Life Painting: Albee

After three days away from my garage/studio, I’m eager to return to my Thursday life painting class at the Hawthorn Arts Center. I’ve been to Bunnings again and have a new transportation box and scraper, so I’m hoping for a smoother journey to and from class, and a better painting as a result.

A yoga teacher and dancer, Albee wears a pale blue, very well-ironed shirt, careful and light makeup and a cream-white scrunchie in her hair. She has pale, greeny-brown eyes and beautiful hair. It’s not long, but quite thick and shiny, worn with a long, heavy fringe, with more delicate shafts of hair poking out from the scrunchie. Her mouth is small and a little tight, suggesting that she doesn’t put much in it. She is a slight, light, immaterial figure, whom I think of in terms of the color blue and triangles. There is sadness in her resting face, accentuated by shadows under the chin, under the mouth, around her right eye and covering more than half of the cheek that is closest to me, her left.

For most of the session I’m discontented with my own canvas. It’s too childish, too basic, too wooden and two-dimensional. It’s literally only in the last six minutes that my hasty application of burnt sienna followed by white transform it into the likeness and appearance of Albee.