Nos. 417 & 418: Seeing Double

Can you tell the difference?

These two gave me double vision!

Subtly different frames.

In a very sweet gesture, a stepmom hired me to draw her husband’s two daughters with their mom, who is deceased. She wanted the girls to know that she accepts and understands their mother will always be “mom.” For her part, she wanted the girls to get equal treatment for Christmas: Two identical drawings, done at the same time, in similar frames.

Double vision!

I thought about doing one, and then the other.  But I decided it would be more efficient, and more accurate, to do them both simultaneously. So I set up the papers and pencils on separate drawing boards and got started, doing the eyes and hairlines first — as usual.

Labeled, like identical twins.

Photos would be sent back and forth to the customer, with Post-It notes attached so that we could tell the drawings apart.

No. 418

No. 417

Soon I was shading in cheekbones and eyebrows, and other facial details. I’d move from desk to desk, cheek to cheek, nose to nose.

Photo I was given to work from.

After a couple of weeks they were finished — not identical, but as close to that as possible.  No two drawings are ever alike!

Fitting the frame.

The drawings are numbered and labeled separately, and the frames though similar are also slightly different to help tell them apart.

Details emerging.

These had been under wraps since August but were finally unwrapped at Christmas.

All three ladies look very nice.  And this was such a nice gesture, a wonderful idea. I was glad to make it happen.

No. 429, Hot 'n' Cool

Dig, if you will, kiddos. It's 1959 or '60. You are in a dark, smoke-choked and crowded room. The drinks are watered down. But you're watching titans blow each other, and those around you, away. John Coltrane and Miles Davis. 

Hot 'n' Cool by Tom Wills, watercolor, December 2018.

Originally No. 429 was going to be called “Birth of the Cool.” I liked the sound of it and, I thought, the history behind it.

Miles

But it turns out that this painting does not actually document the “Birth of the Cool.”  That was Miles Davis’ thing, much earlier in 1949-50, and the title of a famous compilation album of those post-bebop “cool jazz” performances released in 1957.

'Trane

“I first met Miles Davis about 1947 and played a few jobs with him and Sonny Rollins at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. During this period, he was coming into his own, and I could see him extending the boundaries of jazz even further.” — John Coltrane

Making the sax look brassy.

A better title is really “Hot 'n' Cool,” Because that’s what Miles Davis and John Coltrane were in their nearly five years together, off and on (1955-1960). Their final tour was documented in a set of albums just this year,  Miles' melodies and Coltrane’s frenzied workouts. And from the studio over those years emerged the great albums “‘Round About Midnight,” “Milestones,” “Jazz at the Plaza,” “Someday My Prince Will Come,” “Kind of Blue” and more.

Still, theirs was not an easy relationship.

After a few basic washes of watercolor

“Sheets of sound. Well, that was when I got tired of certain modulations. Like when you want to get back to C, and you've got to go to D and then G and then C. I was fooling around with the piano, and I figured out some other way to do it.” — Coltrane

Some definition begins.

"Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth." - Davis, questioning the increasing length of Coltrane’s solos.

Some shadowing.

The photo from which this painting is based was apparently taken on that final tour, or at least it was used by various publications in conjunction with reviewing or promoting those albums. You can see and sense Coltrane in shades drifting off into his own world, with an exasperated Davis trying to keep things grounded. Coltrane looms as a giant over Davis, just by their body positioning.

Cheekbones and hands begin.

The basics of this painting came fast over seven hours on a Sunday, Dec. 9. I woke up early and sketched it out, made some color notes and started splashing watercolors. I used only shades of browns, golds, yellows, orange and black, adding water and white as I went.  The idea was to create a more free image, less intent on details and precision and more interested in the feel of it.  It took me four days.

Adding some yellow to the sax.

First came the black of the shades, hair and horns. The faces and the sax got a wash of orange, then browns and tan, and yellow. I roughed in those brown suits but really the light made Coltrane’s look more purple-black. So I added purple to the slurry of shades I’d created.

"slurry"

I listened to their music together, and then apart, as the paints dried and more layers came:  stage curtain, shadows, clothing creases, the suggestion of blurred hands moving rapidly over the valves and keys. I would paint, blot, dab, wipe, and paint again to create depth.

Highlighting their expressions.

Adding white and extra black to the faces brought out their expressions. More white brought out the shine of the horns, the crispness of the men’s collars and sleeves.

Though I wanted that sax to “pop” from the image, that white was just too bright. So I used a really vivid shade of yellow to wash over the horns, then dabbed most of it off to create the look of brass.

Horns before final detailing in black and brown.

Lastly I did clean up some extra-rough edges and better define the folds of the stage curtain. But I resisted the urge to really tighten the lines and make them clean. I really wanted to try something new here, an improvisation if you will.

Curtains...

These jazz masters were all about pushing boundaries and making new things happen. I’m hoping to really get to that in 2019.
Happy New Year, all.

Preparing to frame.

This framed, sealed and signed original watercolor is for sale. The price is $230. You may inquire about it at willstom01@gmail.com

The Frame as Art

Restored frame, dates from late 1800s-early 1900s.

There are some occasions where the frame is as much a work of art as the painting or illustration it holds.
Nowadays there is a lot of plastic in frames, they’re too shiny and lightweight. I like old things, and I love old frames, and I have been known to tinker with and restore both.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, heavy and handcrafted “gilt gesso” frames were very popular. A very thin coating of gold was applied to wood or porcelain. Gilding gave the impression of richness at a fraction of the cost.

As it came home, crud and all, missing pieces.

This frame certainly did not look rich when I brought it home. It came from a yard sale, sat in a barn for a couple of years, and then remained unsold at yet another yard sale. It then spent time in the elements out on a porch.
All of the tacks holding it together had rusted through. Pieces of decorative gilt had fallen off, crumbled or gotten loose.  Many chunks were missing.

Washing it made even more chunks fall off.

But the frame was flat, the edges were intact and the glass was intact. I could see that it could be beautiful again.
It wasn’t easy, and it took a long time.

I decided to scrape off all of the trim and save the good pieces.

First I used dish soap and a bucket of water to loosen and wash away the dirt and cobwebs. After a while I could see the remaining gold overlay and the finished wood, which still looked decent, amazingly.
More and more pieces fell off, though.  So many that I wound up taking a kitchen knife and prying them all off, collecting the puzzle-like pieces in a baggie.

Turned these pieces on their side and glued them on.

A little research and a few hunches lead me to believe this frame is from 1880.
The frame is actually three frames that fit together — outer, middle and inner. I turned it over and glued them all back together.

Back view: The frames within the frame.

 

Glue and pieces.

Meanwhile, I let the pieces dry out for a few days and then set about trying to salvage the trim. The problem was that there were simply not enough pieces to go around the outer and inner parts of the frame.

The modeling clay, which turned out to be the wrong kind. Ugh!

For the outer frame, I turned the little “apostrophe” pieces on their side, figuring this would elongate them and fill out the space.  But I still ran short, so used modeling clay to craft replacements for the missing parts.  I heavily glued them onto the wood.

Molding pieces and gluing a pattern together.

For the inner frame, there was just too much damage.  The original trim could never be replicated from my baggie full of crumbled plaster. My solution was to save the biggest, most intact pieces and space them out evenly in some semblance of a pattern.  This worked to a point but there was still too much dead space between the pieces. It looked like macaroni glued to a paper plate!

Glue and filler.

I wound up using glass bits from Dollar General to fill in between the chunks. I sprinkled them onto a bed of glue, and once that dried, used a paint brush to spread more glue over the entire inner frame to hold it together.
Elmer’s All-Purpose glue and GE silicone caulk got a real workout here, and the frame is super solid now.
 

Ready to fill in.

 

I decided to use a hammered copper spray paint to coat the outer and inner frame, and masked off the middle wood to keep it as original as possible.  The copper paint coated and filled in the glued-on pieces -- 10 coats!-- and camouflaged the homemade bits, and by design pulled together the inner and outer frames.

Glass pieces along the inner rim.

But there was a problem: The paint would not dry on the modeling clay. It stayed sticky and even pulled off! Potential disaster. But I brushed Elmer's glue over the tacky spots, let that dry and painted the copper over them again -- this time, with a small brush. That did the trick. 

More glue brushed on, to hold everything tight.

Next disaster: The masking tape pulled off some of the old wood stain, making the exposed wood look really beat up.  So I carefully brushed on some new, dark acrylic paint (brown-black-sienna) and then wiped it in and off. Looks much better.

Masked and sprayed.

Even the glass was problematic.  It’s an old, heavy glass — definitely lead oxide glass. It's wavy and full of bubbles. And nothing would cut through all of the filth, including lethal concoctions of heavy chemistry (xylene, goo-gone, Dawn, alcohol etc.). I thought of replacing it, but using a cheap, modern thin glass pane just seemed wrong.

The wood before brushing on new stain.

Finally a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser allowed for noticeable improvement after five go-arounds. It's not perfect, it's antiqued!
Getting the glass back in was tight and required a little whittling.

Waiting for it to dry!

This was a great project, though difficult and time-consuming, and I am very excited about the results.

Applying a wash of the acrylic paint.

The rubdown!

This frame is designed to match perfectly a piece that is already completed — another frankly mind-blowing project for me (perhaps my most complex to date) that I will reveal after Christmas.
Stay tuned.