Carrasco Studio

The Spinach that Ate Seattle

No, I have not abandoned the Art World.  I have not flown up on my own private rapture.

I have been waiting for the planets to align so I can get photos of this year's big mural projects.....about three of them.  However, due to Seattle's extremely wet winter, the stucco has sprung a leak  for the site of my three 5'x 9' canvases. The wine room client has had to have surgery, and the 9'x12' mural in CleElum is installed, but the furniture has to be just right before the client will set up for photos.  Sigh. Life.

So, I have been busy with my other art....gardening.  Note the size of the spinach  on the right hand  side of my raised box and other spinach slithering along at the box base.  I got the seeds from Annie's Annuals and Perennials and the combination of rain and compost  and this special seed has created acromeglic spinach. Huge, and more huge.

  Phil is getting tired of spinach dishes and the whole green thing is getting out of hand.  We've started to go to bed with a machete on the bedstand.

Also, we have put in a living room space in our basement apartment, and it has really amped up it's cuteness factor. (and we can charge more)

Got a new sleeper sofa, found the 50's TV trays at a neighbor's estate sale, and a real little Persian rug at a dry cleaners. Phil worried about the vases tipping over, but I told him that for 99 cents at Goodwill, we could deal with a little tipping.

And, I lowered my standards (and enjoyed it) by painting some Sofa Paintings. Two acrylics...sort of color fieldish with some leaf and water elements, and a gouache ala DeKooning/Carrasco for old times sake. Like when I struggled in Painting 101.

Leaf color field                                                                                    5'x 2' Acrylic on Canvas

Leaf color field                                                                                  3'x 1.5' Acrylic on canvas

Garden Frenzy                                                                 20" x 30" Gouache over watercolor

Hint: I painted the gouache over a big watercolor I screwed up....it was really fun....worked mostly with chip brushes, sharp points to scratch with and pastel pencils. I think I'll do more of these.  After 40 years, I finally got the hang of it.  Besides, I have enough messups in watercolor to keep me busy for a while.

Abstract art is a lot harder, in my opinion, because you don't have the resonance of an image to play against.

And Phil  had real challenges with making the new room watertight. Seattle basements always leak.  I thought Lynne would appreciate this, since she has an artisian well in her basement.  Note also that Phil has installed earthquake plates all around the foundation of our house.  San Francisco is not the only shaker and mover along this ring of fire!

I made the mistake of showing Phil  the levels of finish for sheet rock that Regina featured on Fauxology. Now I warrant that our renter will be the only one living in a level 5 finished apartment!  Painstaking.

Sheet rock knees.  A disease of carpenters.

And also, I've been working on a series of watercolors called, eponymously, "Clear Water"  They are quite large, some of them.....20" by 30", and so far I have about 10 I like.  Here's one.

And then.....I have developed 4 images for a children's nursery that I plan to reproduce.  But I'm keeping those under my hat until their grand opening.......

So, you see.  I haven't been lolling on the couch eating bon bons.

 

Days of Wine and Hedges

Meet "Pensive Bacchus".......my newest mural for a wine cellar. 

My clients love France...and they asked me to design a "sculpture" of a young Bacchus along the lines of Michelangelo's adolescent Bacchus....(not the riotous infant Bacchus or dipsomaniac paunchy Bacchus, although they would have been fun)....against a stylized " Versaille" parterre or tall trimmed hedge. 

All this against a base color of deep cobalt blue, which I pointed up with a  ceiling comet of gold leaf stars and a sprinkling of stars on the ceiling, the sky and some of the parterre. 

The wine cellar is to the left, and this mural is in a small tasting room.  The "hedge" or parterre will extend all the way around the room.  The effect I aimed for is a moonlit night, and it's surprising how the deep color and the repetitive patterns have enlarged the space visually.

I literally overlapped on two big projects.....had to place plastic over my big triptych pieces and whale away on the wine cellar mural.  It can be done.

And here are some of my steps....

I painted some of my Roclon canvas a deep cobalt blue.  I don't have to stretch this type of canvas (see [email protected] for sources) ; otherwise I couldn't have overlapped my underlying canvas as I did. 

 
I drew and cut my stencils for the leaf patterns and drew my Bacchus on tissue and pricked the lines with a pouncing tool. Then I started applying layers of stencilled leaf patterns onto the cobalt canvas.....lighter yellows and greens at the top, darker greens and black greens at the bottom.

Then I started glazing with blue, purple, and black glazes in the appropriate areas....darker at the bottom.

 I then pounced the pattern with white chalk, and then followed the pouncing points with a fine white line of paint and started filling him in with naples yellow, leaving some bluish areas for shadows or adding  and changing shadows with a mixture of paynes grey and naples yellow.

After I got the Bacchus to not look so snarky,  I applied  a glaze of cobalt blue and/or red violet to Bacchus and all of the hedge at once.  I wiped  off a few areas about the shoulders, his head, his wine glass, his fingers and left arm to create a feeling of moonlight falling on his form.

My client and I worked together on the application of the canvas to the wall, rolling claybased adhesive (Roman brand at Rodda Paint) on both the wall and the canvas...waiting for about 20 minutes to let the adhesive set up, applying the mural to the wall, smoothing it out from the center....and then, cleaning up!

I finished the mural the day before Xmas Eve, when my talented clients included Phil and me in a sit down, Oh La La,  fourteen dish, (Julia Child recipes,) 7 wine FEAST for Revillion de Noel. A work of art in itself.

Uh.  Sorry to say, after that,  we didn't end up the evening with the traditional Midnight Mass.

Today we have felt blissfully weak and wandered around all day in our pajamas.

Salut.