nephew John’s wedding, and then we followed Lisa and family to Leavy for Levi’s first birthday at 8 Mile campground. In the morning I led Lisa up Classic Crack. That thing is not getting easier as I get older. Maybe fresh from Indian Creek it would be a cruise, but I found I really had to focus on technique to get it clean, and that was just barely. The feet felt insecure, the good jams were over long reaches and I could feel my power ebbing. When I finally got up to the secure fists at the top I was breathing like a cart horse.

It was great to hang out as a family. As we walked from the campground to Classic, Lisa said she was having deja vu moments, remembering walking there with my parents, me holding her 5 year old hand. Now she was holding her own daughters hand, while I was the grandpa. It’s funny how age gives you this grand perspective back through time, looking down through the generations.

Speaking of grandparents, yesterday Clint had to work an unplanned shift. Sue went over at 6 to babysit. I pedaled over at noon to help. Rose was bouncing off the walls with Abby crawling under her. It was an accident waiting to happen. I asked Rose if she wanted to go for a walk. We walked down to the park together. I’d never taken her for a walk by myself. But there I was, an old white haired grandpa walking a three year old girl in a little white princess dress. Who saw that coming?

She reminded me of Wyatt, meandering along, stopping at every point of interest. But unlike Wyatt the dog, Rose could talk lucidly about the pretty yards, the fine old elegant brick houses. And she was so well trained, grabbing my hand at each street crossing, watching for cars. Getting old sucks, but there are these neat things that happen, like grandchildren.