Page 34 of The Light House
“How do I choose the right canvas?”
It was easier for him to show her than it was to explain. She trailed him back down the hallway and into the studio. Blake went to the rack and pulled out two different-sized canvases. They had both been painted orange.
“Horizontal, or square?” he held them up.
“Horizontal,” Connie decided. The canvas she had selected was about two feet wide and perhaps sixteen inches high.
Blake gave her the canvas, put the other back into the rack, and then noticed the perplexed look on Connie’s face when he turned back to her. She was sliding her hand over the canvas, as if trying to rub away the orange under paint.
“There’s something wrong with this one,” she frowned.
Blake tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially. “Trick number one,” he said and then went through a pantomime of checking over his shoulder lest anyone hear what he was about to reveal. “Canvas preparation. Five coats of primer before the orange under paint.”
“Five coats?” Connie was shocked. She knew it was conventional for a canvas to be primed, but five coats was unheard of.
“Think about the harsh weave of a canvas,” Blake explained. “It’s like trying to drag a house brush over a corrugated iron roof. The result is that you miss in the hollows, and you apply too much paint on the high ridges. It’s the same with a canvas,” he explained. “I’ve never seen a wave with a fuzzy edge, nor a boat with blurred lines. So I put five coats of primer on every canvas. It fills in the weave of the material, yet retains just enough of the pattern for the casual observer to clearly see that it’s an oil on canvas. What I am trying to do is to smooth the surface to allow me to paint clear crisp lines.”
Connie blinked at the logic. She thought about her old paintings and went to her seascape that was still resting on the crossbar of the easel. She saw immediately what Blake had meant – yet not in a million years of painting would she have stumbled upon the idea herself.
Blake set up the projector and turned out the studio lights so that the image thrown onto the canvas would be clear and well detailed. “I’ll be down at the beach,” he said. “It’s almost sunset.”
He pulled the door quietly closed behind him and left Connie at work in the studio to trace the image. Tomorrow morning he would teach her how to paint.
45.
“If you are going to paint a convincing seascape, you must paint the sky first, and you must mix up at least three times the amount of blue sky color you think you will need to cover the canvas,” Blake announced from the studio window. He was leaning on the sill, looking away towards the ocean, feeling the morning’s sun through the glass, warm on his face. He turned to where Connie was sitting nervously at the easel.
“Why so much paint?” she asked. Her hands were trembling. Now she was in front of a blank canvas with Blake tutoring her, the fear of the experience twisted a knot in her stomach.
“Because the color of the sky influences everything else in a seascape,” he said. “Therefore you will need more paint than you expect.” He could see Connie frowning and he urged her to take a close look at the printout of the reference photo she had in her hand. “See the ocean – can you see the colors of the sky reflected in the water? Of course you can, because it makes sense. The ocean always mirrors the color of the sky, so you will need that color to mix with the shades of the ocean. And see the shadows of the sand dunes? There is a hint of blue in them, and in the wet sand along the shore.” He paused for a moment. Connie was peering at the image. “And the distant headland. Can you see the blue haze of its shape?”
After a long moment Connie looked up at him, quite incredulous. “How did you know that, Blake?” she asked almost in awe. “You barely glanced at the image last night. How could you possibly have memorized the colors?”
“I didn’t,” Blake shook his head. “I know nature. As an artist of seascapes, you need to study nature. Those things I just mentioned were not from observing the photo, they come from understanding how nature affects the photo. If you’re going to paint, you need to become a keen observer.”
Connie bent over the paint table and began mixing. Blake went to the radio and the room filled with quiet background noise.
“And remember that the sky at the horizon line is always lighter,” he cautioned her from the studio door. “Make sure you reflect that when you begin painting.”
He left her alone, went out into the living room and sat with Ned. The dog was sleeping, barely lifting his lids open when Blake sat on the edge of the mattress and patted his head. After an hour he went back to check on Connie’s progress.
She was painting the sky, working in long horizontal strokes across the canvas. He grabbed her by the elbow so that she squealed in surprise.
“Wrong!” he said. “You can’t paint realism by swinging your arm like you are swatting flies, and you can’t paint realism by holding the top of the brush.” He took the paintbrush from her hand and showed her how to hold it like a pen, fingers gripping the metal just above the bristles. “To paint real, grip the steel,” he told her the rhyme. “And to paint real, you must reduce the leverage so that you control the stroke. If you power each stroke with your elbow, it’s like using a long lever – you lose control. So you must learn to power each stroke with your wrist. The closer the energy to the tip of the brush, the more control you will have of each stroke.”
Blake filled in the hours walking in quiet contemplation along the beach and came back again in the afternoon. He was bare-chested. The long days in the sun had darkened his skin to the color of mahogany. Connie had finished painting the sky and looked up at him, eagerly seeking comment.
Blake reached for his glasses and peered carefully at the canvas, then compared the color to the reference photo. He nodded, inclined his head, and then stood up. “Pretty good,” he admitted gruffly, and Connie felt the grin break out wide across her face.
“But you will need to understand the importance of brush stroke direction before you take the next step,” Blake cautioned, and saw her smile slip just a little. “Every time you paint something you must be instinctively aware of its shape and its form, and then mirror that with the way you use the brush.”
Connie had a vague understanding of the concept but the look on her face gave Blake no confidence. He picked up a paintbrush and began waving it in the air, as though he were painting on an invisible canvas.
“If I am painting waves, I paint in curled strokes because I want to replicate the dynamic of the subject,” he said, demonstrating as he spoke. “And if I am painting a ball, then my strokes are going to curve around the shape, because I’m trying to replicate the dimensions and depth,” he said. He threw the brush down on the paint table. “It will also help you with shine and shadow – so understand the objects you are about to paint, and try to paint them as they were formed.”
Connie started on the distant headland and Blake explained the logic behind color mixing – how the greens and browns of the promontory must include elements of the sky in order for it to be rendered convincingly. Connie spent an hour mixing color and another two hours painting before she was satisfied.
“Now blur the edges of the headland,” Blake said. “To create the illusion of distance. Melt it into the haze of the horizon.”
Connie worked on the canvas for another hour then looked up with a sudden start. The day had passed her by, and through the window she could see the afternoon beginning to fade into dusk. She stood and yawned. She could not remember a more exhausting day, or a day where she had learned so much about painting. She turned to Blake with deepened respect and admiration in her eyes. “You taught me things I could never have understood before today,” she leaned against him and lifted herself onto her toes to kiss him lightly on the lips. “Even though you were mean and demanding.”
She cupped his face and kissed him again, this time more passionately, and it was not until later when he showered that he realized she had deliberately left sky blue fing
erprints of paint smeared on his cheeks.
The days that followed were filled with exhausting activity for Connie. She painted in the studio every morning under Blake’s painstaking tuition, and in the afternoons she began photographing his old seascapes in preparation for the opening of the gallery. Tradesmen repainted the building in Hoyt Harbor, and new lighting was installed. Finally, catalogues arrived from the printers and were sent around the world to galleries and collectors in Europe and Asia.
She tumbled into bed each night and curled up in Blake’s arms, languid and contented, and they made slow unhurried love until the passing of time became a blissful blur.
After a week the painting was finished and she stood back in astonished amazement, unable to believe the work was by her hand. It was by no means flawless, but the miraculous leap she saw between the art of her past and this new painting defied description.
Blake inspected the painting critically and then smiled into her eyes with pure unaffected admiration. “Terrific,” he said and picked her up into his arms, swinging her around in a circle of laughter. “You, young lady, have some serious talent.”
They hung the painting in the living room and Blake took photos of Connie standing proudly next to the finished canvas with Ned by her side.
Connie beamed a smile for the camera. Her dream to paint had been re-kindled and the gallery was just a month away from opening. She was falling in love with Blake and the house by the beach had become a happy home, still echoing the sadness of the past, but now with those sounds of sorrow at last drowned out by the tinkle of laughter and the soft murmurs of loving.
They were the happiest days of her life.
46.