Painting the Feminine - Destruction and Rebirth

The journey we took together through Painting the Feminine, led by the huge hearted, vibrant and honest Connie at Dirty Footprints Studio officially ended this past Monday, February 2. But truly, when she offers it again, I highly recommend you take it, even if you don't think you can draw because art skills and techniques DO NOT matter. They really, truly don't. I have thoughts and feelings on what this whole journey meant to me and look forward to continuing the exploration on my own (with the safe space to continue to share my work and discoveries here on the blog and with my sisters in paint on our community page) but I will share those once I've finished sharing my art journal pages. Which will hopefully resume next week. My scanner has been giving me some trouble and photos of the journal just don't capture the essence of each image as well as I'd like. But I think I've finally gotten it sorted out, so I'll be on a scanning marathon this weekend!

In the meantime, one of the prompts that I haven't shared yet touched me so deeply and so heavily that I worked with it not only in my journal, but on to the canvas.

The prompt was The Fierce Feminine... in particular, the power of Destruction. Harnessing our Kali and Destroyer energies in such a way so they don't burn us out, but are beneficial rather than simply destructive for destruction's sake.

You all may remember this painting I shared a while back:

Some of you will be horrified to know that I mindfully and intentionally destroyed this piece, smothering her with gesso and modeling paste until the canvas was blank and textured; new and reborn. All 80+ hours of work and hands down my masterpiece painting, gone in a few hours time. Let me share why I did so, as recorded in the writing journal that's accompanied this journey through the feminine:

Destruction and closure came to me in a very different way than just in the art journal this week. It came in the form of a bottle of Gesso and the edge of one of those faux credit cards you get in the junk mail (who needs a palette knife?).

The painting is one that took me almost 100 hours to complete. It is filled with sweat, tears and so much raw anger, hurt and frustration. She tore from my gut and my heart like an avenging angel, filled with fire and poison, ready to smite and to kill after one of the most emotionally draining and painful periods this soul has encountered in its 30 years on this Earth; my longest and most difficult battle with depression, lasting over 6 months and nearly costing me every single loved one in my life. She sucked the last vestiges of the lingering feelings from that time out of me, like a great vacuum and left me feeling cleansed, renewed and refreshed when I had finished.

It was a year ago this weekend that she was created and it was this weekend that she has been cleansed, wiped clean. I was so proud of her when I finished her; she was both a technical and emotional masterpiece for me... the single greatest work I've ever achieved. But we both knew that I couldn't fully heal with the energy leaking from her and from me; that the old wounds were merely scabbed over and not yet scars. Looking at her was a painful reminder of that terrible time, not one that uplifted me and said "I made it!" but one that reminded me of all that I had felt. So I sealed that time and those feelings behind layers and layers of Gesso; I sent her off with ritual - with incense and with more tears, this time of the cleansing variety. The surface of the canvas has been cleansed and reborn and is now waiting to reveal something new to me when the time is right.

This was one of the most difficult things I've ever done; to in essence destroy something in to which I'd breathed life. But from destruction, so often comes birth and I know that something beautiful will emerge from her proverbial ashes.

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And something already has. I've been working on a new painting on this canvas since our circle closed, keeping my painting practice alive in a different form... taking the time and space each day to connect with the Feminine and paint. I've been enjoying this new painting, singing and dancing while I break in new paintbrushes from the husband on it. This is the polar opposite of my time painting The Lady, where most days I dragged myself unwillingly to the canvas almost as an act of penance... painting this new one has been an act of pure joy and light heartedness. Going to the canvas isn't a chore, but rather something to look forward to each day.

Taking that brave step, harnessing the strength of the fierce Feminine to destroy something that I had created (which I have never, ever, ever done before) was an amazingly freeing and healing experience. Without that happening, I may never have fully gotten over that time or the fear of relapse. Now, without her constant gaze reminding me of it from the studio floor (I never hung her up but rather left her in the corner) I feel no fear or shame.

Here's a sneak peek at the rebirth, the Phoenix rising from the destruction:

Work in Progress Wednesday

I've still got several thing in the works, including my painting for DEEP which I should update on as we're now halfway through week 5 and there's only week 6 left to go! But for today, I'll keep it simple so I can paint and enjoy the first day of Spring.

Still working on The Lady. We're near 60 hours now and I'm adding snakes. SNAKES! This is a true testament of my ability to listen to my intuition and the painting for direction because, if I'm being totally honest, I don't like snakes. At all. Not even a little bit. And I've never painted them before because, *shivers* Well, I'm painting them now. And I'm not painting just any old friendly snake, like a garter or rat snake, nooo. I didn't know what kind of snake it was going to be when I started them, I just knew they had to be a grey/brown and looked through dozens of pages of images before I found the right snake. Black mamba. Oh boy.


Sketched and inked a new watercolor outline. Going to give this new style of mine a go in a different medium and see what happens. I'm sure it will be drastically different than the acrylic ones I do just by the nature of the mediums. But, it will be an adventure!

What are you all working on this week?

The 40th Hour

We've hit the 40th hour, The Lady and I. (clicking the link will show you how she started out and you can see how far she's come along) The tender ache I feel when working on her was something I felt I needed to push on and work through, despite the discomfort. Art has a funny way of doing that to people, making them uncomfortable but somehow making that discomfort worthwhile. And so, I picked up my brush, put the music back on and let my emotions lead my hand.

And I'm not going to lie; it hurt. Working on her has been laced with a modicum of pain, the sort you keep coming back to - like a canker sore that you keep poking with your tongue or the bruise you continually push on to watch it change color. Yet despite the ache, I keep coming back to her. Stepping up bravely with my brush (and sometimes a bottle of wine) to keep walking this painted path with her. She has something to teach me, something to help me through. She's letting me pour all of my hurt, disappointment and emotional over-load in to her.

The Lady is leading me in to the darkness but will also guide me back out, torch in hand, like sacred Hecate. She has brought me to tears and to my knees before her and still she continues to push me to my emotional and artistic limits. We've hit the 40th hour, she and I, but in the deepest parts of my intuition I know we have many more to traverse. And though the changes may not all be stark and noticeable to those who are not up close with her, they are necessary as she spirals out and expands from my heart and on to the canvas.

I've lost track of the layers of paint she has in to her right now but the least built up portion of the canvas, the green spirals at the bottom, have 10 - 12 layers of paint. So you can imagine how much has gone in to the most built up area, the glowing vortex she holds.

WIP Wednesday and A Challenge

I'm about 26 hours in to my time with The Lady. I've been studying my trusty anatomy books and have added a circulatory system that still needs a bit of work. To shade or to make that nonsense glow? I'm not sure. I also reconstructed her jaw - the sharp pointy chin she had initially bothered me and I was a bit nervous about going in and broadening it. Not because of the shape, but all that shading was going to be lost and I'd have to blend it back in naturally.

I'm pleased to say that it went better than expected. Take that self doubt! Hah!

I'm honestly not sure how she'll progress from here or where we'll go together. There are so many of my emotions wrapped up in her, so many aspects of myself layed bare across the page... which isn't what I had intended but it happened.

And as if she wasn't absorbing enough of my time, another lady started buzzing around my brain yesterday morning demanding I put her to paper right now! She's a bubbly, energetic little thing and is being painted while I listen to vastly different music than her sister-in-painting. She's also an oddball size at 18" x 48".

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I'm also starting a challenge (better late than never!), over at Ayala Art. It's time for 29 faces again and while I'm a few days late, I have no doubt I can catch up pretty quickly. I don't know if I'll post a face a day, a face every few days or what-have-you especially with my 30th birthday approaching this weekend and all the plans I've made for that but I can't resist a good art challenge! If you'd like to sign up, just click the image in my sidebar.

My first face of the challenge will, of course, be The Lady's. I am beyond pleased with how it's coming along and her eyes are the best I've done to date:

The Lady

I've decided to share some shots of her in progress, so you guys can get an idea of how my painting process evolves. Since so many people have asked me how I do what I do and I'm terrible at explaining this sort of thing, I figured I'd use pictures to help. As you can see, first I outline the figure and then work the background up. Sometimes, if the figure is going to be fairly dark or that background is a bit lighter I'll work the background up first without the figure - this is way easier than creating a smooth background around a figure! In this shot, the background already has 4 layers of different shades of green and blue grey spirals outlined. You'll have to take my word for it because the lighting in my studio and my iphone's camera do not agree with each other! Also, you can tell that I had originally drawn her up higher and much smaller.

From there, I move on to shading the figure in fairly bold, chunky patches. One this one, I'm using ultramarine blue and dark beige. Before I added the browns, she looked a lot like a mime. Heh. From there, I start coating her with flesh toned glazes that I mix up specifically for the skin tone I want. Getting the skin to look natural without losing all of the undershading can take 4 - 6 layers depending on how fair skinned the subject is. In the brightest areas, I go ahead and use an undiluted paint to get it nice and smooth.

I'm about 6 hours in and she's starting to flesh out nicely. (Literally!) She's not quite as colorful as previous paintings, but once the background starts coming together she'll get there. Once the flesh is in place, I like to hit areas of light and shadow with both natural and unnatural colors - in this case, burnt umber and ultramarine shading and pale yellow for highlight as well as to define some of the musculature. These are also applied in glazed layers and I tend to blend them together as I work - sometimes using all the colors at one time. The yellows are a bit blown out of proportion by my camera phone, they're a lot more subtle in person.

From here, she'll be given eyes, a little more definition in her lips, maybe some deeper shadows. Then I'll be working on her hair and building up a crazy ass background/foreground. Lots of spirals and light, maybe some eyes. We'll see where she takes me!


P.S. This one is being painted while listening to the "Hurt" station on Pandora, which I started up with the song by Nine Inch Nails. This coupled with a funk probably explains why she's less vibrant than the previous ones.

P.P.S. A note about why I typically don't paint clothing: Not only do I think painting clothing is a giant pain in the ass, but I think it tends to distract a bit from the figure, the movement and the presence of the painting. Since they're such a symbol of personality and status in day to day society, I worry those qualities will be projected on to the piece. Honestly? Who gives a fuck if the woman in the painting is rich, poor, stylish, in need of a fashion intervention, where she shops, etc? That's not the point. Clothes get in the way of the emotion and the flow of the painting for me. As such, nearly every painting I do in the intuitive style is done au natural.