This landscape is going to be the first in a whole new series of drama moments in the Midwest. I love l
ight and color, especially as is found in sunrise or sunset (both naturals for establishing drama) and clouds are one of my favorite elements to use for capturing that drama with texture and volume.
Last month I decided to start a new painting as a running start for my New Year’s resolution of painting with more regularity. 
I also thought it might be fun to document the step by step working process, something I haven’t done for a while.
This first phase is simply laying out the canvas. I knew the subject was a landscape so making a horizon line and blocking out some sky gave it a start.
The next series of posts will be shots of the painting as it evolves.
This is an update to the saga of the painting we have been discussing earlier. 
In early August, I took the painting “on the road” so to speak to a reenactment in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I worked on it at for a couple of days while in the public eye and gleaned additional criticisms that I could fix right on the spot.
I really enjoy working in public. It is why I set up my easel and paint at many of the reenactments and trade shows. Art is not best created in a vacuum. Art teachers assimilate visual and oratorical influences from their students and colleagues through classroom work and critique sessions. I miss being in that rich open environment of a classroom and find this method of taking work to the field or into the public eye, very helpful. The public becomes my ‘extra eyes’ and sparks dialogue, influences my perspectives, and helps me see my errors…or forces me to articulate a reason if I reject the suggestion.
I hope you have enjoyed seeing this painting develop. It is now a finished painting – ready to use on the cover of the magazine and make prints for those who wish them.
Happily, the original has already been spoken for.
Well, I went back to the easel tonight and at close of day the lady on the right is now gone. Foliage has replaced where she was, the lake is resuming where she was, and the sky and clouds are falling into place where her face was. It is very hard – unnerving – to make a decision like I have while this far into a piece, but I think I did the right thing. I liked the image of the women and may repeat her another time. She just didn’t belong here.
I love the idea that someone can walk into a room and immediately see the problem with a painting that I have been staring at and can’t see. My husband can often do that “extra eyes” for me and that is exactly why I put this painting out here for comment.
BRAVO for two of my viewers for commenting and helping me see what was wrong with the painting.
To test their observation, I quickly pulled the jpg into the software program PAINT and by snipping and copying bits of surrounding image, mocked what the painting would look if I painted out the tall woman on the right. Yes, I agree. THAT was what was bugging me as well.
Thank you for your “New Eyes” — I will head back to the easel this evening to do it with real paint. Onward!
This is a tricky part of any painting. Now is when I need to stop and decide if this painting is complete or if there are little things that will haunt the viewer (or me) so it becomes more about scrutiny than painting. I keep walking away and coming back to it because that’s when I see small errors here and there. It is fixing those that I consider fine tuning.
But let me take a step back and let you know the history of what you’re seeing so you can consider the work in context. This painting is what I refer to as a suggested commission. Translated, that means that I was asked to paint a piece with a list of criteria with the possibility of fulfilling the expectations and directives of the patron. I am not selling the original but publication rights. Unlike a flat-out commission where the patron and I enter into a contractual agreement and half of the agreed on fee is advanced to initiate the beginning of the project, I have painted what was suggested by the patron with mutual hope that they might pick it up. If it isn’t what they want they can just say no.
My directive for this painting from my patron included the following:
a camp scene…in daylight….prefer women…even include children – that would be good…. early 1800 might be good – we could use more regency time-frame.
My thinking process (and even articulating this becomes a work in process):
Camp in the remote sites of the northwest territories are energetic, transient towns (as are the re-enactments of those camps) and they thrive on the aggregation of people from vastly different cultures, ethnicities, and sensibilities. Nowhere is the seamless blending of cultures more evident than in the community of women. Fiercely determined and loyal, we share many bonds: of burdens in both the communal and individual work; of roles as wives, mothers and business partners in these aggregated societies; and even of shared appreciation and empathy for our sisters with regard to everything from material culture to levels of gender respect or status. Occasionally, this undercurrent flows as a barely noticed society within a camp’s social network. However, in camps then and now, women assemble in small, comfortable groups to laugh, to share, to nurture and to build community, generation after generation.
In my last posting I referred to my sporadic absence here on my blog. My personal life has continued to keep me from being as active as I should be with my art, but some events have concluded and after a great deal of soul searching and healing, my reclusive behavior should begin to resolve itself.
As a sure sign of that return I have resumed working on the commission that I mentioned. It is moving along well, and surprisingly fast now that I am restoring my disciplines and regaining my footing. I can tell that my work will be going through a great transition over the next several months. Even as I paint I can feel changes … and can see a subtle evolution of paint handling. Thankfully, I believe it will be for the betterment of my work.
Look for the final painting to be put up when it is complete within the next week or so. But for now, enjoy this rare sneak peek.
I have not been diligent posting here about what is on the easel so I will touch on it briefly this morning. This spring has been about completing projects and coming full circle. It has been utterly amazing to me how pieces of my past are emerging and connecting fractured paths right now. Unfinished business. There is a great coming together that is equally exciting and unsettling. None-the-less, for the last month I have been working on a professional portrait of an administrator that was commissioned over ten years ago. Continue reading “Discipline of perserverence”
This week I decided to take a break, step away from the paintings on the easel, and do something for myself. This is a portrait miniature representative of traditional late eighteenth century style. It is watercolor on ivory (old piano key) with a sealing varnish of DaMar. The painting style does not model strictly after that taught at the Philadelphia academy but is vaguely reminiscent of regional influences. Of course the smiling countenance is purely this artist’s prerogative. The subject is my husband. Enjoy.
Kelly E. James 