I am very pleased with how this turned out. Great idea to cover it with a piece of plywood first before using the router jig. Worked like a dream.
The burnt surface is as black as charcoal, and just as dusty. I wonder if some fixative/hairspray would “fix” it as it does a drawing.
As an artist in Iowa, you can’t avoid Grant Wood’s legacy and all that carries. I went on my own pilgrimage to find the house seen as a backdrop in American Gothic, rumored to be in Anamosa, Iowa. Apparently, it’s been torn down somewhere over the years, but a false front has been added to a similar house to give it the peaked roof and cathedral window found on the original.
The Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington is holding an exhibition opening March 10th entitledGrant Wood’s Studio: Birthplace of American Gothic. I wish I could see it. From the Smithsonian’s site:
This exhibition will, for the first time, present Grant Wood’s decorative art and design work within the larger context of his paintings, drawings, and prints. The exhibition coincides with the renovation of the artist’s historic studio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, known as 5 Turner Alley, where he lived and worked from 1924 to 1935. Wood converted the loft of this turn-of-the-century carriage house into a showcase for his decorative arts work and a backdrop for some of his most famous paintings.
Sounds really interesting, and from my reading, it sounds like there’s a small sister exhibition in Iowa. You should check it out, and the drive is a beautiful one. Note the false fronted house, and don’t forget to stop at the brewery (update: the brewery is apparently closed).
… once asked me if I ever thought about how much easier my life might be if I had gone with a 3×3, a 4×4 … anything less than 25 squares. Sometimes I think of it and chuckle when I’m midway through something. There is something really … zen? or meditative, I guess, about doing the same thing 25 times in a row, or 125 times, or whatever it is. But yes, I’d probably be closer to done right now. I drew all the stars by hand.
This is a work-in-progess, a gouache of a 5×5 with a US Air Force theme, circa 1942. There will be white stars in blue circles, with a blue circle contained within the stars. Just like this one.
Heard from Seth lately? I used to talk to him on the phone every once in awhile and last I heard he was stationed in San Diego.
As I mentioned in the last post, you couldn’t really see the lines over the black areas. I tried using a chalk pencil in my compass, but the line was a little too thick for my liking, though it is a nice contrast.
My next trick will be gouache on wood. I’ve been admiring some NW Native sculptures in a gallery near my office, and really like the flatness and graphic quality of the painting on the sculptures.
Image rotated 90 degrees clockwise for size. The watercolor paper curled up a bit, hence the odd distortion.
One of the most interesting things about gouache is its opacity, which allows you to paint white on dark ground, in this case, cardboard. I’ve always saved the last page of sketchbooks, but not done much with them. Now I know what to do!
One interesting note - I used pencil to draw the concentric circles on top of the gouache. It’s visible mainly in the white areas, but the flash on my camera really picked it up on the black areas as well. Image rotated 90 degrees clockwise for clarity, meant to be horizontal.
The first image is a watercolor I did on Sunday evening, another study for the military storage facility sculpture/large watercolor I’m planning. I include it here mainly as contrast to the first gouache I did tonight. The areas which are intended to be fairly solid, flat colors are not.
The first gouache I tried was scary flat. I was pretty unhappy with it when I first began, but discovered that unlike most watercolor, you can blend gouache even when it’s dry. And you can use watercolor as tint for it. But, the gouache is really opaque, so you have to think about what you’re blending in. White gouache can overpower dark watercolor, for example, and create a grey where you intended shadow. Just a little different way of looking at things. Another pass at the RAF (more camoflaged and bullet-ridden; I was just goofing around).
After blending practice on the above, I thought I’d try something with more tones, like a flag. The rendering is a little cruder than I’d like, and the photo doesn’t do it justice (excuses, excuses), but I feel like I made some progress. It’s difficult to mix the gouache - the colors are just so much stronger than watercolor, and they dont’ get very transparent.
It’s really worth a try, I think. The flat colors obviously appeal to me, but the shading possibilities seem more like acrylic to me, and the opacity is really unbelievable. Stay tuned as Dave teaches himself to paint.
