“The Interrupted Tea Party” – the mark of a beginning

Yesterday I began a very fun small painting I call The Interrupted Tea Party. Last year my friend N. was visiting me and I asked him to make a line or two on an empty canvas for me. Sometimes I like people I meet start my canvases. It is a certain game for me to continue working with marks made by my friends on my canvases. There is a pun somewhere about humans leaving their marks in this world.

Quick sketch was drawn around the two color lines my friend N. put on the canvas.

My friend N. put one red and one blue lines. Then I drew some rough sketch and the painting or, I should say the canvas, stood lonely in the corner of my closet until a few days ago when I got into the painting my large and small paintings. I took it out and placed it on my easel. I looked at the lines I drew then and saw something fun happening there. So now that I am done with The Blue Angst and The Hooker’s Green Hue Dog I found myself staring at the canvas with that rough sketch.

The canvas is out of the closet ready to be worked on.

I didn’t know I was a big fan of cubism until I started drawing those lines and forms on the canvas. These forms I drew were becoming faces of characters inside of other faces on the canvas.

Most of the future characters are sketched around the two lines. I started adding some paint on the canvas.

I know that probably not so many see what I see in these lines at this stage of the work, but these lines and characters appearing on the canvas make me smile. I see these unexpected figures like a chicken and a kissing couple, a smile that comes out and away from the lower lip of a character on the bottom of the canvas. My eyes are having fun, fun, fun!

I can see now why Picasso and other cubists enjoyed this so much. It is also quite fun to see how from the “free flow” of The Blue Angst through The Hooker’s Green Hue Dog, The Interrupted Tea Party becomes a very structured painting. The free flow brush strokes (that’s how I call my fast brush swirls) are going to make appearances on this canvas too, but the majority of the painting is turning out to be a very geometric piece. I love it and cannot wait to see how this red I am planning on using is going to work on it.

Some sketch lines disappear giving a clearer definition for the characters on the canvas.

There is one blue line N. drew on the canvas. I don’t know yet if I am going to use this blue or if I am going to use some other color. Most likely this blue since it was put by N. I was debating if I should use some green as well considering that N. is Mexican American, but that might be too much and too obvious of a decision considering the colors of the Mexican flag, but you never know, some unexpected green might happen somewhere in this work.

The hooker’s green hue is kind of calling to be on the canvas, so after I am done with this painting I am going to put some finishing touches on The Hooker’s Green Hue Dog and sign The Blue Angst, because that one is definitely finished. It just needs my signature. Now that I got eight new canvases yesterday, (can you imagine that?!) I can put my attention towards the whole series and just create.

Originally written on 10-17-17