The Journal of Rhiannon Black

The day when a giant bunny brings baskets of dyed, hardboiled eggs and various candies cradled in colorful artificial grass in honor of the resurrected Christ.

My culture, but not my religion. Do I have a religion?

Diane and I are trading portraits. She started mine Tuesday last, worked some more on Thursday and after pondering, emailed me about the possibility of getting together Friday. She's been feeling selfish because I've been sitting and she's been painting. That will change, I hope, now that I get to work on my portrait. I got a start of it on Friday, did a silverpoint underdrawing and then an umber underpainting, very basic, not a full grisaille underpainting. So far, I like it.

Patricia (she's taking Painting I and II), happened upon us when we first started on Tuesday and said, oh, good. When you talked about trading last week I wanted to ask if I could get in on it but yada yada. Anyway, we both said, no problem and she set up an easel as well. On Thursday, about halfway through the "pose," Aubrey came in and said, damn, I didn't know you were doing this. Mind if I sketch you? Bwahaha, turnabout's fair play.

Next time, I'll bring a pillow.

Diane, a few minutes into her pose, said wow this is a hard chair. I mentioned the pillow idea, but that we'd have to bring it with us, not leave it, because too many things go walkabout.

We're talking about starting up a Friday portrait get together. The studio is always open Fridays, no classes ever scheduled for it, and it will be air conditioned through the summer.

I also mentioned my long-ago idea of sketching various rehearsals of dancers, actors, singers at Santa Fe and Diane is enthused. I'll bring it up to the others this week. And talk to Alora, again. There's also the community theatre and various dance places around town...

Tomorrow the world, eh?

Class remains very frustrating. I am resolved, though, to slow down, sketch out the pose more carefully, underpaint with umber and then stop the first night. The umber will dry (enough at least) not to muddy the colors the next night. I can spend the rest of the first night mixing colors. I can even have a test panel to play with.

I need to work on some stuff tonight and tomorrow to take in Monday morning for call for entries. I'll also have a cuff or two, the fold formed sterling things.

There are four (maybe more) tomatos on the one plant. They're little and green and have a bunch of growing to do but they're mine all mine.

Had midterm on Wednesday with Dan. Our model didn't show up, and that was annoying. I'm so behind on homework but he's not tres concerned about that. And there's still two weeks to go in term. I could easily get it finished. I just need to settle in and do it.

Back to midterm. The same thing happened Spring term. Sort of. Then I actually looked through my drawing pad more. But looking through with Dan I was struck by how good my line drawings are (and conversely how putrid my charcoal/tonal things are).

So I am resolved. I'm going to be a bit of a rebel. I'm going to slow down. I'm going to stop trying to please him as much. I might throw out the damned vine charcoal. That stuff is just annoying. Okay, maybe I'll do a bit of a gesture with it, just to make sure I like my drawing placement. Then I'm going straight to the hard, yeah, you heard me, the hard charcoal pencil and I will do a decent sketch of the figure. I will not dither around on it, then again, I will not jump in to doing the toning right off. I will not block in the shadows so quickly. And when I have a decent sketch, I will start blocking in shadows, but I will not lose my underdrawing to it. I don't know how I'm going to do this. I wonder about using the powdered charcoal, trying to do something with that.

Trouble is, he wants us to block in the shadow mass all at once and then pull off the extra charcoal, lighten areas as needed. But making the shadow mass a single value to start with obliterates the underlying sketch and I will not get it back. And then I struggle to get the shadow values separated. The darkest dark is, most likely, going to be on the body, the cast shadow behind is going to be lighter, at least a nine to the body's ten. I'm thinking of bringing the shadow to the underdrawing's outline, using hatching, and then rubbing the hell out of it.

Have a number of different papers, some white Rives, but also some colored, as well as some Canson mi-teinte. And another gessobord. I'm going to ask if I can do my self portrait on the gessobord. I'm thinking of throwing in my first experiments with color, some gouache, or pastel, or watercolor. Can't hurt to ask.

Have started some manure tea. Yum. Also planted, finally, the last tomato plant and the eggplant. I have one little white turmeric. The other bits of rhizome did not sprout anything. We've had little bits of rain chez moi but not enough to keep the plants going, the water-loving ones anyone. I've had to water the basils and mints a couple times.

I'm going to attempt successive plantings of lettuce seeds and hope to harvest enough for the occasional small salad once in a while. Black seeded simpson is supposed to be especially successful for Florida, even further south than Gainesville.