Jesus in the House of Mary and Martha, Detailing Mary's Robe

            I spent a couple of hours yesterday resolving Mary’s costume. In the sleeve, this meant simply tightening up the lines in agreement with a reference photo. But the fabric over her knee is fabricated from imagination. The difficulty of making it up is ensuring that the folds communicate the form beneath, and I wasn’t convinced the protrusion was convincing as a knee. Even partially hidden behind the vessel on the table, I want her legs to be perceptible beneath her drapery, folded beneath her body in a natural and comfortable pose.

            I also paid some attention to her legs, which will get more firelight in a subsequent layer.

            

Mary and Martha: Adding More Disciples

It would be much more orthodox to plan an entire composition before beginning a complicated narrative painting.

But I planned poorly, and now I’m improvising. I'm satisfied that my latest improvisation for this painting is, at last, getting the image to coalesce. By adding this figure between the viewer and the fireplace, I think I’ve created a bridge between the central figures and the distally placed ones at left. My wife saw it and said, “Oh, now Mary’s really slacking.” It’s a busier room, and Martha’s frustration that her sister has left her “to serve alone” is exacerbated.

I’m now envisioning another guest between the tables, leaning to our right in reach of some victual, creating yet another directional line to the interaction between Mary and Jesus.

Mary and Martha: more food on the tables

Having satisfied myself for the moment that the faces are shaping up well (though they need another layer yet), I turned my attention today to the table in the foreground. A bowl of grapes, a plate of fish, some dishes of spices, some beverages— I can create these from what I have in the studio.

But before I go to too much detail, I really need to bring some people in to model for the figures in the foreground, which will undoubtedly cover up some of my work.

Mary and Martha oil painting: Reworking Faces

It’s taken me almost six months to finally be happy with Jesus’ face, and I’ll probably change it more. One problem with working at this scale is anticipating how it will look in reproduction, which will almost always be tiny compared to the original.

Sometimes I found myself pleased with a facial expression, but after photographing it and viewing it on my laptop or iPhone, I then found the expression indiscernible. Or I found even more troubling errors.

Illustrators working at a drawing table have long been able to use a tabletop attachment, configured like most desk lamps, with a reverse magnifying glass— a minimizing glass— to be able to anticipate how the image will look at reproduction size. The old masters surely had to envision how an alter piece or fresco would be seen at a distance, such as from the back of a chapel. Michelangelo painted the 50,000 square foot Sistine Chapel ceiling to be viewed from sixty feet below, but he could not have seen it from that distance until the scaffolding was removed. How did he know not to waste time on details no one would see? Clearly, Mike was a lot smarter than me.

Stage drama is played differently than screen. Opera singers have a reputation for being lousy actors, and some of them deserve it. But I’m thinking of a young soprano who plays a character as well as anyone in Hollywood, whose facial expressions give marvelous meaning to the slightest glance. Unfortunately, you can’t tell from the balcony— at least, not without binoculars.

I know that most viewers of my paintings will never see the original, and I want them to know my characters’ emotions.

Some of my reference photos have Jesus’ profile silhouetted against the dark wall behind, and some have the white of his robe showing behind that elegant nose. I chose the photos with the expressions I wanted, without thinking about contrasting the lighted face against the background. I found later that the highlights on the nose were lost against the white robe. I’ve been trying to create shadows between them, which look fine up close in the original, but still washed out when viewed on screen. Should I move the robe? I might yet.

The figure of Martha is the closest to being done. But the energy in her eyes is still lost in reduction. Mary, below, looks up to Jesus in anticipation of his words. I have the most work yet to do on her.

Resurrecting a Painting: Mary and Martha

I don't mean to imply with this headline that this painting is dead. But my oil on canvas of Jesus in the House of Mary and Martha sat on the easel for months without progress. Originally, I told myself I was just too busy with illustration work, which was true in December, and with preparing for wedding shows in January, at which I demonstrate my live wedding paintings. But eventually I had to admit to myself that I was avoiding it. In fact, I avoided looking at it. I'd painted myself into a corner, and was deeply discouraged. I found myself thinking of it as a failed painting. I didn't think it was redeemable.

There were problems with the initial drawing of hands and faces, and I would look at those problems and rue that I wasn't classically trained, or at least classically disciplined enough to do regular figure studies, regularly review my anatomy and proportion books, and essentially be a better draughtsman. I can rework these issues, but it would be more professional to get them right in the first place.

But as long as I'm redrawing faces, how about the whole composition? I had doubts about the whole layout. The floor in the front seemed wasted, but I liked how I'd centered the action of Jesus, Mary, and Martha. I'd wanted a more crowded household all along, but in organizing the photo shoot, I just couldn't get more men. I was so impatient to shoot it as soon as possible. I thought I'd have the painting done in a month. But would have been better to have postponed the shoot until I had all the models I wanted. Now, having come to the conclusion that I need to add more figures to the composition, I am forced to bring in one model at a time, or invent them without a model. The first casualty of this rebuilding is proper perspective— how tall is this figure in the foreground compared to those in the center of the room? I flirted with the idea of calling in all the models and my photographer friend for a complete re-do.

So what was I to do with this possible reject on my easel? The canvas became my sketchbook. I brushed in a wash of hypothetical figures in the foreground. Some visitors thought they were ghosts, others asked if they were shadows. I added some shadows. I nibbled at other parts of the painting; the bricks, the glow of the fire. My neighbor from Ballard came down to the studio to model for one of the figures on the left. The guy with the great face who was Doubting Thomas in my painting called It Is the Lord did the same.

At last I committed an evening to buying some fish and painting them above the fire. It was then that I had an epiphany, while puzzling over the image in Photoshop. I copied and pasted a part of the painting, moved it a little into the foreground, and there it was. I became excited about this painting all over again.

All it needed was another table. It wasn't more than five minutes' work to slap to some naples yellow down, and I began to see it as it should be.

I won't need another photo shoot. I'll use elements of the first one, and some vessels I have around the studio. I'll buy some more fruits, maybe. I do need a couple more models, but they can just come to the studio for an hour and throw some cloth over their heads. I have people in mind. I'm thrilled to have this image riding my mind again. The painting is saved.

Third and Fourth Layers: Mary and Martha

For newcomers to the chronicling of my painting of Mary and Martha, please find earlier posts by date in the column at right.

Again, I don’t really know how to enumerate the “layers” of this painting. With this blog entry are progress photos numbered eight through ten, and a couple of detail pictures. But it is between numbers eight and nine that I actually glaze the entire painting for the first time. So in that sense, the ceiling has only two layers. It may be fair to say that Jesus’ face has four layers by picture ten. Mary’s extended arm may have five or six.

Having worked quite a bit on the figures by the last blog entry, I’d come to a point where I needed to set them better within the space. This will sound like a task that should be done at the sketch stage, and I wouldn’t argue. They were pinned loosely to their place in the room from the beginning, but the space between the figures and the fireplace was empty, and the perspective lines were not really fastidious. I came back to this earlier this week, readdressing lines I’d abandoned for my impatience to draw people. At this time I began limning in the bricks of the ceiling.

The wonderful living room where we shot the reference photos was plaster, masterfully textured in the 1920s. But it was not the plaster-work, but the barrel-vaulted ceiling for which I chose this room, with the intention to turn it into an arch of Jerusalem stone. I found wonderful photos of the Old City, and of Bethany, where this native limestone cobbles everything from roads to gardens to walls to hearths. Our view of the ceiling above our dinner party would be of the narrow ends of wedge shaped stones, the stubs of pie slices inserted nose down and held together by their own weight. I see in some of these photos that the stones are smoothed over, as with plaster or concrete, but not thoroughly. In all

cases, centuries or millennia have textured the construction with wear. It is a challenge of imagination to visualize how a home in Bethany would have looked in the time of Christ.

Trying to arrive at that look will require many layers of paint, glazing, scumbling, and reworking, to create what Leonardo da Vinci called sfumato. He derived the word from the Italian word for smoky, and used it o describe his method of blending. We associate it with his luminous depiction of flesh, but I’m use it here to describe my approach to the haze and shadows that will fill this room.

As I darkened the back wall and began to find where it should meet the floor in the shadows, I decided to add a large urn or water pot in the corner. I’d love to say I had one for the shoot, but I’m afraid it came entirely from my head at the last minute. It’s my hope that it looks ceramic, but I’m afraid it looks more like finely chisled Roman marble. I don’t think they were poor, but I’m positing their most luxurious possessions were for the table. Perhaps I’ll be able to texture the vase later.

On top of this vessel I painted my cat, Porter Rockwell Kitty Cat, who surely must have had ancestors employed in the mousing trade throughout the ancient world. As his role is not mentioned in the scriptural version of the story, I’ll keep him glazed in shadows, and critics who peer that deep can call me sentimental to their hearts’ delight.

The painting then dried for a day while I wore other hats.

Today, at last, I glazed a true second layer, coating the whole canvas with classic medium. It is a muscular job on a painting this size, pushing a carpenter sized brush over the breadth and width, first in a checkerboard pattern, and then in arching strokes across the curve of the ceiling. I stand on a bench to reach the top, waving the whole length of my arm.

The medium must not be so thick or thin as to run or pool.

Then I squeezed about half my index finger’s worth of crimson paint onto my palette, wetted that big brush with turpentine, and began to spread this brilliant, translucent pigment over the whole background. It does not look crimson by the time it is spread thin; it is a wash over burnt umber, which is tan at it’s thinnest, ochre in midrange, and the darkest brown in it’s full body. Crimson diluted against a pure white gessoed canvas would be pink or magenta, but over this umber gradation it becomes red in the shadows and yellow in the light. It is firelight on the walls.

I then returned to lining the ceiling with bricks. It would be more ideal to have finished this in the previous layer, but frankly, I ran out of time. If I had resumed this task first thing today, I would have had to wait another day to glaze the whole with color. If the first layer hasn’t dried enough, a wash of turpentine will loosen it, and it will be destroyed. But it is no great concern to work detail into a wet outer layer.

Last of all, I built some depth into Jesus’ face. (This is ostensibly for color and detail, but since I'm a hack, it's also an opportunity to correct drawing errors.) I will keep doing this to all the faces a bit at a time, layer upon layer. It would be great to be able to ad a layer to all the faces in a day, that they could all have their first layer in the same day, their second layers the second day, and so on, like a class who all matriculated together and graduated together too. But I haven’t enough contiguous hours in a day to do so much at once. At least, not if I wish to have dinner with my wife.

And so I continue as I am able.

Second Layer: Mary and Martha

I have added color and detail to Mary and Martha, and now to a disciple as well. Additional disciples are being added or reworked.

Painting in oils is classically done in layers. A short version of this involves an under drawing or painting in grisailles, which is all one color—usually gray— and glazed over with final color. Leonardo da Vinci took this to the extreme: the Mona Lisa has as many as forty layers of paint in places, some of them just microns thin.

My method may be unorthodox, in that I don’t have the discipline (read: attention span) to finish the under painting before beginning the second layer. Indeed, parts of this painting are already under three or four coats, and I still haven’t determ

ined where all of the figures will be. In other words, I still haven’t finished the under painting.

It seems I’ve seen large buildings erected where progress at one end is a story ahead of progress at the other end. My canvas is in that state. I’m building on top of the foundation in some areas, and still laying the foundation in others. This is not a structural concern. The classic medium with which I coat an area before working over it again contains some varnish, along with oil and turpentine. This mixture is a time proven combination that allows layering to laminate properly, without separating.

I used to glaze the entire canvas each new day I touched it, but I don’t find this necessary, when I can only rework small parts of a large painting in a given amount of time anyway. It also saves material and expense to only glaze the part I’ll work that day. In some of these photos, you can see the edge of the glazing, as it is shinier. If the photo is taken in daylight, the top of the painting reflects the blue-ish northern light of the studio’s sixteen-foot high windows. Photos taken of the painting after dark are very yellow from incandescent track lighting. I haven’t bought expensive lighting for photographing large paintings, because I have a professional do that for me. That is a complicated art in itself.

At this point in the painting, I can continue to layer and detail the existing figures. But I want more disciples than I was able to gather for the shoot, and I’ll need to model two or three or four more. This I’ll probably do with more simple photography, which I’ll be able to do myself, because these figures will all have their back to the viewer, and will not need significant detail. In other words, the lighting will be easy to manufacture.

Anyone want to want to wander down to Pioneer Square and get draped in fabric?