St Thecla, work in progress

"St Thecla and the Deer" is slowly (I and emphasize "slow" here) coming along. I had electricians tearing apart the lower half of my house, including my home studio. My painting studio at Mainframe/Krab Jab Studio was an oven, due to the intense greenhouse August we're experiencing in Seattle. Plus, I was working long days preparing for what is now my last curatorial show.

As I've stated in an earlier blog post, I realized she's gotta go through veils of glazes to get where I want her, particularly with her skin tone. I actually went into the studio to work on that, along with adding her damask blue patterning on her dress. However, I really wanted to add blackberry brambles into the horizon line, and textured the grass, which I hadn't really touched in a while. I also felt that the deer needed more work, I hadn't done anything to it since I first painted it. I didn't get too far; after about three hours, the temperature in the studio soared up into the high 80s and a nice heat headache began to bloom. I started making rookie mistakes, and to boot, I've lost most of my good brushes ("misplaced" is probably more accurate) so I'm using spares, along with a makeshift mahl stick. All this is a recipe for potential disaster.

I probably have about 5 more glazes to apply to the painting ("glazes" are thin, transparent layers of paint that basically tint the surface of a painting). I want to do a little more definition work to Thecla herself, and soften up her hands. Her hair actually flows down her dress but I will add that after I add the damask blue pattern in. I have a few more weeks to work on her before she's finished and ready to varnish, frame, and ship out to France. I'm fairly confident I can get her to where I want, but boy did I learn my lesson on cutting corners in my process!