The Oughts

As I said in a previous post, I will turn sixty this month and it is with mixed feelings on my part. I'm not sure what the cause of this is but, the decade of the oughts was  somewhat turbulent for me. The decade started with my Pop having health problems which started a general decline for he and my Mom and both of them passing just after mid decade. I have no siblings so looking out for them fell to me in its entirety. I would have liked to have eased into it but that was not the case and I always felt I was two steps behind.

Laura, Charcoal on paper, 8"x10"

During this time I had decided to finish my undergraduate degree also, my work was always in flux, feast or famine, getting paid or not. Work is work, enough said. School was a strange mix of love and loathing, of feeling out of place. Being around twenty somethings really made me feel my age.

So, here I am, through with the oughts. Throughout my life every ten years or so I have reinvented myself and that time has come around again. Its more of an evolution than a metamorphosis and I have no idea how it is going to go but I am getting a little excited. It's always interesting.

So. here to the teens. I hope you are looking forward to them as I am. Have an interesting weekend.

Brad

In the Queue

Here are two projects that are in the queue for me. The first is a composition that I am doing in tempera with oil glazing. This is the first of many layers of tempera and the color will build up slowly. I go a bit against tradition so, hang on and see how it goes. It is the same composition as the charcoal drawing in my post 'Back in Black.'

Laura, Egg tempera on canvas, 8"x10"

I have posted this charcoal drawing that will become a painting I intend to do using charcoal and oil medium. I would like to take advantage of the beauty and visual vitality of the charcoal and the translucence of the medium as a glazing over the charcoal. I thought I would use white chalk with the charcoal but, in the end I will probably end up using titanium white oil for the highlights. I will start the project by laying out the drawing on a canvas on chipboard panel. The panel will be fabricated by mounting a primed canvas on chipboard with acrylic medium. I will then execute the first stage of the drawing in charcoal and as with the tempera, fix it with a coat of shellac. From that point I will add depth to the drawing with glaze and more drawing. I'm doing my favorite thing here, groping blindly. If you have done something like this, please chime in with a comment or leave me and my readers a link. I will post progress photos along the way for both pieces as well as more charcoal drawings. I'm still learning from them.

Crows, Charcoal on Paper, 8"x10"

I will leave you with a little appropriate music for a composition with crows.

Have a good evening and a lovely spring week ahead of you.

Brad