So I cheated a little this past month.
That’s how I’m starting June.
I had planned to share an oil painting I’ve been working on, but things aren’t going well there. It may need a complete reworking, so I’m putting it aside for a while.
Instead, I’m cheating a bit and using a small charcoal drawing as my finished piece for the month. (Charcoal comes together faster, with more predictable results.) This one’s on a new surface I’ve been experimenting with, my own wood panels. This piece is on alder, finished with clear gesso and sanded. It’s not quite as smooth as I’d like, so I’ll keep tweaking the prep process. But there’s something about drawing directly on wood that feels good. The grain and tone bring a natural quality to the work that I like.
Plus I feel like wood is something friendly and comfortable. Something I get along with.
It’s color that messes with me in the paintings. I’m starting to get the hang of watercolor, but oil painting still feels like a fight. I’m figuring it out... slowly. For now, I’ll lean on the charcoal.
A recent windstorm left me with a few sections of fence down in the backyard of our suburban home.
The fence posts, probably nearly 40 years old, had rotted right at the surface, folding over with the first persuasive gust from the right direction.
Over the years, this has happened a few times, and gradually the posts are all being replaced with new ones. So, Memorial Day weekend gives me the time needed for the task. This, and a large fallen tree branch that we took on piece by piece.
The footings involve a tedious process of chiseling the old concrete apart and extracting it one chunk at a time. I’ve devised and tried a few other ways of doing this, but have always come back to this. Sometimes it goes quickly; other times, it can take a couple of hours.
It’s one of those projects where, the whole time, I’m asking myself whether I’d be better off paying someone else to do it and spending my time on something more aligned with my actual skill set (whatever that is). But really, I probably wouldn’t have been all that productive doing anything else.
At the very least, whether it’s a piece of artwork or a fence post, it doesn’t always go fast or cleanly, but eventually you step back, take a breath, and say, “There, that’s better now.”
And for now, that’s enough.
A few head studies from the past few weeks. Some that turned out OK:
