The Covid-19 Cancellation Monster

    Well, Covid-19 changed a few things around here, starting with the focus of the Tubman project. There were supposed to be two performances of the choral work this weekend, both of which were cancelled. The music is very beautiful and complex. I don't remember if I posted a link to a recording of it, so here it is: http://www.pavanepublishing.com/sounds/P8011.mp3

  Those dates were also going to feature ten of the silhouette images that my classes created with Harriet Tubman's life and journey as the subject. We were all ready to go! It's not a real loss, because we all learned a lot in the process, and the work will be shown next fall, both in town and in our university gallery. Still, it's a little disappointing.

 The silver lining is that I feel really lucky to have been a part of this group and to get to learn and sing this with an amazing conductor. Maybe when this all blows over, we can perform it. Here are two more images from the set:

Where I left it today

I just realized this image didn't post correctly the first time. I hope this posting works!

     

    The best thing about spring break is I can afford an hour or two a day for this. And marimba :)

Right now, I'm working on resolving the shadows. I spent some time with my trusty blue pastel pencil and looked for the deepest values. And then I started brightening and evening the skin tones. I feel like I may have lost a little ground on her belly, because I squandered some of the darks I could have left behind in favor of poufing her out. I see some other things, too. I'll fix them tomorrow.

    

  

First stencil effort

And...it ain't perfect. What else is new? I didn't marry the stencil down properly, so I've got a couple of smeary areas, and I think I need to mess with the Silhouette settings a bit more to smooth out the lines. But, we'll get there. I managed to find some stencil material with adhesive backing, and I made this one with black spray paint. So far, so good.

    It took so long to get everything working this far, that I finally had to admit today that it would be better if I had these printed professionally for the upcoming concerts next weekend. Otherwise, it would be a stressful mad dash from now until then. I'll still have to brave using Spray Mount to attach the prints to boards, but at least they will be clean and I will have minimal cutting to do.

   Maybe I'll actually get some time to paint this week!

Here is another one of my favorites, which references Billie Holiday's song Strange Fruit:

I'm so proud of these guys.

I like him better now

The struggle is real (but it's all good)

   This morning, even though there is a pile of other things to do, I closed the door and tried to pick up the thread of this piece. Except for this area, it is pretty much resolved (which is far different that being finished).

     I always struggle with 3/4 views, and I have two of them in this piece. Now that I see it here, I think I need to work on making the man's head not too parallel to the mom's. I should probably start adding pastel to the medium list for my paintings, because the drawing I do with it ends up being part of the color applied to it. 

    The other thing I'm struggling with is that I took so much care to keep the paint layers thin that now, I'm having trouble getting those thin layers to adhere to the surface. I'm considering spraying it with varnish to seal it a bit. I'll probably float the idea with my posse and see what they say.

   Anyway, it's all good. An update up the Tubman project is coming soon.

The First Batch

   I'm so proud of these guys. These are three of the images made by my students that I'm planning to send in for publication of the program for The Journey of Harriet event in March. The top one is by Jesse, the middle one by Dex and the last one by Haley. 

   So, even though I only get to walk by my painting and rub the belly of the mama like she was a lucky Buddha, it's all good.

The Logic of Stencils

   For the Harriet Tubman Project, my classes are designing silhouettes based on the life story of HT. My intention is to have them design their images as stencils, and then we will print them on boards.  
      We have a wonderful new machine that will cut the stencils for us; the Silhouette Cameo 3. There is a bit of a learning curve to make it work, both in the design process and in learning how to use the machine, but we are all making progress.
    On the left is a double sized cut from one of my students' thumbnails from last class, and on the right is one of my own images.
    The student's work is pretty close. It has some design issues and it needs to be blown up and cleaned up, but this one gives me hope that this will actually work.
    I'm counting my image a success as well, even though instead of a silhouette, it is a line drawing/cut, and I lost some areas during the process. But, I'm really impressed with how fine the lines are, and it would just take another session of making the image fit the logic of stencils  (all negative areas have to connect somehow; no islands!) to make it work. Also, next time I might make the lines cut a little thicker. Right now, I'm not so sure the ink/paint will have enough of an opening to make a mark in some areas.
    Tomorrow, I'll try to print both of them a la poupee, which means dabbing the paint into the openings of the stencil.
    I will confess that it's a bit of a relief to get this far with this much success.