Morocco has some beautiful scenery including the Atlas mountains and the Sahara desert. When we returned from our trip there, the logical choice for a painting seemed to be a wonderful landscape. Surprisingly though, I found myself drawn to painting some of the people we encountered, specifically some of the women of Morocco.
I hadn't painted any portraits since my early watercolor ones, so the idea of painting portraits in acrylics incorporating my contextural style was intriguing. There were two women in particular that I wanted to paint - a woman emerging from a desert oasis and a young girl leading a large cow by a rope in the mountains.
Moroccan Oasis
We were visiting a desert oasis when we noticed women carrying large loads of cut grasses from the stream below up to the village where they lived. One woman came out of the oasis by herself and was perfectly framed for a photo. She seemed to epitomize the hard working Moroccan women who always seemed to be busy. She was also wearing an interesting outfit with her skirt tucked up out of her way over her pantaloons.
A large canvas was needed for this full-body portrait, so I decided to use a bigger canvas than I had ever tried before - 4 feet tall by 3 feet wide. I liked the visual of the woman herself so much that I decided to paint her 'straight' without using my contextural style. Contexturalism would be incorporated into the background of the painting.
After drawing a pencil sketch of the woman, I started by painting the grasses that she was carrying. By doing the grasses first, I was able to use very broad swipes of the brush with lots of paint without worrying about splattering. I would later simply paint over any unwanted splatters. Compared to my usual highly controlled painting style, painting with these broad swipes was quite fun. I was able to paint the entire area of grasses in an hour or so.
Next I painted the woman's clothes. Having never taken any painting classes, I was inexperienced at painting folds in clothes and found this part to be challenging. For her shirt, pantaloons and belt, I decided to use my watercolor approach of painting light to dark. I first painted the whole area in the lightest color and then added continually darker colors to create the shadows and creases. I didn't know if this was the recommended technique, but it seemed to work.
I then painted her colorful skirt using the opposite approach - dark to light. I started with the darkest color over the entire area and then added continually lighter colors on top.
I next painted her face, arms, legs and shoes. Finally I finished this non-contextural part of the painting by adding her shadow in the lower left corner. This portrait part of the painting took only about three weeks to complete.
Now it was time to start the contextural background. I immediately realized that this portion was going to take much, much longer than three weeks! The background canvas area was bigger than any of my previous paintings' total canvases. Each color used was a custom mix, and the first problem encountered was getting enough of each color. I had to either keep mixing new paint to match or mix a large amount of paint at once and keep it from drying out. It was very time consuming to keep mixing new matching paint. It was easy to get close to the same color, but very hard to get the exact color. So I decided to mix big batches of paint and then keep them from drying out. This approach had its own consequences that I will discuss later.
The woman is shown walking along a path out of a darker background. I first painted the path using a light base layer, followed by a darker layer of patterns and finished with a lighter layer of dots. Each of these layers took multiple coats. I then painted the non-path areas starting with the darkest colors in the farthest background at the top of the painting and then gradually lightening the colors as I moved down the canvas toward the foreground. The same three layers of base, patterns and dots were completed for each set of colors before starting on the next lighter color set. Below is a photo of this process midstream after the path and the darkest background areas were completed, and I was working on the mid canvas area. (Who is that young man with no grey in his hair?)
After many months, the painting was finally finished. I really liked the finished product, especially the way the colors worked together.
Now that the painting was finished, I learned the consequences of my trying to keep the paint from drying out. I had read that acrylic flow release could be added to the paint to keep it from drying out. I used it and it worked great. The paint didn't dry out. However that's when I also learned the importance of reading directions. It seems that I was supposed to dilute the flow release twenty times with water. Oops, I used it straight from the bottle. The paint was drying very slowly, taking hours instead of minutes, and then still staying tacky. Now several years have passed and it is still a little tacky. As Lorrie says, it's still tacky after all these years!
Moroccan Cowgirl
As we were touring in the Atlas mountains of Morocco, our bus came upon a group of children walking along the side of the road. One of them was a small girl, perhaps 8-10 years old, leading a huge cow by a rope. At first she didn't want her picture taken, but after Lorrie gave her a treat (see it in her hand), she quickly agreed and even gave us a small smile. Being pre-digital camera days, Lorrie didn't see the photo until we got home from our trip and had the film developed. When she saw the picture, her first words were - "Where's the beef?" (not really). My response was - "I didn't care about the cow. I wanted a close-up of the girl that I could paint." So you'll just have to imagine a very large cow attached to the rope.
Since this girl's patchwork-style outfit was so textured itself, I decided to incorporate my contextural style into the entire painting including the portrait. I also wanted to focus more on her face, so I painted just the upper part of her body instead of a full-length portrait. I was able to use a much smaller canvas (28" tall by 22" wide) and hoped it wouldn't take as long to paint as did Moroccan Oasis.
After again starting with a pencil sketch, I first painted the varying blue base layers for her entire dress. Then the darker patterns were painted over the base layers, and the lighter dots were added as the final layer.
Next I painted her bandanna.
Now I reached the biggest challenge, her face and hands (minus the treat!). As an experiment I tried painting these using my contextural style. I was hoping it would give a unique, attractive effect. It did provide a unique effect, but not exactly attractive. Imagine a bad case of eczema. I quickly decided to paint over it 'straight.' It took many layers of paint to cover the texture, but I finally was successful and the resulting face and hands turned out well. However if you look very closely, especially at the hands, you can still see the slightest texture from the final layers of contextural dots. I like to tell people that it was a cold day in the mountains, and she had goosebumps.
To finish the painting, I added the fir trees in the background using my contextural style. Then I tried a new technique. After the entire background had dried, I went over it with a slightly abrasive pad to take off a bit of the color and make it look more washed out by the sunlight. It also served to further give this beautiful young lady the spotlight she deserved.
