Blessed benefactors
Joel posted today about the awesomeness of his readers. Now, I don’t know who his latest benefactor is, but I know that Joel and I share many readers — and benefactors.
Like Joel, I can’t begin to number all the great people and their gifts. Honda generator, anyone? Funds toward re-roofing Ye Olde Wreck? Icon-painting class? Sometimes it’s $5 via the donation button. Other times, whoppingly more. Sometimes it’s “mere” moral support (there is nothing mere about moral support) or needed advice on tools or techniques. But it is all from good hearts and bright minds.
Like Joel, I have been blessed with the world’s best readers.
Onward with egg tempera
One of those readers, a figure of some mystery, has taken to dropping regular, but always surprising, contributions on me — sufficient to make up for last spring’s plunge in Amazon’s commission rates* and more.
That person just struck once again. And you know what? This time I’m going to splurge. Taking the icon class last month I fell in love with both the icon style and with painting in that complicated, persnickity, medieval medium, egg tempera (which has many beautiful uses beyond icon painting). I’m going to take this opportunity to get started.
Unlike more familiar painting media (watercolor, oils, or acrylic) you can’t just go out and buy yourself a set of egg-tempera paints (well, you can, but the cost would shock you and egg tempera is not durable in its fluid form). You make your own paints from powdered pigments. You not only gesso your own hardwood boards, which is usually no big deal. But you make your own gesso. AND you make the gesso out of things you didn’t even know existed, like rabbit-skin glue particles and French chalk (aka whiting powder). AND you have to paint on 10 coats or so of it. Egg-tempera painting has to be done with high-quality brushes because it’s a medium of thousands of fine, often very visible, strokes. Some artists even grind their own pigments from semi-precious stones and other earth elements. Some buy boards (usually from Orthodox monasteries) that are crafted to last centuries, and priced accordingly.
In short, the barriers to getting started are big. Oh, there are books that lay out how to do it, and I got some of those from the library. The learning curve is steep, but once you’ve climbed it, tempera painting isn’t especially difficult, just different. More complicated and hands-on.
The biggest barriers involve acquiring the needed ingredients, most of which aren’t in an artist’s standard stock.
Dear Donor of Mystery: Your latest will buy 10 jars of high-quality powdered pigment, those bizarre gesso makings, red sable brushes, and how-to books that I can keep after the library versions have gone back. I already have small (not monk-made) boards for my first experiments.
And I can purchase those things in good conscience because another donor/lender has already covered the remaining necessities of household structural repair.
Otherwise, I might be spending your money on a termite inspection. And however useful, you know that just wouldn’t be much fun.
Life in the freedom-blogging lane is good, thank you. But sometimes it leads to things that are even gooder. 🙂
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*BTW, thank you to the person who just purchased all those fancy light fixtures on Amazon. They not only helped alter the generally dismal picture, but because of the arbitrary way sellers list items, a couple of them appeared in one of the few categories where the commission actually went up instead of down last March.
A phrase for which I’ve always had a grudging and rather guilty affection is “follow your bliss.” Guilty because it sounds as though I read it on a kitten poster, and because Joseph Campbell was just so *trendy* I couldn’t take him seriously for a moment. So probably he meant something by it far different than the meaning I assigned it. Didn’t ask, don’t care.
For me, the phrase is delightfully transgressive. I spent virtually my entire life, man and boy, failing at every attempted endeavor. To the extent that I tried to do what others expected of me, whether “society” or specific individuals, to that extent everything would always eventually end in a big crash. I developed the well-founded notion that I was simply a loser. Clearly this was the way it was always going to be.
“What do *you* want to do” was a question that nobody ever asked me, and that I never asked myself. If it had come up I’d have dismissed it as irrelevant and of no help at all. Through failure after failure I kept my nose to the grindstone until nobody could find anything left of me to take. I had to hit bottom – no family, no home, no solid work, no future – before it occurred to me that trying to please others truly and demonstrably hadn’t worked out well for me. There was only one way forward left, and that was to try and please myself. Finally I asked the question. Finding an answer took years. Following in the direction it led was terrifying, but it led to success at last and the first real happiness I’d ever known.
I don’t bother trying to explain it and I never proselytize. But “what will others think of me for doing this” is a question I have tried – not always with complete success – to banish from my brain.
You’ve spoken before about how you got so wrapped up in self-consciousness over your art that you didn’t pursue it at all for years. It’s great to see you going for it now. You should pursue what interests you, and let others’ opinion of it take a back seat if others are allowed on the bus at all.
Amen, Joel. That strikes way too true with me. When I’ve allowed the opinions of others to take over, misery has been the predictable and consistent result. When I’ve followed my desires, no matter how odd it may have looked to others, happy memories got produced. My belief is that people come out of the womb as either givers or takers. If they’re smart, takers do very, very well. My conscience gets in the way of using that phenomenon to my advantage.
My God, Joel, I know you’re not writing books now, but did you ever think of putting your philosophical ruminations and insight into a “Chicken Soup for the Free”-type compilation?
So many times you make the perfect remark that there’s nothing left tp add. And so many times you take the thought out of my head that I suspect you’ve got a direct line to my brain.
“You’ve spoken before about how you got so wrapped up in self-consciousness over your art that you didn’t pursue it at all for years. It’s great to see you going for it now.”
Yes. Claire is on a roll, art-wise. Once she decided to “do” art, she is making up for lost time. It’s been a joy to watch *her* joy, and the giving to us — of her thoughts and imperfections and techniques — is sign of a true professional. She sounds truly *FREE* for the first time.
I don’t know if this would help, but rabbit glue isn’t too hard to make from scratch. Do you know anybody who raises meat rabbits?
I think when an artist is going to go that medieval, Ellendra, it’s time to bring in an apprentice to do the dirty work. 😉
Good point, though.
As luck would have it (oh, thank you, luck), rabbit-skin glue particles are available for $7-8 from a number of online art supply sources. I’m sticking (pardon the pun) with those for now. Ditto with the French chalk that combines with the rabbit skin to make the proper gesso for egg tempera.