gecko

gila monster

Sketched from a specimen on display at the visitor center for the national park.

tuatara

a kind of lizard from New Zealand
seen on tv

lizardlike

sketches from a tv program about prehistoric beasts, early lizards that predated the dinosaurs

gecko

Bell Jar Lizard 5

Finished!


Here's the head so you can see all his nice little nasty teeth.

Bell Jar Lizard 4

The mountains were inspired by photos I took of the Badlands in North Dakota.

Bell Jar Lizard 3

More work on the Bell Jar Lizard.

Bell Jar Lizard 2

Last night after everyone was asleep, I pulled out my easel again, cracked open boxes of new art supplies, and got silly giddy happy over painting once more. I didn't even linger over the new materials, but just dived right in. Trying out new papers, this first one a Fabriano Ingres, Italian made. Also a packet of finger cots, rubber-glove tiny pieces that just cover your fingertips. Only I found I'd ordered a size too small, so they were cutting off my circulation. Not good. I snipped the rolled edges off with scissors and just stuck the remaining short film over the three fingers I use the most. It got soiled fast, but kept my fingers cleaner than usual. I just can't keep them out of my work! I've bought chamois, stumps and tortillons before, but they end up sitting forgotten while my fingers do all the rubbing, smudging and blending. I did pick up a new pastel brush, but all it did was remove pigment from the paper, not blend it. Maybe it will be better for later layers. I set it aside again.

I'm probably going to get ill someday from being so literally hands-on in my painting process. There was a story passed around in art school that an instructor of mine had a small wound on his thumb that never healed for seven years, because he always got oil paint on it. I was horrified by the idea! Hopefully these finger cots will postpone some of the possibility of contamination for me. They certainly let me work the whole hour at a strech without running to the sink every ten minutes to wash the dust off my hands.

I remembered this time to pad underneath my paper, so that the pastel strokes would go on smooth and soft. It's fortunate that I had ordered some interleaving paper too. I replaced all the tracing paper sheets that were separating my paintings in flat storage with interleaving, then put all the dirty tracing sheets under my new paper for padding. It worked great, and I got one more use out of those old tracing sheets. I never liked using clean papers meant for new drawings or paintings for padding, even if they're not going to get smudged. I'd rather use something I know I don't care much about, so this was perfect.

So here's a few hours' work into the Bell Jar Lizard, starting again. I tried to be more true to the sketch this time, but already see some things that need adjusting. The bell jar flares too much at the bottom, has too much of an hourglass shape. In the oil study it was too straight, but now it's too curved. I'll correct that next session.

To see the sketches and previous work on the Bell Jar Lizard, go here.

Bell Jar Lizard

This new painting I'm working on came into thought a long time ago. Here is one of several small drawings from an old sketchbook.


More details added a year later.


And two more I did yesterday, working out exactly how I wanted it to look.





At first it was just a commentary on the feeling of those times when whatever you do only seems make your own situation worse: you know, the kind of "open mouth insert foot" incidents, or ones of more serious nature refered to as "digging your own grave". Thus the lizard is being strangled by his own tail. But then something compelled me to add the bell jar, a suffocation from things beyond your control. I suppose this painting reflects the ultimate helpless feeling.



It was only later, an hour into painting the rough that I realized this also ties in nicely to Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar.

My two-year-old saw the last sketch. She said "open! open, let him out!" She knew exactly what was going on with that poor lizard, he was trapped. I flipped back to the earlier sketch where it's not so obvious to her that he's enclosed and she looked relieved: "he out!" But then she pointed to the last drawing again: "now open dis one!" It made me laugh! Not too much, though, because she was fairly concerned at the lizard's predicament.

For the moment, I am working in oils again. This is a smaller painting (for me), being only 12 x 16". It feels quite different to have the pervasive smell of oil paint and linseed in our small rooms instead of constantly sneezing pastel dust! I really ought to open some windows, but the weather has taken a sudden plunge into winter's cold.

See the next stage here.

Reptile Studies

In preparation for my next painting, which is simmering inside my head, I have been going through old sketchbooks studying drawings that I did of lizards and similar creatures, and making new ones as well. Here are a few that I will be using as reference for the painting.



Reference being a very loose term. They will be sources for gesture, structure and textures, not copied directly into the painting.



All of these drawings were done from life. The first three were drawn with ink pens, at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.