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Sunday, October 7, 2007

ArtPact #25

(Originally published on July 30, 2007).

I think I am back to painting! All that venting must have done something, and I am pulling myself out by the whitening roots of my hair (ribbon included...).

It happened on Thursday, as I was working on the agenda for our upcoming board meeting. In the background, the TV was playing a classic movie from 1964, called "
The Pumpkin Eater". A movie in black and white, that had wonderful lighting on the faces of the characters. Now, one thing y'all need to know is that once you start getting into portraiture, you never look at a face the same way. You find yourself gazing at people like some freakish stalker, saying things like "Ah, you have such a wonderful light on your cheekbone!". Then they call the police. and you end up admiring the shadow shapes on the mugs of your inmates, but that's a whole different story.

Anyway - seeing all that wealth of faces, especially in black and white, which makes it so easy and tempting to capture, I went into my studio, grabbed a pencil, 2 tubes of watercolor, 2 brushes and a jar of water. I set them all onto lapdesk that The JohnnyB self-deludingly likes to call his . . .

. . . 30 minutes later (and several TiVo pauses later), I had these 2 bozzettos. Both watercolor on paper, each 5"x7". Apparently, I did get quite rusty during the long weeks sans watercoloring, but it's good to be back!!




As you can tell, the movie was not exactly a comedy. It's quite moody and dramatic, with many of the dialogues done wordlessly, only via facial expressions, so it went very well with the bleak colors I chose. I hereby present to you Anne Bancroft and Peter Finch, as they were 33 years ago.

By the way, I've finally finished watching the movie (which is very good, by the way) - and am still puzzled about the name. So, what's with the pumpkin???

1 comment:

Kayla S said...

I enjoyed reading thiis