Webster Art

I spent 4 days working on a portrait of my son. Sue acted as my chief consultant, checking on it twice a day as she visited out in my studio / shop. Towards the end I sensed there were problems but couldn’t see them. I was taking breaks at night, hoping I’d see clearly in the morning but that didn’t work.

Back in the day I’d look at ‘from life’ paintings in a mirror, but now I take a photo and layer the photo on top of my photo reference. I reduce opacity of the painting layer and see all the errors. I had the chin way to short, the lips too high, both eyes were wrong for various reasons: Pupils were too large, left eye was too wide, right eyelid was too thick. The nose wasn’t tilted enough, lips were tilted too much, forehead was too tall and hair was too long. Other than that it was quite close.

Here are some notes I made for todays corrections:

• make darker on left forehead 
• Eyelid too thick right 
• Correct lip tilt
• Refine curve on cheek wrinkle  right side
• Mustache, left more contrast
• Left lip darker
• Define forehead muscles
• Rite hairline curves in more
• Tilt of nose is off
• Right mustache too dark
• Squint!!

I texted the painting to Craig and Jamie. They both said the eyes were wrong. Craig thought it couldn’t be fixed. He clearly doesn’t paint in oils. The first major change I made was to move the lips down a quarter inch. To get them to move I had to scrub them down to white gesso with solvent and then repaint in the right place. This was after agonizing over them for hours: refining the wrinkles, the shading, the hue, the chroma, the dark lip line, the shadow under the lip on the chin. And all in the wrong place, too close to the nose.

As I got closer to a likeness it began to breath. I’d make a few small corrections to the lips, nose or eyes and I’d hear him say: “Yeah dad, that’s it, you got it right there.” Hearing these imaginary conversations in my mind made me smile and helped the work continue. Which was incredibly frustrating at times. If this sounds like I’m crazy, hearing voices in my head. I probably am, or maybe it was the turpentine fumes. Anyway, what happens in the studio stays in the studio. No one reads this damn blog anyway. Except future me.

During the worst of it I questioned not only my skill, but my sanity in even trying something so far above my pay grade. I’m a total hack of a painter. Don’t have a clue how to use color correctly. I knew his beard was brown hair on tan skin, but those colors were intolerably boring. When I tried green though, it sparkled.

Sue: “Why do you use such stupid color? His beard isn’t green?”

Me: “I’m a retard! If you took as much acid back in the day you’d paint crazy too”

Sue: “You could tone it down a little. You have the skill to do that. I see it in your pencil work. You should work more in pencil, those are awesome!”

Me: “But I like color!”

We dropped by Clint’s after our walk today. He knew something was going on when I walked in with my wet painting carrier box.

“Got a new painting to show you.”

“Oh, you painted me! That’s not bad.”

I looked over at Rose who was bouncing off the walls.

“Hey Rose! Do you know who this is?”

Her attention slowly wandered over to me and the painting I was holding under the light. Her face opened up in wonder, her mouth forming an “O” shape.

“Daddy! You painted my daddy!!”

She reminded me of a dog who is super excited to see you. Tail wagging furiously, jumping up and down. But in a 4 year old human kind of way.

A small starved part of me wants to share it on social media, see how many likes I can get. I’ve been off FB and Insta for months now and don’t miss it at all. When I think about likes in the abstract, what are they really? Someone sees your work on a screen and presses a heart button. How is that real in and meaningful way?

Compare that to the huge smile on my son’s face, and the excitement of my grand daughter, and Jamie saying “Wow, that’s a huge improvement on the one you texted me!”

As I worked longer and longer on it I became increasingly sure that I had a likeness, that it was truly him I’d created with my brushes, oils and turpentine. Sure, the colors are all wrong, I’m a train wreck of a painter. But there is something real there, bad colors and all. It didn’t exist before I put paint to canvas, and at the end of the day that is a good day of work.

I especially like how I’ve carved out an attitude that allows me to work on stuff that is totally pointless, doesn’t have a chance of ever selling and is not intended to.

I’ll post it later. I like the purity of English. Van Gogh would write letters to his brother about his paintings. He didn’t need photos to express his feelings and neither do I.

Here is Rose, his daughter:

And this is Olivia, my daughter’s daughter:

I also painted his chickens and his dog. They can be found over in my portraits gallery on my hand built website.

This is not a story about painting, climbing, or family. Rather this is a story about an 11 year old kid, new to town, on his first day in a new school. His dad had got a new job. All his friends were left behind 30 miles west.

As he stood there bewildered by the new buildings, wondering which way to go, a small voice popped up beside him: “Hey there, are you new here?”.

The new kid was me, and Ted became my first friend in town. 59 years later we’re still friends through thick and thin. We got in so much trouble in high school, it was almost a right of passage to break as many laws as possible. We weren’t criminals or anything, we had our morals and sense of honor…but if a law didn’t make sense, was it really even a law?

If you lived thorough those times I need say no more. But we were there for each other through boy scouts, our first crushes, girlfriends and the inevitable heartbreaks. They were wild times but we soldiered through together.

He was there when I first picked up a guitar. He was in a band that played gigs around town, and I was invited to practices. A gang of 5 of us had our own garage band complete with some cute girls who liked our sound and the beer. His band later won a competition in Seattle and toured Europe.

I was working full-time then but still joined the band at house parties as the harp player. We jammed today for an hour, playing both old and new songs. It’s hard for me to remember the old harp riffs because I play them so seldom.

Going back to 1966 he and I and a few other friends played ping pong downstairs at my folk’s house. If you have kids, get them a ping pong table! It’s safe harmless fun and endlessly entertaining to kids of all ages. Plus it keeps them off the streets.

My dad took Ted and I on some hikes in high school, and we continued hiking afterward. Ted took this photo of me and Sue hiking and being silly in 1980:

After jamming today we wheeled his table outside and played for another couple hours. He raised his kids with a table and has some chops, especially considering he only plays every few months. Though I play up to 3 times a week, he still had me running around the table. I could not let my guard down at all or he’d be on me.

I finally painted my second grand child. I did my sons kid almost a year ago and finally got a good photo from which to paint my daughter’s kid. They are going to see it tomorrow. I hung it on the wall by the first portrait. I hope they like it. I look at it and see problems. But everyone else (Sue, Ted, Carol) all think it’s great and problem free. I’ve already spent 4 days on it and it’s in danger of getting overworked.

We’ve had the usual bout of spring colds. It’s hardest on Lisa as she is stuck so far from help. She drove up here while Levi had a fever. Nothing could make him happy and being unable to talk yet all he could do was make annoying Ahh, Ahh sounds. It was driving us all crazy but she was on day 4 of it and at wits end. Sue was right there with her. She gets on the same wavelength and the two of them are drama queens.

I played ping pong Wednesday and we had a great crowd. Randy and Bob showed up which would have been plenty, but then Lamson and his friend showed up. Lamson is the guy I took a lesson from. According to Kenny Lamson used to clean up at regional tournaments. Seeing him at our local gym was like a visit from royalty. His forehand smash is a thing of beauty. The movement of his arm as he flows through the punch reminds me of how Tiger Woods swings a golf club.

I need to work out and then start in on a portrait of Clint. He sat for me once before he had kids, but I’m afraid that window has closed. Many of my artist heros including Richard Schmid work from photos when necessary. And both of my grandkid paintings were definitely done from photos. 3 year olds don’t sit and neither do solo parents babysitting two kids under 4 years old.