Dionysos is finished

Here is the last picture in this blog. Click on this image to enlarge it, or to see it full size come to  the Open Studio that will be taking place  at 315 W. 39th St. Studio 810 on May 9-10-11 from noon to 7 PM.

Ephraim Rubenstein has provided two last indispensable consultations on the many changes in the landscape that bring it together. Marissa, a model Ephraim knows from the League, helped me to finish the blonde and brunette heads and the hand that extends from the right-hand dancer of the whirling couple. That hand has been a problem from the beginning, since it was drawn from a model standing still. Marissa obligingly whirled arm-in arm with me until we could figure out what gesture that movement imparts to the outboard hand.

The head of the cymbalist is finally shaded by a bower of grape leaves whose light I got from an old painting of my daughter Jessica sitting in a grape arbor (see post for Feb. 5, 2011 #3A)

There are only two faces whose expressions are fully visible — the first dancer on the left and the god. They are at the beginning and end of the arcs of  movement in the piece. A full face anywhere else would arrest your eye, and I want you to keep moving around in this dance.

But speaking of the face of the god, I am learning about that from an interesting book, Masks of Dionysus edited by C. H. Carpenter and C. A. Faraone. This was a god unlike any other in the classical world. He was sometimes painted full-face on Greek pottery – a large head engaging the viewer, whereas other faces were painted in profile. This was consistent with his way of appearing as a man and dancing with his devotees, a very un-Olympian kind of manifestation. And in the ritual of drama, of which he was the original patron deity, the masks of the actors are the means by which they become personally present as characters to the audience.

There is debate about how much sex was involved in the cult as originally practiced — especially since the rites for men and for women were generally separate. But drinking wine in remembrance of his gift of it to mankind was part of the cult, and in many other ways — incarnation,  sacrifice and resurrection for example —  he is a kind of prototype for the personal relationship to divinity that we have come to seek in later millennia.

Better Rocks

Working on this watercolor study (see February 10) I started to play with shapes for the rock pile in the foreground, and came upon the solution shown here. The tilt has some of the energy I remember from Colorado boulder fields – or even some of the deposits in Central Park. Shadowing the front part with dappled shade makes it less prominent, more pointing towards the center. Then if I tip the rock behind Dionysos a little, there is more of a channel of movement flowing up from the ground. And there will be an opportunity to make those tree branches in the upper right raised in a gesture that is seen against the sky like the upraised arms of the dancers.

This begins to feel like a solution to the problems described in the previous post. I’ll wait a while for comments and then start to carry this design through in the oil painting.

More color

The painting is almost ready for final attention to finish — faces, details — places where the eye will linger. But before I get to that, it needs something — maybe reorganization of its color. It’s too red-green, with just a little blue-orange (the blue sky and burnt sienna of the skin shadows of the central pair help a lot). I remember looking at the Matisse Bonheur de la Vie (see post of 4/15/12)  and thinking what a difference the purple-yellow axis made in enlivening the whole composition. I know this is an odd way to think about composition, but just to test it out (and to resolve some other questions I have), I’m going to make a new watercolor study of the painting, bringing in more purple and yellow. Here’s the state of the oil painting now:

And here is the 20″X13″ watercolor study, introducing distant purple mountains and near yellow rocks (with purple shadows).

I see this as an opportunity to (1) open up more blue sky behind the god and in the branches of the tree behind him, (2) get the top of his body into the sun, (3) move that wild grape vine into its own place behind the cymbalist so that it’s more of an element, a nimbus behind her, less of a  distraction-pattern. Now I can see that the line of rocks can come down through the field and in the foreground echo the forms of the prone dancers. This pulls the  foreground together into a line of undulating masses, and from the horizon to these foreground rocks you begin to believe that this dancing is taking place in the mountains. The ecstasy of mountain dancing was an idea associated with the god’s cult from earliest times. And looking at the composition now, I like the way the line leading from the cracks in the foreground rock runs up in a twisting path to the drum — another echo of dance. I’ve also got the cymbalist calling out and given the god some flying dredlocks. I can see that the front rocks are not quite right yet. I may have to go back to the oil painting and play with some paper outlines. But in general, what do you think of these changes?

A Consultation

Every few months I get a consultation from Ephraim Rubenstein, This most recent one was especially interesting because it dealt with the things I have a hard time seeing for myself.  I get attached to vanities of the painting process without being aware of it. Ephraim, quoting Bobby Fischer, reminds me to “look at the whole board.”

Here is the state Ephraim and I were looking at a week ago. Out of curiosity I had added chalk lines tracing the main verticals and the arcs of some of the sides and diagonals of the squares. Double click on this thumbnail to see it full size.

The notes i made on our consultation suggested the following changes:

1. Get rid of the blue leaf shadows on that upright thigh of the lower left figure and paint it as against the light but not leaf-shadowed. It’s too much a focal point to leave in the shade.
2. Changes to the figure with the flute: (a) put the head more in the dark so it doesn’t “pop” so much (b) darken the leaves in the foreground around the head so they are more of a screen and less of a helmet/headgear for the figure (c) do away with the seductive but distracting  light between her knees. I was besotten with this effect in the photograph and had to be persuaded to give it up. Now she is a good transitional figure between foreground and middle, an exemplar of both exhaustion out of breath and music, and you don’t get stuck looking at her.
3. Much repainting of the figure on the lower right.  Mainly, the leaf shadows on her chest look less like tattoos.
4 Changes in all the darks and lights of the grass/vegetation so that the composition is simplified and reinforced.
5. Most exciting and successful, I think, putting blue shy behind the branches and the drum so that it stands out. Lots more work to do on the god.
6. Finally, following Eph’s suggestion I will sharpen the colorful detail of the feet of the central hailing figure so that they work together with the foot of the lower left figure to form a chain of feet and toes going up the arc. “How beautiful are the feet”  is a detail worth developing rather than a distraction to be eliminated.

Here’s the result a week later.

Rubens in the Garden of Eden

As the winter solstice approaches, I am working away at Dionysos, hoping to have a state worth posting soon. Meanwhile, take a look at this painting by Rubens in the Mauritshuis – actually Rubens did the figures of Adam and Eve and the landscape, and then invited Breugel the elder to put in all the animals . I think this is the closest approach in Rubens’ work to the problem of figures in a forest clearing. What caught my eye first was the composition: it’s a square root of two rectangle. If you locate the edges of the two squares, one frames exactly the figures of Adam and Eve, running just past the edge of Eve’s long hair. The other runs exactly down the center of the group of trees on the right. These two uprights reinforce the great diagonals of the scene.

I also notice the contribution of color to the management of space.The dark foliage in the foreground has a lot of red in it. The foreground figures are shadowed by overhead branches, which adds to the sense of location in space, and the animals and trees in the central distant clearing are lighter and bluer. It helps to jeep a postcard of this example on my bulletin board as I get closer to the end.

November Show Postponed to Spring

In the September post I mentioned a November show. It seems wise for many reasons to slow down and prepare for a better collection and a more finished Dionysos in the spring.

A day in the sun

At the end of the summer I was able to get together a day of sun, a tree-shaded space, a good model and my friend the photographer Betsy Crowell, all indispensable to the outcome. Tania, a model recommended by the Washington, CT Arts Assn, was the perfect partner in this day-long undertaking, and we recreated the poses of the seven main figures in the apple orchard near the house where Betsy and Kathy McQuarrie live in Middlebury, CT. Betsy made photos and I made  color notes on six canvas boards prepared from the painting. Then I brought all the materials together in the studio to turn the boards into these rough color studies for the next development of the figures. I have

developed the figures at the expense of  attention to the vegetation, with the result that the darks and lights of the background are oversimplified — in general, too dark, and as I transfer these new sunlit and shaded bodies into place I will have to tune up the subtlety of the background at the same time, in order to be able to read the color of the figures.   To do this well, will take more time than there is between now and a November show, so Dionysos will be unfinished work in progress when you all get an invitation to visit.

Places, everybody!

Here we are at the beginning of June, with only one day of sunshine in the park to work with a new model, Colleen (Rainbow got a full-time day job). Still, with the help of some studio photos, it’s been possible to get all the figures in place, and make some guesses about color, before Colleen went home for the summer.

Colleen is a blonde, which adds variety, and with her help several changes led to the state above.

1. The central pair moved again so that they are now even more part of the arc that leads from the lower left up to the god’s drum. I started that move in the Match 27 post (“Underpainting”) and this finally looks right to me. Comparison with that picture will give an idea of these changes.

2. Thanks to Colleen, the cymbalist has a new energy in her stance. I moved the sitting figure in that group to the right to make them more of a solid triangle, and darkened all the foliage to make its pattern less distracting.

3. At the suggestion of classicist friends, the figure leaning against the tree is holding an aulos, a double flute, which she is too winded to keep playing.

4. The god’s face is brighter against a white cloud in the background, for which I eliminated some of the trees at the far end of the field..

Color and Composition

The next task is to use the color opportunities of sun and shade to contrast blues and reds with all the yellow and green vegetation. At the same time I want to support the composition by shading some parts and lighting others.

Parts of figures in shade have blue and green shadows to take them down into the leafy background, and parts in full sun have not only their own bright skin color but also pick up red reflections bouncing off adjacent parts. Rubens knew this — look at this enlarged version of Ixion.  Notice that the “real” Hera on the right has a pink reflection on her bottom picked up from the sunlit knees of the hallucinated Hera on the left. That left figure has blue shadows defining her shoulder in the shade, and, if you look closely, there is a slim pink reflection on the blue-ish shadow side of her left thigh. That’s how you believe in the sunlight.  I’m sure Rubens was thinking about this because it is rehearsed in a smaller study hanging next to the big painting in the Louvre.

Here are some experiments I’m trying with this kind of sun- and shade-color.Here is Dionysos with some reflection from his shoulders.

The cymbalist has red from her shoulder and green from the field. (click on this and the next for a closer look)

And the central pair is in full sunlight that contrasts some of the warm tones with the highlights, and plays red reflections on fingers and thighs. We’ll see if these conjectures from photos are borne out by another model in the field this summer.

In a Green Shade

My friend the photographer Betsy Crowell came to the studio and took this picture just after I had finished working over the vegetation, darkening most of the green shadows with red. They were certainly too emerald-blue-green before. Betsy called my attention to the Matisse “Le Bonheur de Vivre” at the exhibit of “The Steins Collect” now at the Met.  Yesterday Margaret and I went to see the show and I brought home a postcard of the Matisse.

There is a striking convergence with my organization of figures and terrain. It’s uncanny that Matisse has a group of dancers in a distant field seen through the trees, darker recumbent figures in the foreground, and the two brightly lit women lying together in the center, facing in opposite directions. I don’t remember seeing it before, but who knows? What a great dance of color —   It reminds me that with all this green and yellow in  my painting,  it will need some red and purple.

Underpainting

#21

Above is the state of the underpainting in December, and below is where it is at the beginning of April. I’ve added a description of the changes, with some of the rationale.

#22

Living with it in the studio for a couple of months, every few days something needed to be changed.

The central pair: I moved these two what (in the “real” space on the ground) would be about a foot to the right and a foot closer to the front. This makes them part of an arc that swings from the lower left corner right up to the drum. The supine figure is resting her hand on the other’s thigh, and her left elbow points up to balance her partner’s right elbow pointing down, so that the assembly of the two is a kind of spiral dance, part of the energy that goes out the top of the painting into the sky. I moved the thyrsos staff of the seated figure so that it’s parallel to the arc, and took away the little tree that was behind it. Much will depend on getting the sunlight right on these two.

Music. Several visitors asked, “where’s the music?” I realized that the figure standing on the far right isn’t adding much, so I gave her a pair of classical Greek bronze cymbals that join the god’s drum and also follow the arc of the trees on the right.

Vegetation. My aim here is to establish three spaces. Furthest out is the sunny open field with the upright dancing figures. It’s bounded by the shadow of trees on the right that darkens the figure of the god. Then there’s the pool of sunlight in which the central pair is lying. Then there’s the dark, dappled wood where the other figures are ending the frenzy. I establish that with some branches on either side in front of the picture plane, so that we’re standing deeper in the wood  looking through (like Pentheus, a hidden spectator in the Bacchae?). Anyway, I’ve darkened the branches and the grape vine in the upper corners so they are less distracting (one of Ephraim’s many suggestions), made the ferns darker and deeper,  and put the foreground figures more in the shade. It may have to be deeper still.

Next steps. I need to bring a model in again and check and correct all these anatomical and perspective changes — then prepare the canvas boards for a trip to the park to get the color right. May or June ? I hope so.