A Change in Plans

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.

Psalm 42:1



Yesterday I had an abrupt change in plans, art-wise: I'm going to postpone Study in Vanilla to do another piece which I started sketching yesterday, Trixie: Arrangement in Black and Tan. The idea for this new painting came unexpectedly yesterday afternoon when I walked into the living room and saw Trixie standing with her chin on the window sill, just watching the rain. Goofy dog. Standing there watching her, it suddenly struck me that this subject would lend itself more readily to the tonalism of the Whistler project (see yesterday's post). After a couple of sketches, I'm getting kind of excited about it.

So until I get far enough along in the project to have some progress to show you (hopefully today) I'm cheating a little by sharing an older piece - I painted this one way back in 2001. That was the year I got my digital camera (a Canon EOS D30 - really high end at the time) and that summer I went kind of nuts taking hundreds and hundreds of photos just because I could. Because I wasn't wasting film! NO FILM! NO DEVELOPING! I've calmed down since then. A little. Kind of.

Anyway, that summer I went on a camping trip with my sister and her family in California, and our campsite backed right up to a deer trail. Every evening the deer would emerge from the woods at the top of the hill which rose up from our site, and come down the grassy slope to eat their dinner. I captured a photo of this little guy as he was standing at the edge of the long shadows cast by the trees, and he was backlit by the setting sun. As soon as I snapped the shutter my inner photographer let forth a triumphant, "Yes!" and I knew this picture was something special.

This is one of the first paintings I did where I used a lot of glazes of different colors layered over each other. (I had been studying the techniques of Maxfield Parrish, one of my favorites.) This is also one of the first pieces I painted on masonite instead of canvas, and I've been painting on board ever since. I haven't had the heart to let this one go; it will probably still be in my collection when I "let go this mortal coil."

Cheerio, everyone, and tune in later for progress on Trixie: Arrangement in Black and Tan.