As a glaze oil painting proceeds, there is less and less grunt work and more and more fun.  By the end, the brush is dancing as you tweak dark/light, focal point/background, sharp/soft. colour/complement.  Is this baby crowning?  Only time will tell.   There's too much shine to make final decisions for a week or two.
You can decide for yourself on the website's "Work in Progress." ​

In the meantime, Wednesday was spent doing something wild and crazy in acrylic.  Marc Gagnon has been experimenting with pointillism - a method which depends on small dots to create subtle colour blocks.  I had last weekend's shot of a beautiful old maple at Geneva Park so I took a run at it.  It's not deathless art but it was a blast to paint.  Not quite finished, but you get the idea.  

​No, I was not on drugs.

Luckily I hadn’t signed up for a workshop at this weekend because the baby needed attention.  Friday night was spent on the transparent yellow layer, which had obligingly dried by Saturday morning.  Pouring rain is a tradition at Geneva Park, even in the tail-end of a drought, so Brenda, Debra and I hunkered down in a well-lit room and beavered away while it poured.  Yet again, I was the slowest painter by a long shot.  In the time it took me to wade into the final glazes, both had finished two good paintings.  As usual, I was wearing most of my paint.

There is very little that is more fun than painting with other artists.  We share secrets, dispense and receive advice, and kvetch to our hearts’ content, all under the guise of being productive.  We laughed a lot.  Of course, we did this while standing at our easels;  by the time the dinner bell rang at 5:30 we looked like the remnants of a siege — limping, flat-footed, and smeared.  But happy in an exhausted kind of way.

The painting still has a way to go.  It’s been walking a thin line between intricate and too busy and will need broad finishing strokes to unify the composition.  Sometimes it’s a good idea to stop for a few days and ignore it for a few days.  At such times, I avoid staring because I am past being able to see this kid dispassionately.  Sideways or upside-down views are the best for spotting major flaws.  

Don’t try this at home with real babies.

Paintings, like babies and important ideas, have to gestate.   But not all pregnancies are well-timed and I am the living proof.

To put it mildly, this month is  busy.  I have an artists’ conference to attend, not to mention an alumni reunion of my university honours class in another city, happily to be combined with visiting dear friends.  Everyday life with house, garden and walking continues apace.  And then’s there’s the matter of the four impending commissions. …  

So how did I get myself into a “delicate condition?”   First, instead of planned parenthood I opted for Leda and the Swan.  This happens to painters, or at least those for whom a painting is a major time commitment.  First you feel the urge to look through your reference photos (think sperm bank) and after days of trolling, about a dozen of them wink back and send “come hither” glances.  You corral these on your Desktop and try to imagine each one as a six to twelve square foot painting.    Each argues its paternal strengths, citing healthy traits and raw appeal.  Some wear cowboy hats, but I consider that cheating.  And finally you choose the next "Mr. Big" and now it’s just you and Zeus.  Pure passion is running the show and your brains have checked out of the hotel.

This is where intervention could be helpful.  I do not have time to be pregnant right now.  But there went Monday and Tuesday prepping the canvas and painting the grisaille.  And Wednesday-Thursday were consumed with the transparent blue layer.  Eleven hours in, my back is complaining, yet I am just barely showing, to squeeze the metaphor.  You will note that this 24 x 36 scene is incredibly complex and that a smart person would not have chosen to shoehorn that baby into this month.  If Alcoholics Anonymous members can have sponsors, why can't painters?  I need one badly.  When the art-lust knocks out my brain, I would call this person and send her the reference photo and size.  She would immediately call back and talk me back from the edge:  “Step back from the easel, Z’Anne.  For now, paint an 8 x 10 bunny.  No trees, Honey, and definitely no bare branches.  Good girl.  Call me tomorrow.”

Lacking such a sponsor, here I am - deliriously tired, merrily obsessive, covered with paint.  No turning back now.  I'm expecting a big baby!

Hair.   Crowning glory or life-long pain!  Lacking even a semblance of either curl or body, my hair hangs straight down in this climate despite my best efforts to curl it.  It also stubbornly refuses to grey;  I was counting on acquiring a different texture — maybe something manageable wouldn’t be too much to ask….  Anyway, this summer was the last soggy straw.  

Faced with the choice of either cutting it all off so that it didn’t glom onto my neck or letting it grow into a ponytail, I chose freedom.  It’s a new and cooler world out there if you don’t count the target a ponytail represents to a husband.  Jon likes ponytails and now I know why.  I doubt that one could stop a horse that way, but it sure works when Jon wants my attention or has to stop me from stepping into the path of an insane un-belled bike peddler on the walking trail. 

There are also consequences for my art.  It used to be that Jewell would show up here and there, a long brindled hair embedded in a large oil painting.  Now my own DNA flutters here and there.  Such souvenirs are best caught and removed before the painting dries but life’s busy and I don’t always find them in time.  Look at it this way:  if you own such an “inclusion”  (which are actually prized in amber, don’t you know) you have my permission to clone me, as long as I get curly hair the next time

While I am happily in the “just wash and tie up” mode, others totally embrace hair.  This gal whom I have never met, sat in front of us at a December wedding.  A horizontal shaft of light set her hair aglow and there I was, without a camera.  Our friend, David, had his and obligingly took the shot.  Because what I love about hair (anybody else’s, that is) is painting it.  I build the underpainting as usual but the fun is in the finish, which is built by dragging riggers - long, thin brushes - dipped in a variety of tones.  All sorts of colours can be mixed because hair is not monotone.  “Rapunzel” is full of transparent yellows and burnt siennas, with touches of blue, layered on a pale base.  “The Private Joke” is mainly sienna/blue mixed in the shadows but separated in the hair’s highlights.   Jon has that “I’m about to tug your ponytail” look, doesn’t he?

Decorating magazines have been touting “saturated colour,”  by which they mean heavily pigmented paints.  I too love the colours achieved by this method, and pigment load is important.  To be more precise,  I am for  “saturated but juicy.”   That is a bit more complicated.


Years ago as a self-taught watercolour painter looking for deep rich tones, I tried simply loading more pigment into my wet brush.  It looked glorious until it dried flat, all of the luminosity gone.  Magpie Girl likes shiny things.  Experiments with portraiture and skin tones yielded some hints.   If I let the first, more moderate, coat dry and then recoated with one or more thin coats,  the results were far happier.  Blissfully unencumbered by knowledge, I concluded that I had invented a new technique.   Years later I heard another watercolourist refer to glazing and thought “Dang!  There goes another break-through!”


As I came to learn, the practice of glazing, while well known to Renaissance oil painters, had fallen out of favour in the last century.  My dear artist friend and centenarian, Frank Barry, sniffed when I raved about it and replied, “Yes, but in the twenties we called it “staining.”    Because there is a strong strain of edgy anti-conservative practice among artists, Frank and his generation found glazing out-dated, and shining depths of colour became conspicuous for their rarity in twentieth century painting.  Pity.


Well, glaze oil is back.  I can't imagine painting any other way. Saturated and luminous colour  is the very reason I can’t wait to get back to my easel (from which I’ve been largely absent this summer). So why am I sitting here?   Time to find my painting smock.  Hello, September!!

P.S.  This painting of the the pond at Jon's fly-fishing club has gone to its forever home, sadly missed like a beloved puppy.  It is shameful to admit but I find myself interviewing people who want one of my paintings to be sure that it is going to a good family.  What a blessing that as teenagers we had no notion how truly unhinged we would become!