Carrasco Studio

Spring Cadeaux

 

Here's a big rustling bouquet of flowers for your imagination.  I like the sound of a big bouquet as much as the scent and color. (Have you ever noticed how daffodil stems squeak when you gather a bunch?)

Anyhow, I finished this small mural, about 2 'by 1 and 1/2 ', on canvas for a client last night.  The color is a little off since I snapped the picture Very Late at Night by studio light, so the peach and coral are dimmed, but it turned out to my satisfaction.

Here are my steps, if anyone is interested.  Several people have chided me for giving away my "secrets" for free, but actually, there is no true recipe for this kind of work.
Every painter's body talks differently, and in all of my teaching, I have been delighted and surprised by the different takes my students produce from the same assignment.
"Vive la difference!," I say. ( I like to throw in French now and then to show I am literary.)

After I get approval for my drawing, I usually check with my client to see if she or he wants a color rendering for final approval.  In this case, my client passed on the option, so I went on to transfer my drawing to canvas.  I trace it with tracing paper I make myself.....from chalk pastel....color of my choice....and Bestine rubbed over the pastel I have rubbed onto a piece of tracing tissue.  I like this method better than using Saral tracing paper, because Saral is waxy and the colors are too sharp...reds, blues, and blacks. (Also, it's cheaper!)

 

The next step is my underpainting, and I posterized this image a bit to make it more understandable.  I paint plain Golden Acrylic Glaze all over the area and beyond where the image will be painted.  Then I paint a faint background "bloom" in  the area...in this case it was a very pale coral/peach glaze.  After this dried, I painted a pale yellow on the shapes where I could alter the colors with glazes....i.e. pale blue over yellow makes a radiant green, pale vat orange or light quinacridone red over yellow makes peachy or coral hues.....but painted pale blues in areas for my periwinkles and purples.

Then I placed another more coral "bloom" over the area. Softly! Lightly!

 

And, as I said, this is a little dark because of my lighting, but I think one can see my progression....building up the greens, the reds and the periwinkles with thin glazes.
This technique is much like watercolor, and is done with liquid Golden Acrylic paints.  However, you can bring it further into a more painterly and modeled form by going back into shapes and putting down opaque highlights and glazing over them. This is especially effective when you are working on a buff background, as I am doing here. 

The old Flemish painters did this to great effect.  Some instructor told me that Van Eyck would sometimes place 40 layers of red glazes to get that glowing rich red in his masterpieces.

Designing for a project...from drawing to finished piece

A friend of mine told me that she likes to show the work involved in putting together a project, and I've always been interested in the process of getting a painting from here to there as well.  Here is the start of a floral arrangement for a client who wanted it in her kitchen  She sent me pictures of specific flowers and asked me to include them and a hummingbird.  She wants color palette much like the colors in the textile pattern, with some delicate whites and periwinkle blues as well.

This design will be cut out and pasted onto a surface, so I gave her the option of cutting around a relatively uncomplicated "bloom" of color behind the flowers or going into the details to cut out a more intricate perimeter.

I like to draw my design in pencil on tissue for the first presentation, and then go from there either to a color rendering or directly to the actual project, depending on the client's wishes and budget.  I don't trace or copy as a rule, since I like to draw, but with a repeat or symmetrical motif, I will fold the tissue over to trace it.  Saves time.

I've lately been aware of how I have to keep an eye on how tight my curves are in a design. My tendency to draw tight curves needs to be modified.  A more open curve, a straight line here and there keeps my designs from looking like a box of octopi.

Queen of Heaven

 

I signed the contract with the card company today.  38 images, all copyrighted and in card format.  This image will come out with others of the same ilk (see medieval girl.) The company asked me to tone down the background into more of  a garnet color, because they felt it would look richer.

All this was A LOT OF WORK.  I learned far more about PhotoShop than I ever really cared to learn, but I guess I am a Better Person for learning it.  (Frankly, I'm tired of building my character.)  My mother used to tell me to "offer it up". Catholic, of course.

Speaking of Catholic, the title comes from the Litany to Mary at the end of the mass.
I always loved the titles the priest would call out.... "Rose of Sharon", "Tower of Gold", "House of Ivory", and the congregation would murmur, "Queen of Heaven,Rejoice, Allelulia" while incense billowed around the priest and the altar boys and the light streamed through the stained glass window above the altar. 

I am not a practicing Catholic now, but a few years ago I restored the painted marble  pillars and the baptismal font of the pretty little Gothic altar in my former church. It was very peaceful and familiar, painting a faux marble finish on the plaster pillars and listening to Mozart.  The priest lent me his tapes, and I played my favorite, the Requiem, again and again.

I wrote a poem about the Virgin after the project....about the difference between our plain statue of Mary and the glamour of the Spanish/Filipino Marys kept by the old families in Manila and brought out once a year for processions.

I hardly recognized Filipino Catholocism as being Catholic....it was so mystical and contained more than a few aspects of the old Malay culture.  Same religion?  I don't think so.

Procession of Virgins

Tonight Manila frees
God’s mothers
from  glass boxes
in the living rooms 
of old mestizo families.
At twilight the Madonnas  lurch
from somber gates,
their altars hoisted
on the gleaming backs
of praying men.


Ave, Maria de Santa Rosa, the Virgin of Sampoloc.
Ave,  Queen of Sorrows from Binondo.
 You and your sisters show pale faces
 like the tilted eyes of God,
ivory ovals in a radiance
 of crinkled hair and diadems.

My childhood gods were plain.
The church placed prim
among the ordered neighborhoods,
where Mary was the patron saint
of varnished pews.

Blandly, she and Jesus smiled
on farmers and their women;
the mothers with their babies
crying in the back.
I’d fidget in my seat, and dream
of  boys and high adventure
while glancing idly
 at the blank
of Mary’s face,
her plastic flowers,
 lacy curtains at her feet.

Where you, Madres, your Spanish brilliance spikes
 a retinue of comets in the dark.
Your generators surge, electric candles
urge light across moire, along your goitered neck,
and snag on jeweled ears, the lace at breasts and cuff.

 Your light slaps facets on  sweating walls,
spins glamour out of filthy ground
and clothes the  beggars squatting by canals.
Tonight you scatter glitter in the streets
where day shows only garbage,
circling dogs,
and slinking rats.

Moths and the Nerd Princess

One of these fabulous creatures actually clung to the screendoor of my house one hot Georgia night. I had always wanted to see one, since I was fascinated by insects ever since I was little, but never had the chance until we lived in Georgia. It was so lovely, so still, as it worshipped the lights inside the house.  I paid it homage  for 15 minutes, then turned out the light.  It loosened it's grip on the screen and flapped regally, slowly back into the darkness. 

I wonder why moths, as creatures of the night, are drawn to light and often their death because of this attraction. I wouldn't be the first to draw morbid analogies from this.

The above Luna moth, which I painted as part as a chinoiserie room,  rests forever at the top of a wall in West Seattle.  Since the top of the canvas was a trompe l'oeil bamboo border, I put all the chinoiserie creatures, and they are many, toward the top as casting a shadow like the bamboo.

As a girl, I collected insects.  I was an odd shy child, nerdy and romantic, reading anything I could get my hands on and spending the rest of my time roaming the hills and the creek of my hometown, Pomeroy, Washington.  It's located in a sparsely populated S.E. corner of Washington named the Palouse. Remarkable, in part because of its hills, bare of trees but covered with grass or wheat.

I would go fishing with my Dad in the summer and spend a lot of time among cattails with the redwinged blackbirds and the butterflies sipping in the mud at the edges of the lake. At the age of seven, a shirtless brown little savage, I would stoop down and gently pick up the big swallowtail butterflies and place them on my chest and shoulders.  They would walk slowly over my body, attracted by the salt on my skin.
Slightly scratchy, deliciously  tickling, they quietly opened and closed their gorgeous yellow and black wings. They also had a wonderful smell, like the flowers they frequented for nectar.

Anyhow, even at 14 I was out in the bushes with my butterfly net, searching like Nabokov for the rare butterfly.  I even had boyfriends helping me, although I think they were hoping for something else besides butterflies.

The nuns at the parochial school I attended used my etymological skills to capture the black widows that were always coming into the music rooms.  Dad showed me how to put some carbon tetrachloride onto a piece of cotton, place it in a jar, and sneak up on the evil looking spiders and clap them into their jar prison.  They would die, and I stored jars of them in my closet among my pretty dresses and go-to-church MaryJane patent leather shoes.  My sister Megan, who shared my room, swears to this day that I created her phobia about spiders.  She was positive that they would escape and come out to bite us in the night.

My interest in nature and my father and grandfather's knowledge of the land and it's creatures created an encyclopedia of images and names in my brain that I draw on for my painting today. Grandad and Dad taught me the common and the Latin names, and I must confess that some of these names are beginning to escape me, but the images remain.  Indian paintbrush, swallowtail, white tail deer and willow.

I will know their shapes and smells and color and the way they move as long as I live.

Salish Painting...Finally finished

Well, now.  It's done, and what a challenge!  My client wanted an oil painting, a dark painting...at night with the moonlight illuminating the clouds over the Mission mountains of the Salish/Flathead reservation, with an encampment of the tribe in the meadow.  Lots of horses, little light except that of the moonlit clouds and the fires of the encampment. And, all the important animals, including his tribal name of the raven, plus the berries and plants of the region.  Oh yes, the Salish beaded bag, the child's moccasins, and most of all, the family tomahawk/pipe....which I got to see and touch.  It is almost 150 years old.

I had never done night landscapes before, but found looking at the tonalities of Remington and Whistler's Nocturnes to be helpful.  My client wanted lots of detail and the colors and values to be dark and early evening feeling, but he wanted both blue hues and warm hues as well. He wanted it like "an old tavern painting".  So, I spent a lot of time wandering around in the dark, both figuratively and literally.

For some reason, I kept thinking of that old movie, "The Illustrated Man", based on some of the stories of Ray Bradbury.  There was a daytime scene of people camped in lovely white billowing tents in a beautiful green mountain meadow.  They were peacefully gathered and waiting with tranquility for the end of the world.  I kept thinking of that scene while I was painting my night landscape with the tribal evening firelight glancing off the faces of the families and their tents and animals.

My client and I named it "Salish Twilight."  I sent him in to look at it alone before I joined him.  When I came in, he had tears in his eyes.  So much has been lost for his people.

East Indian textiles/a watercolor rendering for a mural

I did the rendering for a design where a friend had invited me to paint with her for a client's workout room.  The lady wanted lots of primitive animals derived from East Indian textiles and embroideries.  She liked the rich colors and stylized figures, and so did I...especially Mr. Elephant.

 I liked the Pensive Monkey and the Bouncing Tiger as well.   In fact, I could do this kind of work every day and be blissful. (for a while, at least.)  I turn on my book-on-CD, crank up the heat and paint tiny and small
while the rain beats on my skylights and the wind blows up the skirts of my big sequoia in the corner of the yard. 

I wish I could do this  more often. The murals are fine, but more and more I am drawn to smaller work and the quiet in my own studio. I want to come out to my studio at 9 o'clock sharp, lay out my watercolors and sharpen my pencils like a Bob Cratchit of paint, and paint people's wishes and dreams for the next six hours or so, with time for a good lunch and nap.  I love translating what people have in their minds.  I feel an amazement and power when I get what other people dream of but can't express visually.  I never thought I would like it.  I thought the only way to do art was to express only my visions, but with this kind of work, I can do both.

And I can see, that no matter what I do...animals, plants or samovars.... it still has my mark, and that is a comfort and pleasure for me.It can be somewhat of a drawback for a decorative artist...too much of "me" can get into the way of the pure decoration.... but it also reassures me that my beginnings as an artist have followed me all the way through my life.

Sheep Creek/Umatilla Forrest/ Watercolor

A few years ago I went up to Sheep Creek by myself to spend a day painting .  It's a long dusty drive and I had to go down the Blind Grade (a winding gravel road that makes me ill with fear) to get there, but I finally pulled into the campground about an hour after I left my sister's house.

Sheep Creek's source gushes out from a draw on the side of the mountain and chases down the hill through a dense choke of spruce and Douglas pines. It then dives under the road through a Forest Service culvert and spreads out into the narrow valley below. A hundred sparkling fingers of water meander between small islands of nodding aconite and smiling daisies to finally gather in the dark shadows at the bottom of the hill.

In the middle field, on a sunny summer day, it feels like you are walking in fields of colored diamonds.

I parked myself on a sunny rock, put on my cowboy hat and shades and painted until late afternoon.  Just down below me was this copse of trees where the water joined and eddied up.  My dad would have brought his fly rod and cast a couple of times into that eddy and probably snagged a little native rainbow trout, too little to keep, but a brave little fighter.  They are the prettiest little trout, and so quick and wary.  Not at all like the hatchery fish, which are fat and somewhat stupid.  They'll eat anything you put on a hook.

Anyhow, while I painted,tiny blue butterflies rose and fell among the flowers and the mud at the water's edge, and a  black and white Viceroy butterfly even landed on my head.  I could see his shadow  as it lit on mine.  It was a Bambi movie moment. I went home that day in a dazzle of light and water sounds.

Three days later a Forest service guy told me he had been in that same spot that afternoon and had been stalked by a cougar.  The man found fresh pug marks in the mud and dust of the road when he came up from the creek.