The cherry tree behind Starbucks in the park, late in the day

Showing a work in progress is a little like showing one’s underwear. Not a thing I do very often. But today was fun. I moved the rock today, and put the beginning of three kids behind the hedge, where they like to hide. The main event, the blossoms on the cherry tree are yet to appear.

I guarantee the finished painting, if it is ever finished, will not look like it does now.

My Eggs

An egg tree is my only concession to Easter this year. I may relent and boil and paint an egg for my youngest. He likes to eat them. He does not like chocolate so no Easter bunny for him.

My sister Jenny paints very pretty eggs. Mine aren't. I find I am not a decorative painter, to my economic deficit. This year I painted a fish egg, a dragon head, and a black ship, the sort sent by Millard Fillmore to force the opening of Japan.

The Japanese gobbled up Christmas and Halloween but have left Easter alone. I don't blame them. They have the cherry blossoms. It is the finest sort of spring celebration. That and the vernal equinox visit to the family graves. Enough.

My Easter Egg Tree

Years ago my Canadian friend Andy and his family were visiting. I was making pancakes for breakfast. It was and is my habit to blow eggs that are going to be scrambled up anyway so I can save the egg shells to decorate the egg tree. Andy came into the kitchen just as I was blowing out the egg. Bloop into the bowl. His eyes wide he asked me, “What the hell did you just do?”

Andy’s family did not have the habit of decorating an egg tree. I think my mother picked up the idea from a children’s book from eastern Europe. At least one of my sisters and I keep it up. Jenny’s eggs are far prettier than mine, more in the Easter egg style. And she putts a pretty colored button on the end of the thread to hold it in place as my mother had.

I developed a method of securing the string with half a toothpick and a drop of glue. I find it easier and more secure. It will even hold an egg that has been dropped and no longer has a bottom half.

Under it all

I wondered how many people know what is under their painting. The easiest and most popular ground for oil painting is ready made from acrylic paint. It is easy but I don’t like the look or the feel. My gesso recipe has been used since before the Renaissance. Hide glue and chalk. I add iron red for color.

I learned it from a Japanese egg tempera painter in New York who now works with software and images on line. Thanks Kenji.

Brushing on the gesso

new painting

I have been reading art students’ motivational letters - What they are trying to do and why, in hopes of their being accepted by art schools in other countries for study abroad.

I started wondering, What am I doing? Why?

After some reflection I decided that I don’t know. It surprised me to realize that my new paintings are all of local shops and restaurants all endangered by the pandemic. I thought I was painting them because I liked the night time light. But there may be more to it.

Today’s work in progress

I will add it is impossibly hard to correctly photograph these new ones, half dry, with the strange and different sorts of reflections on the surface.

A very new ink stone

It was a present. I just realized what it is. Of course it is an ink stone, an ancient technology for making ink from a solid dry stick of perfectly preserved ink, ground on this stone to be ready for the brush. But is also something else. It is 3D printing! A 3D printer carved ink stone. Wow. Old meets new, I’m guessing from China.