‘Joanne’ painting 35×21 inches on tinted paper

Today I completed this (little bit scary) portrait of my Mom (Joanne) painting in white and black Golden Liquid Acrylics over paper tinted blue-gray using dilute sumi and prussian blue applied to the paper by wiping with a sponge.

'Joanne' 2009, 35x21 inches, acrylic on tinted paper

This and the previous painting of ‘Lee’ completed a few days ago are experiments in the sort of light and dark over mid-value drawings which were popular in Europe 400 years ago.  I’ve selected two examples from the Goldman Collection of Italian drawings.  I was lucky to see the exhibition of this wonderful collection at the Chicago Art Institute last year — you can obtain the FABULOUS catalog of the collection from Amazon.com well worth the $47 price!

from the Goldman Collection: Ludovico Cardi (Rome, 1559-1613) c. 1610, about 17x11 inches, black chalk with brush and pale brown wash heightened with lead-white gouache on blue paper

from the Goldman Collection: Guido Reni (Bologna, 1575-1642) "Andromeda (?)" c. 1640, about 8x6 inches, pen and brown ink heightened with brush and white gouache on blue paper.

My approach is very similar to the tack I took with my “Jim” lithograph — overlapping layers of line to communicate the value gradations of the image, but the paint makes these much more tactile — the paint builds a very heavy impasto as it overlaps and makes an interesting if somewhat bumpy surface — I LIKE these!