Shoes
2024-02-14
I thought it would be interesting to document a picture from start to finish with variations and work shown
This is a picture my maternal Grandmother took during a visit to her daughter’s farm. My aunt Edith married a farmer, Jim Baker, after WW II I think. They set up home in southern Saskatchewan in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s and started farming. This is one of several images showing life on their farm when it was still being established. I get the impression that Grandma was not 100% happy about the situation as I was told she referred to the farm as ‘Dogpatch’ (after the Li’l abner comic). Depicted here are the shoes of Uncle Jim and one of their daughter’s (I am not sure which one) carefully removed before entering the house. An aspect of this that puzzles me is that apparently the house had a mud floor and I can not quite follow the logic involved. Perhaps it helps to differentiate ‘inside’ form ‘outside’ ?? In any event - I think it shows Grandma had an excellent eye for a good composition when she saw it.
2024-02-15
One of Edith and Jim’s daughters sent me an update. The farm was from the GI bill, awarded to vets returning from WW II, Aunt Edith deserved a medal, as did all those farm wives for the work and working conditions, and the BASEMENT had a mud floor, the house itself had regular floors with carpets etc, so please keep the farm outside - take off your shoes. Makes perfect sense now. She also thinks the door looks a lot more battered than she remembers it.
So - I plan on trying several media to recreate this picture. I’m starting with water soluble oils (just like ordinary oils but you can wash the brushes with hot soapy water instead of solvent ) on canvas. The image is actually a long narrow one so I am using an 16 x 24 canvas but I am also experimenting with a wide unpainted boarder around the image as well. The idea is to create the same sort of presentation, once it is framed, as a framed and matted photograph. So after I masked the boarder, I gave it another coat of white acrylic gesso. Partly to ensure clean edges but also to help fill in the rough canvas a bit. Once that dried overnight I put on another coat of acrylic gesso lightly tinted yellow to provide a neutral average hue value to work on.
You can barely see light pencil marks that block out the major landmarks and the shoes themselves. I have purposely made the shoes slightly larger than they are in the original to emphasize them as the main focal point,
So here is the first layer. Painted using a very very thinned coat of paint, mostly raw sienna, black and zinc white. The purpose is to define the spaces, and start creating the shading and objects. Subsequent layers will add colours, shadows and details. I am basically using a 15th century technique I experimented with last year that I really like, unfortunately it requires each layer to be very dry before you add another layer. This means a 10 +/- day wait between layers so it takes a lot of time. I also plan on keeping the sepia/B&W flavour of the original - but plan on adding a few colours to give it a bit more pop.
20240220
While I was waiting for the oil to dry I was working on different media and paper to see what they would look like. I finished the first one yesterday'
Finished water colour version. About 2 hours of prep and 8 hours of painting spread across a couple of days
I recall a paper we had to analyze for an art class. The German philosopher Heidegger once wrote a long and convoluted discussion on what makes art art. It includes the line ‘The thingyness of the thing’ - which may be a problem of the translation from german to english but also indicates the nature of the beast … read at your own peril. As a basis for his discussion he used this image of a pair of boots Van Gogh painted. Later interviews with Van Gogh were reported to have him say something like “well, I just thought they were a pair of boots” But is interesting that Gramdma’s image captures so much of the same feelings - only more so I think.
Paint was dry enough to work a couple of days ago, just got back to it today. So, background work mostly. The door and door frame got the majority of the time. The boots are a bit more defined. There is something wrong with the childs right shoe, not sure what I’ve done wrong, but it is rotated too much. I should be looking almost straight on but it looks like a 3/4 profile. Hopefully I can fix that. Now, back to the drying rack for a week or so. In the meantime I started another water colour version, but this time in Gouache.
Although it will be in gouache - an opaque watercolour - I started the basic prep with ordinary (transparent) water colours to block in major colour areas and monochrome values. Now to work on the details …
And here is the finished version using gauouche.
Pretty close to finished the oil painting. A couple of highlights, and the boot laces and some grass. Was surprised - when I started this pass the shadows were still not dry and smeared a bit when I put on the oil coat - will wait 2 weeks at least this time.
