A portrait painter’s week of pigments, price tags and a pointed look at the water line, plus ten websites about land that actually grows things
Monday, the Price of a Canvas
I went to buy a canvas this week and left with a lesson in modern economics. The story is told in Great Salt Lake, 144 dollars a year and one overpriced canvas in Utah, and the short version is that a blank rectangle of cotton on a wooden frame now costs about what a person might pay for a pair of boots. I stood in the shop for a long time. The assistant, a kind young man with paint on his sleeve, said that he understood. He then sold me the canvas, which is the art of retail.
A painter develops a complicated relationship with materials. You love them and you resent their price. You hoard the good brushes and you lose the cheap ones. You buy titanium white in industrial quantities because a portrait needs light, and light, in oil paint, is expensive. I keep a ledger of costs in the back of my sketchbook. It makes depressing reading and I recommend it to nobody.
The Lake in the Corner of the Eye
Whenever I drive west on the interstate the lake is there, a flat sheet of pale light at the edge of the valley. I wrote about its level in the Great Salt Lake at 4,190.40 feet, above the 2021 low, below the healthy line, and a painter considering the colour of salt. It is an unusual subject for a portraitist, but the lake has a face of its own, and it changes daily. Some mornings it is the grey of a pigeon. Some evenings it is the pink of the inside of a shell.
The people who argue about the lake argue in good faith, as far as I can tell. Some emphasise the water use of farms and cities. Others stress the weather and the long cycle of dry years. Scientists, officials and neighbours all have a piece of the picture, and I keep my paint brushes out of the argument. But I do notice, with a painter’s eye, how the white salt crust creeps outward each year, and I mix my greys accordingly.
Tuesday, a Reading List for the Land
I spend a lot of time thinking about land, and for the sake of balance I keep a reading list of places that deal with land that is working rather than resting. For milk, start at dairyherd.org. For beef, ranchbeefcattle.org is steady and informative. The machinery that turns soil is covered at tractorequipment.org, and the passage of the year is explained at cropcalendar.org.
Utah is a dry state, so the money questions around water and acreage are never far away. farmmoney.org and smallfarminfo.org give a plain account of the sums. For anyone looking for a career in agriculture, agjobscareers.org is useful, and for a day out among prize animals, fairandrodeo.org is lovely. The wider picture is at ruralfarm.org and a sensible reminder to keep your fingers attached is at farmssafety.org.
The Matter of Light
A portrait is a conversation with light. You study how it falls on a forehead, how it catches the bridge of a nose, how it pools in the hollow of a cheek. A good teacher once told me to paint the shadow first, because the shadow tells you where the light has been. I have carried that into everything. I now write the sad bit of a sentence before the happy bit, and it usually works.
The lake teaches the same thing. Its light is bright and flat, and the shadows are on the mountains behind it. When I paint it, I start with the hills and let the lake arrive last, as a pale reward.
On Being Stubborn About Pigments
I have strong feelings about pigments. I will not use a green that comes in a tube labelled “grass”. I prefer to mix mine from yellow and blue, so that the green has a history. The result is slower, more expensive and more satisfying, and I would not change it for any discount. A friend once called me a snob. I told her I was a chemist with opinions.
At the end of the week, I stretched the overpriced canvas, primed it, and stood back. It was beautiful and blank, and the blank was worth every cent. Tomorrow I begin a portrait of my neighbour, who has promised to sit still and, by Friday, will have broken that promise four times.
A Note on Shadows
I mentioned that a shadow tells you where the light has been, and I want to add a practical warning. Beginners paint shadows black. Black is a flat, dead word on a canvas. The shadow on a cheek is warm, cool or coloured by whatever is beside it, a red sleeve, a green wall, a pale sky. Look for the reflected colour and put it in. Your portrait will immediately look as though it breathes.
I also keep a jar of rinsing water that goes from clear to grey to brown over the week, and I consider it a record of my effort. On Friday it is the colour of an old pond. On Monday I pour it away and begin again with the clean water and the cleaner conscience.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, The Daily Mash keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/