Seat's Still Warm

"Seat's Still Warm" - 2.5 x 3.5" colored pencil on drafting film.

Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.

Click here to bid.

Today, because I love my daughter, and because we just moved into our new house, I finally decided to assemble the play kitchen she got for Christmas. One of those nice, wooden jobbies from Grandpa, that had been carefully hidden so that we wouldn't have to move a gigantic kitchen once we had taken it out of the box.

Well, I have to tell you, four blisters, one headache, and exactly three swear words later (all used as adjectives, I'm afraid), that I miss those instructions that actually used words instead of universal images. You know, I open the instructional paper up and find a sheet of suggestive pictograms, arrows pointing just what to stick where. I was stuck studying each wooden slab and wondering if this unmarked piece was really B or if it was possibly D -- I mean, they both had little hole thingies sort of the same places . . but just different enough to really get you into trouble should you swap them.

So I opened up the little screw baggies (aptly named, my friends, aptly named) and got to work, only to discover that I was using the wrong screws for the first five steps. How was this possible? Well, because the directions indicated I should use the R screws, I was mistakenly using the screws from the baggy marked R. instead of using the screws from the unmarked baggy. An obvious error on my part! But I soon realized there were R screws and then there were R sub 1 screws, which was virtually impossible to see in the size 2 font the instructions were printed in. Tell me just one thing. Are there not 26 letters in the alphabet? Could they not have named them something other than R and R with a milimeter high 1 next to it?

Stupid kitchen. All I can say is she better to pretend to cook and slave away in it for hours at a time.

Anyway. So I wanted to show you a photo of Horses of Roan on my new mantle, so you can get a better idea of what it looks like in context. And I wanted to give a mention to all my Sargent blogging buddies:

Nicole

Katherine

Regula

Rose

Helene

Belinda

Robyn

And tomorrow, my pets, I shall reveal the February artist! Bum bum bum . . . unless I already said. I don't remember. I'm not good with this suspense thing.

Horses of Roan - After John Singer Sargent

"Horses of Roan" - 30 x 40" acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas.

Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
$1600: email me to purchase.

Okay, I think I'm done. Finally. After a month of scrutinizing John Singer Sargent's methods and works, drawing endless preliminary sketches, and doing a full color study before even touching my brush to my giganto 30 x 40" canvas (that's the size of one of the old Mini-Coopers, for those of you using metric), I think I've finally come to the end of my journey. This is a terrible photo, and it still needs a varnish to even the tone and bring out the color saturation, but you get the idea. What a long way it's come from the doodle in the margin of my novel notes!
But I'd like to tip my hat to Mr. Sargent for a very fruitful January. Those of you who have followed my work for any length of time will know that I'm most at home with my colored pencils. Acrylics are a fairly new medium for me and I'm not at all sure what I'm doing when I have them in my hand. Well, on my brush that I have in my hand. So for me to tackle this project with acrylics was pretty gutsy for me and I expected disaster, to tell you the truth. But I think - gasp - that I pulled it off. Of course, you might believe me once I get a better photo of it.

So, what shall follow is an extremely cool and bulleted list of what I learned from ye ol' JSS.

• with a limited palette of only Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, Hooker Green, Burnt Umber, Ultramarine Blue, Mars Black, and White, you can create amazing colors.
• Almost every single color on my canvas includes at least a little bit of ALL of those colors. This was very weird! But it makes it look so complex in person -- and so cohesive.
• No hard edges between values -- Sargent said that was laziness and I had to work harder than my normal slacking self did to try to get the perfect tone down to fade between the two.
  
• Strong value shapes are more important than strong realism. I was emulating the values of his piece "El Jaleo" with its single white-dressed dancer and dramatic shadows. It was more important to set a stage with dramatic lighting that highlighted my white struggling horse than to create a comfy habitat with rolling realistic hills and splashing water and rubber duckies. That meant really fighting my desire to indicate background or obsess over details
• You would be amazed by how few details you actually need for a scene to make sense. Sargent often stared at his canvases from ten or more feet away, and then dashed forward to make a change. His pieces look realistic at 10 feet and like impressionistic pieces up close. The colored pencil detail freak in me had to know when to stop.
• A counterpoint to your focal point makes a powerful statement. Okay, that doesn't make much sense. But what I mean is this -- Sargent would show us his focal point/ subject through dynamic use of his lightest light and darkest dark next to each other. And then, in the opposite corner, he would put RED. Red, people. You know, that color that draws the eye and is only supposed to be in your focal point? Yeah, well, putting it in the opposite sweet spot works, if you've made your subject strong enough. Amazing.
• Black is never black and white is never white.
• Sargent said to use plenty of paint -- to scrape paint on a canvas to indicate transparency showed a lack of skill. I used so much paint on this, and worked wet in wet (tricky with acrylics, though I did use medium for some of it). And I had to fight the urge to just paint a dab where I wasn't sure. Had to slab it on.
  
• And finally, Sargent did plenty of preliminary work on his big pieces: sketches, charcoal studies, color studies, etc., so that when he came to the canvas, he could get it down right the first time, and quickly. I ironed out so many issues with the preliminary work that I'm not certain I would ever do a piece this large without doing that many sketches and studies again.
  

Thanks, John, for haunting me for the past 30 days. I learned a lot. And I'm sure I could do it all over again in January 2008 and learn more still.

Now that it's the end of the month, maybe everybody who participated in the Sargent project could send me an email with a link to their stuff, so that I can assemble a final page with all of them!

Only I will be moving on Monday, so I might be away from the computer for a few days. Hopefully everything will go smoothly . . .

Studio Moving Sale! 50% off!

"Want Company" - 11 x 14" fine art print
on SALE, baby!
Click here to buy.

Okay, folks, I am very excited, for two reasons. Firstly, in two days, we're moving into our first ever house of our own. Whoo hoo!!! Secondly, for the first time ever, I have an entire floor to myself for my studio. Which will be nice, cat free, and completely beautiful for clients to come over and goggle my work and drink my tea and eat my cookies. Sounds . . . idyllic, doesn't it?

Today was the first day I got to pack a box and label it "STUDIO." I was so excited, I danced around and screamed like a little girl inside my head. Want to see the box? Of course you do.

Oh, the beauty of it. Anyway, I was packing up my stuff and you know, it's the new year and a new studio, and I don't want to move last year's odds and ends into it. So I decided to do the Christian thing and have a sale.

That's right! A huge Moving Into a Posh New Studio Surrounded By Oak Trees One Day Only Sale! And it's already started! I schlashed my prices on selected pieces by 50% and put them on eBay for a one day auction. Oh, and what the heck, I'll give y'all free shipping too for those, if you mention that you read my blog.

Anyway, the pieces are here. Check them out. Pass it along to your friends. Go WILD!

Oh, and I think I might finish my Sargent piece tomorrow, so brace yourself for a long-winded post on John Singer Sargent's virtues.

This Seat's Taken

"This Seat's Taken" - 6 x 6" acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Click here to bid.

Seriously, I'm not being antisocial. I'm just packing moving boxes while painting. Really. I'll be mostly normal again by Monday evening when it's all over. (Husband, in background, laughing wildly at notion of Maggie = normal).

Beauty

"Beauty" - 8 x 10" colored pencil on pastelbord.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Click here to bid.

Okay, fine, you can say it. I'm a geek. I just stopped short in typing my blog entry (which was going to be all about how posing my still lifes was difficult as two cats, two kids, and a dog kept the life from ever being still) to shout to my husband to switch the station to Top Chef.

Oh! Blast - hold on, right back . . . I'm sure there'll be a commercial soon.

Okay, okay, I'm back. Anyway, I don't know why I watch that show. I mean, sure I love food and I love to cook, but it's not even like they're cooking in the same sort of way that I cook. See, this would be my life blended with Top Chef.

MY HUSBAND: "What's for dinner?"
ME: "Deconstructed hamburgers with a mayonnaise mahi mahi pate seared with foie gras."
MY HUSBAND: "I'm going to kill myself now."
ME: "It'll get cold."

They don't really cook real food. They cook weird, strange dishes with French names and sauces that are the colors of Crayola crayons. The ingredients are bizarre, expensive oddities from overseas that I could never find locally, like the underarm scrapings of a Cambrian sunflower or the liver of the Tuscan Sea Squirrel. Then they serve them all on posh, square plates that I might be able to find at IKEA if I dropped one of their round ones on the floor.

And yet, I watch it faithfully every Wednesday. While eating a donut. What can I say, I'm so middle class.

And - yep -- it's back on again. I must leave you, my dear reader. It's the season finale.

Table for One

"Table For One" - 11 x 14" colored pencil and acrylic on paper.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Please click here to purchase.

Oh, gentle reader. Forgive my short post -- we're moving in exactly one week and I have been tearing around like I'm on fire -- that's why I'm posting at 17 minutes before midnight. Why is it that when you take all of the objects out of a 10" x 20" drawer, it takes two boxes measuring 20 x 20" to hold all of the stuff?

And I want to know, can I rent moving boxes? What a great idea, right? Pack 'em up, move 'em, empty 'em, and give them back. Great idea. GREAT IDEA. Wait, I think I need some more tea.

The Meaning of Christmas

"The Meaning of Christmas" - 5 x 7" colored pencil on pastelbord.
copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Click here to bid.

Well, today I hit a new low. This fact hit me as I was scraping a can of Spaghetti-Os into a medium-sized microwave safe bowl. Mmmm. Dinner. I could not help but be entertained by the fun, Dora the Explorer shaped pasta pieces as I prepared my meal.

See, I'm allergic to preservatives. It really sounds innocuous, but the little bastards* are everywhere. Try it. Pick up any package of food -- gravy, American cheese (I don't know why they call it "cheese" anyway -- after reading the package, I'm glad I can't eat it), salad dressing -- and I guarantee you'll find a Sodium Disodium Phosphate Sorbate Potassium Sulphate Chemical cocktail party. Oh, yeah, and Red 40. They somehow manage to work that into foods that aren't even vaguely red.

* I did absolutely not swear on my blog. You're imagining things.

Anyway. When I eat even the smallest bit of any of it, I get a fun filled vacation to Anaphylactic ShockLand. After I have ridden the Blood Pressure Coaster and the Cold Sweat Teacups, I stand in line for the public restrooms and wonder if I should do it all again or just go home. Following this family entertainment (I'm great fun at parties and weddings! Call me!), my mood dips precipitously and I inevitably end up on the couch listening to all my Snow Patrol and Death Cab for Cutie albums. I disgust even myself.

But on this particular night, my husband was working and it was too cold to hit the grocery store with two kids. The Dora-Os were the only preservative free object in the house. Not even any chocolate chips left to make myself cookies. Oh, the pain.

While slurping down Dora's Huge Bubble Head(TM) made of pasta, I observed that if I could manage to choke down the whole can, I'd only have scored 300 calories. I calculate that brings me to just about even with what I expended madly tearing apart the kitchen looking for a canned pasta alternative.

Huh. Well, I guess I'll try and get the whole bowl down then. At the moment I'm trying to decide if this particular piece of pasta on my spoon is supposed to be Tico the Squirrel or the Star of David.

I think I deserve a donut run tomorrow. Lots of donuts. Lots.


POSTSCRIPT: I wanted to let you know where I had gotten to on the Sargent painting after tonight's painting session, but it's really too embarrassingly late to stay up and write an entire Sargent post this evening . . . those Dora-Os must keep you up!

The Eatery

"The Eatery, Cary Street" - 6 x 6" acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas.
copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Will be available February through Chasen Galleries.

Today I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond with my kiddies, husband, and extended family, hoping for an enriching and education experience. Three hours and seven or eight galleries later, I had learned a lot, namely:

• never take a two year old to any place that urges words like "contemplation", "quiet", or "introspective." You will end up beating yourself over the head with a gilded frame.
• if you want to be really talented, change your name to something unpronouncable. See, I'm ahead of the game.
• ugly paintings somehow get put in museums -- I'm never throwing anything away every again, in case I get famous
• my dad likes boring paintings
• my husband likes boring paintings
• I like exciting paintings
• Going to a gift shop is like date rape. You will come to your sense three hours later feeling violated but not knowing why until you realize they took your wallet and your dignity.

I highly recommend it. We all need cultural enrichment. And also their mocha lattes were pretty tasty, even though I hate coffee. What more recommendation do you need?

And be patient, patient . . . more Horses of Roan on Monday, I think.

Molly's Eyes

"Molly's Eyes" - 2.5 x 3.5" colored pencil on drafting film.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Potrait commission for private collector; for commission info email Maggie at
portraits with character @ gmail.com

Okay, folks. I promise, I'll do a real blog post tomorrow -- Fridays are my nights to write on my novel that will make me rich and famous, so I'm actually posting this between chapters. My full attention tomorrow night, promise!

Just Another Weekend

"Just Another Weekend" - 11 x 14" acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Click here to bid.

I would write something witty here, but I just finished watching the remake of The Producers and all humor in my life has been utterly drained. I am but a limp shell of my former self . . .

Because I have zippo creativity left this evening, I'll leave you with my progress shots of the painting above. From the whole messy beginning . . . (note the values sketch, oh budding artists!)

to the kiss at the end . . .

Afternoon Study in Gold

"Afternoon Study in Gold" - 6 x 6" acrylic on gallery wrap canvas.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Please click here to bid.

Okay, first of all, a small "whoop whoop!" as today I hit the 200 feedback mark on eBay. 200 positive feedback! Whoo hoo!!

Yeah. Enough of that. Unfortunately, my dear blog readers, today is going to be one of those boring plug-the-artist posts. I have not been doing nearly enough to promote my cityscapes (which were voted best on eBay! whoop whoop!)(I've got to stop doing that).

So. Puh-lease. Take a gander at my Richmond Series, which is carried exclusively by Chasen Galleries in Richmond.

"Fountain Bookstore, Cary Street" 12 x 36" acrylic on canvas.
A nice street in Richmond with an awesome bookstore and right there behind the van is a great Italian place with killer cheesecake. Not too easy on the pocket book though. The cheesecake, not the painting. My art is always a steal!

And. Take a look at the cityscapes that are available through Art Encounter, Las Vegas. I don't know what my paintings have been doing while they're in the gallery out there. What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas. Probably canoodling with some nude oil paintings or something . . .

"Spot of Sunshine" - pretty stinking large acrylic on canvas
currently entertaining itself in Las Vegas.

Anyway. There. I promoted them. Now please go and buy stuff so I don't have to do it again. You will be returned to your usual programming tomorrow evening.

Short Term Relationship

"Short Term Relationship" - 9 x 12" colored pencil on paper.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Click here to bid.

All right, ignore the cat above. Okay, well, don't ignore it, but pay more attention to the one below. Well, not that either. Go, click on the link above, put a huge bid on the cat, then come back here, and look at my Sargent stuff below.

Regular readers will know that me and the members of Fine Line Artists and any other artists we can delude into joining us are all trying to do a piece in the style of John Singer Sargent in the month of January.

So for the past two weeks I have agonized, eaten much cookie dough, and sweated over numerous Sargent websites and books and have done a series of preliminary drawings and color studies. And tonight . . . I started the real thing. On a gigantic 30 x 40" canvas which is approximately the size of our bedroom.

And this (hold your breath) is what it looks like.



Oh, stop sputtering. It's not done yet, for crying out loud. That's only an hour's work. And it's admittedly a terrible photograph. Hey, it's dark in here.

I feel like Sargent is hovering over my shoulder, laughing his head off and slapping his thighs in between cursing and shouting at me to put down the tube of Cadmium Yellow. See, one of the things his contemporaries always said about him was that one got a sense of "effortless virtuousity" while he was painting. I think perhaps the phrase they would use for me was "effortless swearing."

Okay. Deep breaths. American Idol isn't helping. Why is it that everyone hates that show but we all still watch it?

I would like to take this moment to highlight other Sargent posts going on at this very moment. And those of you who are vaguely artistic and not participating, I know where you live. I will come for you and I will put tubes of dark umber in your hot little hands. You can't escape the Sargent project.

Nicole Caulfield
Katherine Tyrrell
Rose Welty
Helene Keough
Belinda Lindhardt

Willoughby

"Willoughby" - 2.5 X 3.5" colored pencil on film
copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
portrait commission.

Okay, I'm actually watching the end of Mission Impossible III while working on the above portrait commission, but I wanted you to know that I really was working. Not just relaxing like a normal person . . .

And the villain just got to the part where he gives the long monologue telling Tom Cruise all of his evil plans. Villains just don't do that. They stay quiet. They don't talk. They're cagey. That's why we call them villains. People who tell us all of their evil plans that they want to carry out are called coworkers.

Smelly Wet Nosed Pillow Thief II

"Smelly Wet Nosed Pillow Thief II" - 8 x 10" colored pencil on pastelbord
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Please click here to purchase.

I've decided that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who pull into parking spaces, and those that back in. Those who are in a hurry to get parked and those who are in a hurry to get away.

I am proud to be a backer-inner. It says something about me. It says "I'm self-assured." "I'm confident." "I'm motivated." "I know where the corners of my car are."

I have seen the Pullers-In. Crouched over their steering wheel like a preying mantis with a back spasm, they look in vain for signs of the parking lines. When their time shopping is done, they turn their heads around backwards like Linda Blair to make sure they don't back over any Backer-inners. It says something about them. "I talk on my cell phone a lot." "I drive an SUV named after a small country." "My car is large enough to crush your car."

Okay, so I'm a little biased. But I've had my car backed into by two Pullers-In in my life, beating a retreat from the store. If only they had been Backers-In, they would've seen my car creeping up sneakily behind them, and not added their paint choice to my paint choice (which is always black).

Ah, but can one change? Nurture or nature? Is being a Puller-In a choice or a birthright? I'd love to hear from you. Tell me. Why, why, pull in?

Her Attention

"Her Attention" - 6 x 6" acrylic on gallery wrap canvas.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Click here to bid.

Today, having wrested the remote control from the terminally sticky hands of my small children, I was watching television and I saw a commercial for some sort of non traditional, non-springy bed of a brand that I neither recall nor care to recall. Anyway, the thing I do recall is that they cited some statistic that the average bed will double its weight in 10 years due to all the dust mites inside it.

Now wait a second here. Just wait one second. I'm not sure what the average weight of a dust mite is, but I know how much my mattress weighs: an awful friggin' lot. And unless that dust mite population is down there having a great time 24/7, listening to salsa music, and getting it on, I find it impossible to believe that they'd be able to create enough of their little allergenic bodies into my mattress for it to become doubly friggin' heavy. And how about fitting that many little multi legged bodies? If you look at human populations that reproduce like dust mites, you know, say, the Catholic Irish (don't get all offended now, I'm Catholic too . . . ) you can see what happens after they've doubled their country's weight in ten years: they get the heck off that island and move someplace with more room to procreate.

As I've not seen any dust mite conga lines heading out of my mattress, I'm really doubting this statistic. Or even the existence of dust mites. Or even why I care that they're in my mattress. There's springs down there too . . . should I be worried? I also have at least one cat infesting my couch -- time to panic?

Anyway, the point is, I think those people are lying about the dust mites. What's that one quote?

"77% of statistics are made up on the spot."

Periwinkle

"Periwinkle" - 8 x 10" colored pencil on pastelbord
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Click here to bid.

More later . . . watch this space. ;)

Penda

"Penda" - 5 x 7" colored pencil on colorfix
copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater
please click here to bid.

Okay. I am not going to entertain you all today on this blog. Instead I would be much obliged if you would all hurry your bums over to art4critters.blogspot.com and check out the blog of Art 4 Critters, a group I'm in that donates portions of their proceeds to animal charities. Read it. Be amazed. Be amused. Search for A4C on eBay and help starving artists feed hungry animals! (catchy, huh?)

Horses of Roan - Color Study

"Horses of Roan - color study" - 11 x 14" acrylic on gallery wrap canvas.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Please click here to bid.


Okay, so I was back to the Sargent drawing board today. I decided it was time to tackle a color study. Sargent did several for El Jaleo, the piece that I'm modeling mine after. See here and here for examples.

It turned out to be harder than I thought. First of all, it takes a lot of work to make it look like it's intuitive. I was thinking about the following Sargent principles while I was working:

• limited palette - I only used the colors that Sargent used (see my first post with my Sargent sketches for a list)
• Soft edges - Sargent said that a hard edge was a weakness
• Strong, confident application of color rather than tentative layers of incorrect colors
• Get the tone right the first time or begin again
• mimicking Sargent's reliance on dark values to define his shapes.
  
• aiming for realism at 15 feet but impressionism at 15 inches

Hard stuff . . . so much harder than I'd anticipated, especially with little or no reference for much of it. To refresh memories, here is El Jaleo again -- see how the white horse is supposed to draw the eye like the dancer. On the final canvas, I need to move that horse a bit to the left to put him in a sweet spot.



I want to end this post by directing you guys to other blogging participants in the project. And keep sending me your sketches and blog addresses -- I want to do a big post at the end of the month with everyone's efforts. All skill levels are welcome to join in! Supposed to be a learning process, right?

Okay, the links:

Katherine Tyrrell's post: "Realism or Impressionism?"

Helene Keough's blog progress on her piece learning from Sargent

It's only the 8th -- plenty of time to join in! And keep those helpful comments and emails coming. I'm only a baby here . . . I need all the help I can get!

Laurence

"Laurence" - 11 x 14" colored pencil on Ampersand Pastelbord.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Click here to purchase.

I'm a bit irritated with my dog, Peanut. Aside from the fact that she has eaten roughly 16 oz of Dora the Explorer brand cereal today alone and she barks suspiciously when she hears herself fart, she didn't bother to use the oft spoke of doggie sixth sense to alert me to our impending climactic disaster.

I mean, here it was 78 degrees on Saturday, obviously a sign that glaciers were about to melt and flood us out of our townhouse, and Peanut was snoring on the couch, filled with graham crackers and dead to the world. And today it was 20 degrees colder, obviously a sign of the crack in the ozone layer, and Peanut was frisking around outside like some sort of caffeinated lamb.

I always hear about these super dogs that alert their owners to the secret rumblings of hidden volcanos on the verge of erupting, or dogs that begin to whimper when a tornado is forming miles away. Even dogs that mysteriously get excited when their owners start on their way home from work, cities away.

Not so with my psychically fragile Peanut. Oh, no. The only precognitive ability I've seen in her is the one that allows her to know exactly when you're about to get up from the couch so she can be ready to slime instantaneously into the warm impression left by your butt before you return. If our lives were in Peanut's hands (paws), all I can say is that I hope that the threat was in the form of a small stuffed animal, which has proven to be the only presence that Peanut can effectively neutralize with confidence.

I suppose my irritation with Peanut will pass. Perhaps the complete absence of winter here and the complete absence of summer in New Zealand will turn out to be perfectly normal, and Peanut will be able to look back and say "I told you so." With a mouthful of Dora the Explorer Cinnamon Stars.

Falling In - Revisited

"Falling In" - 16 x 20" acrylic on canvas
copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Please click here to bid.

Today was a typical day for me, which means that I

• ate cookie dough
• threw all of my clean laundry into a pile to quickly clear off the kitchen table in time to photograph still life set ups before the sun went behind the clouds
• spent $200 on frames and supplies for the upcoming months of shows, intaking breath sharply as I pressed "yes, process my order" button on the website
  
• listened to Lunasa's "Otherworld" album at top volume while cleaning the kitchen
• stripped my jack russell terrier until she looked fairly hairless and attractive
• ate more cookie dough

And now, I will conclude this post with one of my still life shots and a photograph of chocolates that I took yesterday. You know, to tide you over until you can make some cookie dough of your own.

The Dream

"The Dream" - 8 x 10" acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas.
Copyright 2006 Maggie Stiefvater.
Please click here to bid.

Today I decided to try a color study to see what I'd be up against with this Sargent project. So out whipped the paints and an 8 x 10" canvas, and this is what I came up with. Sargent said:

• a perfectly delineated line between dark and light was a fault, and laziness
• dragging paint thinly across the canvas to create the idea of transparency was no substitute for a thick glob of paint of the exact correct tone
• to achieve proper facial features/ likeness, the initial underpainting, no matter how blobby, of the head, had to be properly constructed
• better to scrape off a poor start than constantly try to correct it.
  
• make sure you have plenty of paint on your palette and don't try to spare it
  

So I kept all these things in mind as I worked on this, and tried to ignore the fact that my intended final canvas is 8000 times larger than this little one.

Bring on the comments, folks, I can take 'em. Also, on Sunday I'd would love to post progress from my participating readers, but I sense y'all are still holding back, because I don't have as many as I'd like. Doesn't have to be big, folks . . . email me. portraitswithcharacter @ gmail.com

Penny Lane

"Penny Lane" - 14 x 17" colored pencil on drafting film.
Copyright 2006 Maggie Stiefvater.
Image not yet available for purchase; email at portraitswithcharacter @ gmail.com to reserve.

Am I the only girl in the world who doesn't like to shop for clothing? For Christmas, my father in law was kind enough to give me a gift card to Old Navy, the store where most of my wardobe originated and the most likely reason why I still get carded at the grocery store. What he doesn't know, however, is that most of the clothing in my wardobe was purchased by my husband for me.

See, when I enter a clothing store, the racks seem to multiply. Like frightened buffalo, the piles of baby Ts and swathes of pea coats draw into a huddle, confusing the predator by failing to offer any one easy choice. Most of my clothing hunts are ended in this early stage as I circle the herd, eyes listless, and head back out the door for a bookstore where the prey offers itself up more readily.

But let's figure it's a good day. I've had my Vitamin C and some sweet tea and their evasive behavior doesn't fool me. Well, on these rare days when I stride into the store confidently, I'm am foiled by a different problem: the problem of the Oddly Changing Body Size. Perhaps this has happened to you. You find a shirt. It's great. It's blue. Nice. You grab your size, head to the dressing room, try it on with a pair of jeans which are also blue, and nice. They look great. You turn. Your butt looks great. You turn. Your boobs look great. Voila. You buy them. You take them home. You take off the tags. You put them on. The pants fall off you, loose enough to fit you and your mother in law both, and the shirt clings tightly to your bust, making you look like Lindsay Lohan in a wet t-shirt contest.

So what's the solution? The husband. Perhaps because clothing racks don't realize he is a predator, they lay prostrate before him. I wait patiently in the car (or better yet, in the bookstore next door). He swirls into the store, effortlessly selects a small stack of clothing which he intuitively chooses in my size, and emerges. He hands me a bag. "You're so helpless."

They always fit.

The Horses of Roan - second Sargent sketch

"
"Horses of Roan - more preliminary sketches" - 5 x 7" approx. graphite on paper.
Copyright 2007 (still sounds weird) Maggie Stiefvater.

Okay, today I worked some more on my sketches for the John Singer Sargent project, because I read this following passage in his words:

"A sketch must be seriously planned, tried and tried again, turned about until it satisfies every requirement, and a perfect visualization is attained. A sketch must not be merely a pattern of pleasant shapes, just pleasing to the eyes, just merely a fancy. It must be a very possible thing, a definite arrangement -- everything fitting in a plan and in true relationship frankly standing upon a horizontal plane coinciding in their place with a prearranged line. As a plan is to a building, so must the sketch be to the picture." From: http://www.goodbrush.com/misc/painting_lessons/sargent_notes.pdf

After reading that, I realized that I had not done nearly enough prep work. I hadn't tried more than two positions on the horses. I hadn't tried different crops, groupings, value patterns . . . No, I'm still nowhere close.

But with the sketch up top you see that I'm closer. A little. I brought them closer together and changed the crop since my intended canvas is a whopping 30 x 40" which is more square. I knew I wanted the two horses farthest away to be darkest but the jury is still out on which horse is going to be my focal point and how to treat the foreground. More study is needed, I think, to see what Sargent would've done.

But there's still a lot of January left, right? I would like to call y'all's attention to my Fine Line Artist friends who have now begun to blog their progress on this project.

Katherine Tyrrell's blog, full of information and a wonderful breakdown on her process.

Nicole Caulfield's blog, tackling a still life in Sargent's style.

I have a few sketches from readers so far, but please, I would love for everyone to try this who has even the slightest inkling, so please, google Sargent's work, get excited, and email me your sketches and blogs! And keep those suggestions and comments coming!

Waiting for Feet

"Waiting for Feet" - 2.5 x 3.5" colored pencil on drafting film.
Copyright 2007 (that sounds weird!) Maggie Stiefvater.
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Today my husband and I were taking our two toddlers on a walk in our townhouse community and I noticed that there was a cat sitting inside one of the windows. "Look, Victoria!" I said, "a cat!" My husband caught a view of a large (very large) cage behind the cat and something sitting in it and said, "Look, and a bird!" But it wasn't a bird. I glanced at the window as I walked by, and bird is definitely not the word that I would've chosen. I think closer would've been primate.

That's right. Apparently, one of our neighbors has a monkey. If our next door neighbors do too, it would explain a lot.

Now, how the heck do you end up with a friggin' monkey, anyway? This is not a rich community. We are not populated by bored Paris Hiltons looking for a live exotic handbag.

I'm guessing one of these three scenarios:

1. "Mom, can I have a pet?" "Sure, how about a hamster?" "No." "Fish?" "No." "Monkey?" "Okay!"

2. "David, can we have a baby?" "Woman, I am not having no baby." "I want something to hold, David! Something to call my own! Something I can teach to be like me!" "How about a monkey?" "Okay!"

3. "Hi, welcome to WDVM's Hot Music show! Do you know the answer?" "Is it 'Paris Hilton'?" "That's absolutely right! You've won a fabulous prize!" "Ohmigod! Ohmigod! What did I win?!"

It was definitely a monkey. That's just not right.

The Horses of Roan - preliminary sketch

"Horses of Roan - preliminary sketch" - 5 x 8"ish, sharpie on paper.
Copyright 2006 Maggie Stiefvater

All right, as promised, today is the first of my more indepth blogs on John Singer Sargent and my first preliminary sketches in my terrifyingly complex concept for my ala Sargent piece.

I dug up this following info from a handful of sources (which I'll cite at the bottom) so I hope no one is offended that I'm disseminating it here! (If any of the article writers are reading this and are both humorless and offended, contact me and I'll take it down . . . possibly replacing with a cartoon face representing your personality).

For me, the pleasure of Sargent's works is in his value pattern, which for those of you who aren't as art geeky as me, means very simply how he places his darks, midtones, and lights. And how much of them he uses. Check out these pieces for instance:








In all these early works, his use of dark values is powerful. Moreover, he uses darkness to simplify all shapes and relationships to bare bones. Realism -- but only barely. To me, a Sargent is a Sargent because he paints the barebones of a subject and combines shapes and subjects into value groupings in order of importance. Does that make any sense? No matter. On I go.

And this piece is the one that I intend to model mine after, well, at least the most closely. This is his famous "El Jaleo," and the part that I want to imitate is the lighting and value pattern. See, he has a bunch of people in this painting, but you would never mistake what the focal point is. And he even highlights the secondary players in the painting without overpowering.



So you've seen my concept up at the top, based on a little two second sketch I did in one of my margins a few days ago. Since then, I've been doing preliminary drawings of the horses because the impression of realistic movement and lighting is going to be crucial in this bugger. I also have to place the horses in such a way that none of them eclipse each other, have a foot in another's eye, or look like they are involved in rude activities. And the light has to hit them all in the same way. This is hard stuff!

Sargent usually did preliminary drawings for his larger, more complicated works, and also for his competition pieces, like El Jaleo and Madame X (the stylish woman above). I've seen these drawings, and you can see some of them here (bottom of the page).

After that, what did he do? The biggest points to learn seem to be that he:

- Worked fast. He would do a portrait in 2-8 sittings, and his portraits were big.

- Worked spontaneously. From an article at http://www.canvaz.com/reproduction.php?master=sargent: "Sargent's bold, physical approach to painting was unusual. He would shout "Demons," rush at the canvas, place a flurry of brush strokes and then retreat to a distance to find out what effect his marks had from this perspective. The easel was set up next to the person being portrayed but he viewed it from afar." or from http://jssgallery.org/Essay/Articles/Apollo/Apollo1998.html:"...slowly and deliberately recede about a dozen steps from the easel and suddenly,[ pic] the brush lifted ready for action and without ever taking his eyes off of me, make a dash for the canvas on which he then recorded his impression, generally accompanying the act by contentedly humming a little tune.(17)"

- Never overworked. He would rather redo a portrait on multiple canvases than paint over mistakes on one.

- had a limited palette, namely:
-mars yellow
-cadmium yellow
-emerald green
-vermillion
- mars red
-ultramarine/ cobalt blue
- ivory black
- sienna
-mars brown
-lead white (rarelly zinc white)
- a lot of medium

- Worked on mainly gray primed canvases

- Worked with a full load of paint - he criticized a student for being too spare with the amount of paint that he had squeezed onto his palette. His large and evocative brush strokes take a fearless use of pigment.

And finally, my quick sketches that have gotten me to this point. Next is going to be a value study to try and change around the positions of the horses to choose a definite subject and identify it clearly with darks. May be a few days -- I have commissions to be working on.













And my links.
http://www.canvaz.com/reproduction.php?master=sargent
http://www.jssgallery.org
http://www.museothyssen.org/thyssen/exposiciones/WebExposiciones/2006/SargentSorolla/fundacion/fundacion8_ing.html
http://jssgallery.org/Essay/Articles/Apollo/Apollo1998.html

I hope I haven't bored you all silly or been incoherent and I'm still quite silly from this idiotic flu!