September always hits the ground running, the highlight being our annual art-camp weekend at Geneva Park.  Fun, WOW.  Over-stimulation, DOUBLE PLUS UNGOOD.  But if the title baffles you, I recommend you read the post of March 4, 2019  - “Earplugs as a Cultural Icon” (click on April 2019 under Archive in the right column)

Let’s assume that the vast majority of the 120 artists gathered there have short alleles and that we had been careful to assure that the previous week was quiet and restful, with lots of time to sleep, exercise, eat carefully…yada yada.  And was mine?  Well, NO actually.  This year it had been particularly packed and stressful.  I should know better than to do this but there you go.

To make things worse, I wasn’t going alone, but was packing for triplets.  On Tuesday, I had realized to my horror that I hadn’t even done the rendering for two of the three portraits I hoped to finish over the weekend.   I also needed to transform the drawings on canvas into value underpaintings, which then had to dry.  And of course then there would follow three  (x 2) transparent primary layers, each of which would also need to dry thoroughly.  Yikes!! I could already feel my alleles shrinking.  And I had to remember to pack all of the triplets’ essentials --  pigments, mediums, drop sheets, lights, shapers, brushes, brush cleaners, et cetera.  Theoretically, I could borrow a missing item, but your kids and their mom are used to their own stuff.

By Friday morning, had the Sainted Judy not driven, I’m not sure I could have but she did and we found ourselves lakeside that afternoon.  Phew.  We unpacked, organized our gear and got ready for our traditional cocktail hour before supper.  Amid the laughter, the junk food, and the toasts, it emerged that we were all in varying degrees overtired and jangled.  I felt so much less alone that I made a mental note to have t-shirts printed up and distributed the week before next year’s art camp reading  “SO SOON OLD;  SO LATE SCHMART.  THINK AHEAD!”

Which brings me to the issue of food.  The back of the Tee could read ‘SO SOON FAT.”  I doubt that I am the only artist who eats her own weight at art camp.  There is food everywhere you look, and for someone who w/couldn’t eat until I hit puberty  (you try eating when you’re not hungry), I am now someone for whom the butter calls my name.  The only reason I don’t overeat normally is that it makes me feel horrible.  Next year I must try to remember that and the fact that it consequently interrupts my sleep.    What can I say?  Short-allele-ers  are fragile flowers.

Judging by the lack of conversation at breakfast, we all felt a bit ragged.  And it was only Saturday morning of the major work day, a day begun and interrupted only by yet more overeating.  Porridge, bacon and eggs, cinnamon buns, full-bore coffee, and fruit salad started my day.  Feel free to shower me with abuse.  I have to learn.

Fragile flowers also crave quiet time.  This is not quite the same as concentration or even digestion.  Every artist responds with a wry grin when someone says, “It must be so relaxing to paint.”   Well, it’s not.  Sure, painting has elements of deep meditation and complete absorption - "flow" - but they are intimately allied with intense problem-solving and even physical work.  We create art because it’s too wonderful not to, not because it’s a way to kick back like couch potatoes.

If we had thought we were tired the night before, you should have seen us overeat again at supper, conversations polite but disintegrating into incoherence as we grimly chewed.  Thankfully, the fruit of hard work was there as the walk-around that evening proved.   Even in workshops where everyone painted the same scene, every richly-covered canvas was different, even viewed through the lens of the heartburn I so richly deserved.  Good grief!  What am I - ten?

When we packed up on Sunday morning, you will understand that I am relieved to have misplaced only one whole bag of gear — pigments, in particular, if you’ve seen it.  Dream prophecy (or mine at least) proved unreliable, as it did not show up behind the kitchen door this morning.  With any luck, it won’t have to drag its own way home like the dead son in “The Monkey’s Paw.” But even if the bag is irrevocably gone, the weekend was as always worth its annual assault on my nervous system.  At present, I am endeavouring to apologize to my digestive system.  But take heart, those of you who were also there and are similarly occupied.  Like phoenixes, we artsy-fartsies will rise again, fluff up our short-boy alleles and live to make each other laugh another day.  Thanks and love to all old friends and new for  Geneva Park 2019.   

Happy to report that the portrait and I are still dating. We are in fact getting serious--planning our future with only details to iron out. You know — things like getting our chin and lips on straight!

So what am I sure of so far?

I think the rendering looks right but freely admit that Beverley is not someone I know. We met briefly at an art show opening where she shone like a beacon aimed at a portrait painter. Like a crazed stalker, I marched up and blurted out a request to photograph her because her fashion sense is sensational. Bev was kind enough to humour me. I was in the mood to focus the next painting on a face or you might also be seeing her bright jacket and the lime green beaded skirt. I did however take care to include three points of high colour....

You will recall that my wise friend Eunice helped me enormously by suggesting that every painting should be thought of in terms of a wedding. On this occasion the bride was definitely perched on Beverley’s nose. Those fabulous turquoise glasses with their elegant black outlining would have looked ridiculous on me but they highlighted her warm complexion and gorgeous white hair. It was a no-brainer to leave those glasses where they belonged.

The two bridesmaids were equally obvious: Beverley, who is a beading expert, has great taste in that jewelry, although it (the bracelet in particular) has been subjected to an unusual amount of cursing in the last week or so. The roped necklace is coming around but that blankety-blank bracelet needs to be completely re-detailed to retrieve its bright clean colour.

Everything in this painting hinges on capturing her likeness and the jewelry. The background begged to contrast to Beverley’s white hair, so I have been rubbing in thin films of black which echo her dark eyes and lashes. The shirt too was black but it seemed to be making the portrait too heavy so at this point I am simply rubbing transparent colours into it to neutralize that section and then thinly glazing with turquoise. Now the warmth of her skin and brightness of her hair are coming forward to frame her face.

As of today it’s now a waiting game. Only after the oil painting is perfectly dry (you can see that it's wet from the reflection), can the final toggling of values and colours complete the process. And who knows -- that shirt might turn black again.

(just be glad you chose acrylic!!)

​I’m just back from a holiday where I accomplished absolutely nothing.   I slept late, binge-watched Netflix, and read a gazillion books -- all without leaving home. I walked in fragrant gardens and towering forests while accompanied by my beloved Theodore.   My holiday required neither airports, nor time changes nor strange beds.  It was quite perfect and the the first time in months I feel rested.

But inevitably I reached the point where I was boring myself, let alone any poor soul stuck in my company (sorry, Darling).  This, I have come to recognize,  is a sign that I need to start a new painting, probably a  portrait.

It kills me that I am drawn to faces, where so many things can go, oh, so wrong.  The existence of facial recognition software makes the point that exact measurement is sufficient to identify one face out of millions.  Theoretically, all I need to do is to pull out the callipers.  (I often think of the famous story about Colville when his wife answered a reporter’s question about what he was working on by replying “I think he’s about to start a new painting.  He was measuring the dog this morning.”).  Because correct proportions and relationships are vital to portraiture,  I usually take the time to superimpose a grid as a template for free-hand drawing.  If I’’m lucky enough to get mostly everything right,  the human eye, which performs facial recognition unconsciously and perfectly, will not shout “Who the hell is that?” when confronted with the image of someone it actually knows.

A big ”however” follows.  If portrait painting were nothing more than careful measurement , cameras would have replaced paintings completely a century ago and live action animation would have been perfected.   Even when proportion-perfect, portraiture in oil is a brute exercise.  That same exactly-proportioned face is a mobile canvass of minute muscular movements.  In older faces, characteristic expressions have generally etched themselves into laugh lines or practised squints, but no matter the age, unless one has had too much “work” done and ended up with a frozen visage, faces are naturally mobile.   Having to work from multiple digitals is scary but often necessary to attain this marriage of appearance and expressed personality.

I will stop here for now, because the portrait that called me yesterday is in those early stages that are mostly about drawing and  some modelling of shape through burnt umber, red and yellow glazing.   All that I have done other than that is to establish the iconic turquoise glasses, whose colour will be echoed in the jewelry to come much later.  It's still really rough -- lots more fine-tuning and multiple layers to come.   

​More about “Masochism” aka “The Art of Portraiture” next week.  If you see that I have changed the subject, it might mean that the underpainting went south and is now cowering in a corner of the basement or worse.  Pray for us both.

By the way, if you live in Southern Ontario, do go out to your garden tonight after dark.  Fireflies everywhere!!

I first saw this image of my cousin's daughter years ago, and it haunted to me until this week when the time was finally right to put brush to panel.

I have said before that the most important line in Hamlet is “Readiness is all….”  Many images inhabit my brain for a decade or more.  Sometimes even a painting which is 90% completed suffers that same postponement.  For whatever reason, I know enough to leave well enough alone when my instincts tell me to step back and wait;  the corollary trick is to act when that mood to finish strikes!  Once or twice I have even gotten out of bed to correct a misstep or to solve a colour problem.  I do not recommend this. 

The good news is that this week was finally the time to begin “Nimbus.”  One of the reasons I loved the photo is that Erin is not posing.  Her ash-blonde hair glowing, even reflecting the warmth of her cheek, the wee girl is rapt in contemplation.     Although it is partly shadowed by that glorious hair,  her sweet face is relaxed, so completely focused is she on what will forever remain a mystery.

Of course, the other reason I wanted to paint her was that gorgeous mane of hair.  Anyone who paints the back of someone’s head is utterly sincere about an enthusiasm for painting hair (see “Rapunzel” in the Portraiture section either by following the link above to my gallery or bookmarking zannekeele.com”).  The title comes, of course, from the 17th century word which has the double meaning of “a luminous cloud” or “halo.”  Both would suit, on this occasion.

She is largely finished.  I am looking forward to the final touches, which include the fine blonde hairs which are so light as to float above her halo.  

Thirty Rock had a great early episode about Jack and Kenneth.  Jack, the boss who knows everything, brags that he always wins at poker because of his ability to spot the “tell” — the gesture which betrays someone's hand.  Ironically Kenneth can beat him because, of course, he completely lacks deception and the signs which reveal it.

As a sometime portraitist, I am on the hunt for a different kind of “tell”  — the look that hints at that person’s essence.  You rarely find these in a studio photograph, although exceptional photographers like Yousuf Karsh and Tony Hauser come to mind.  Perhaps it is because we are most ourselves when doing what we love.  Neither Rachel nor Leslie, the two musicians, were thinking about anything but the music.

The "Tell" need not be a facial expression.  My “Reading the River” series created itself.  I began to notice that simply being on a river was sufficient for many to show themselves.   Here are three with a common element -- the presence of a fishing rod, a directional bias in the posture,  and the complete absence of photo-shyness.  

Sometimes colour blooms in the most amazing places.  “Rapunzel” is a case in point.   Because we were seated inside and the December sun was setting, at first I registered nothing but the stunning coif.  Only later  did I find the exquisite shadows on her neck and face. This is where the glaze oil method shines.  Those multi-coloured skin tones emerged as a natural outcome of the transparent primaries in the underpainting and needed no further development.  And what began as a painting of great hair became an exploration of the fabulous warm/cool spectrum of shadowed skin.

Often there is even less light to work with.  That can work too as in “Ethereal.”  Leslie’s pale skin and hair glow, almost encircling the warm siennas of her precious Odoardi.  In the same way Rachel and her cello become one, signalling from the darkness as lines and pools of reflected light.  “Pensive” too relies on few areas of bright light — the side of Jon’s nose, the edge of his lips, the crease of his smile. 

As viewers, our imaginations supply what is missing, like a pilot landing at midnight.

Are you thinking in words or images these days?  Words are deserting me, a telltale sign.   In fact, I can tell that a portrait is brewing whenever I start concentrating on faces instead of the conversation.  Now staring is just fine when, and only when, that face is on a screen.  But we were all raised not to do it in public.  If you catch me doing it, don’t worry.  I promise not to follow you home in a darkened car.  All I’m doing is working out your colours.  Preferably in daylight.

Do you remember the fad of the eighties about “having your colours done”?  I do, if only because I got saddled with a pastel palette.  Always having had strong colour preferences, the experience of having them assigned ticked me off and I have made a point of avoiding these colours since.

Yet it does start me thinking about the colours we already possess.  Not the obvious two:  eye and hair colour, though both can tweaked, as my ancient green contact lenses could attest.  I’m thinking more about the colours below and above the skin surface and the shadow.  They are the real deal.

Let’s start with the obvious, such as strong skin colour.  Jon is a case in point.  I played with that classic Scots high colour in ”Jon - detail” (in Portraiture) by setting him in strong evening sun which bleached part of his face and deepened his cheek.  To a lesser degree, “The Private Joke” (glaze oil on panel) also employs contrasts of light and shadow to emphasize his ruddy colouring.  Both portraits depended on strong daylight to set up the pose and utilize his distinctive hues.

But we live in Canada, don’t we!!  Few of us boast that lovely deep tone, even in summer.  For heaven's sake, most of us are fish-belly white from November to April.  Here is where I count on setting my subject next to a sunny window.  Side light is a huge help in defining features and creating warmth.    With that boost,  the subtle palette of “De” becomes a play between rosy skin and green eyes.  On the other side of that glass it was minus 25.  Daylight rules again!  Use it when you find it.

Next post:  More on finding colour.

True confession.  I wore orthopaedic shoes —brown Doc Martin’s, I guess —for what felt like forever.  Age seven to twelve, actually, at which point I refused to embarrass myself further.  My flat feet seemed to have been reshaped from duck prints to what my love calls "your Egyptian feet” — always ending with “I don’t know how they hold you up”).

But my feet are making duck prints again and my back stopped speaking to me at noon.  Yet again I am in deep water with no land in sight (although the duck feet might come in handy).  Turns out that “It seemed like a good idea at the time” is a dangerous way to choose subject matter.

Little girl in white dress.  What could possibly go wrong?

The fact that her skirt was tulle apparently registered enough for me to identify it in the last post.  I ADORE tulle.  If anybody ever gave me a ballet tutu I would probably never take it off.  Thousands of hints have failed to produce a tulle anything and thus I am reduced to painting it on others.

Loving it and painting it are different continents.  Today the charm of the tousled layers has come head to head with the sorting out of said layers. Cross-eyed trying to establish just how many tulle overskirts she is wearing and where they do and don’t overlap, I am driven by the grim truth  that, if I get it wrong, the painting won’t read right.    

So this means returning to first principles.  Yes, the glaze oil process as I practise it necessitates least five separate layers of paint.  And yes, that allows for corrected rendering at least four times.  But it has been my experience that getting the drawing right at the beginning makes the difference and that means paying close attention to detail and line at every stage.  Portraits are, of course, the most dependent on exact rendering.  (You will remember that my lapse of judgment chose to paint a portrait surrounded with tulle.)  I stood at the easel today for three hours and staggered through the drawing.

That propelled me into the grisaille, or value study, which establishes the tonal structure like a sepia-tone photograph.  Nothing slapdash here either.  I have learned the hard way that careless brushstrokes will return to haunt me.  So whether I am painting a leaf or a nose, I try to imagine the “grain” of the area and echo that with my brush.  Again, the damn tulle.  Four more hours for my arches to sink.

Our marriage has precious few secrets.  But I don’t remember anything in our vows which said I couldn’t keep a small dark chocolate stash for those late afternoon duck-print moments.

I’ve been meaning to write about this sensitive issue for a very long time, each time hesitating for fear of causing regret.  But I keep finding myself painting memorials to a beloved - a person, a pet - while having to work with a posed or poor quality image because there was no other choice.  Often the image even fails to capture the telling expression, but it is all there is to work from.

Painting a portrait is by necessity slow and careful.  The tolerances for error are exceedingly small if you are aiming for immediate recognition and I do.  That said, simply getting the contours, proportions and skin tones right is not enough in my opinion.  Our dear ones have mobile features and a vast array of expressions, some of them highly characteristic.  

My modest proposal is rather easier and a heck of a lot more benign that Jonathan Swift's was: USE YOUR CAMERA REGULARLY.  Given the high quality of smartphone cameras, virtually everybody has near-constant access to good photography.  Use these amazing tools to take lots of close-ups of your beloveds.  Group shots are fun but do not take the place of portraiture.  It doesn’t matter in the slightest if you plan to have the photo turned into a portrait.  What matters is that someone who really matters is documented  generously.  These crystallized moments will have great meaning in the future.  Just remember to regularly download them  onto a HD or a DVD which you store somewhere safe off-site.  

And what to do if someone you care about seizes up at the sight of a camera?  When I wanted to paint a friend whose deer-in-the-headlight expression around cameras bore no relationship to her exuberant personality, I enlisted Jon the Relentless Tease to distract her.  Despite herself,  she eventually exploded in laughter and SNAP! 

Once upon a time and long before I actually started to paint, I mused about opening a business.   Not because I had any entrepreneurial desire or talent.  It was just because I thought I had a couple of  catchy names.  For some reason that escapes me now, CHEZ Z’ANNE!!!!! seemed like a winner but then I realized that I might have to either learn to cook or to sell explosives so I have reluctantly abandoned that one.   Then there was the portraiture studio which would call itself “Eyes Right.”  Now we’ve all seen portraits (I’ve painted a few) in which the eyes were creepy in some indefinable way.  But I now paint as many landscapes as portraits and I have come to accept the fact that the woods don’t actually have eyes, so scratch that one too.

The idea did however at least function as a segue to the topic of this post:  eyes.  Jon and I recently watched a television show which showed a series of animal rescues.  In every case, body language, especially that of trust, revealed itself through the eyes in particular.  The infant baboon, lovingly bottle fed by a calm and nurturing woman, maintained adoring eye contact with her  until his wee eyes closed in sleep.  In general, relaxed eye contact, whether by ocelot, grizzly or raven, was the hallmark of a loving relationship.  It was trumped only by the ultimate surrender — submitting with closed eyes to a full body rub.

I have  learned the hard way that monitoring eye expressions is always smart.  My mom was the first to point out to me that cats have expressive eyes.  She pointed out that the our mercurial Tigs squared her eyes when she was in a rotten mood;  only once did I ignore that warning and still have the scars to prove it.   When they are enraged, birds engage in what is called pin-pointing:  the pupils rapidly and repeatedly open and close.  Because Gussie, our orange-winged Amazon parrot, was riding around on my shoulder, I didn’t see his eyes in time to save myself a vicious bite but once I pried him off, I could see that his eyes looked like spinning tops.  That bite is still a mystery but I carried him on my hand after that.  And you will recall that the chomp Mouse (the house grouse) delivered when he was furious at Jon (see “One Foul Fowl, August 29) was preceded by a stink eye.  Don’t ask me to describe it:  I only know when I see one.

We all do.  And that is why I love and fear painting portraits.  Forget big:  go “eyes right” or go home.  I am just beginning a small portrait now of a young boy with beautiful and unusual eyes;  my version of these eyes will either be bang on or the whole portrait will be wrong.  I will let you know.  In the meantime I will show you the eyes of someone special.