The Making of "Another Day in Paradise"

Back in December of 2014, I was doing a show with zero room behind the tent. I usually have a doorway on my back wall and sit back there facing the art patrons entering my booth. So this particular show I was sitting across from the tent facing into it. After two days, I had decided there needed to be something large and brooding staring down on anyone who entered the space. Since I had been doing a lot of animal scratchboards, the first thing I considered was a bear or a tiger rearing up on its hind legs, threatening everyone.

When I started the sketches, I knew it needed to be a person, not another animal portrait.

I still wanted large, brooding, staring, and menacing, but it needed to be a person. An irate wife/mother/grandmother wielding a rolling pin. I didn't want it to be a pretty picture. I wanted it both humorous and dark.

First thing I needed was a model. At a dive bar in St. Petersburg I ran across a homeless woman who agreed to pose for a bottle of wine. I declined her other offers. She donned one of my wife's old robes - which I let her keep (I hate to run the washing machine with only one item in it anyway.)

I snapped 6 or 7 images, then we heard a siren the next street over. She panicked, grabbed the wine and ran out of the house still wearing the robe. I was glad. That saved me an hour driving and having to listen to her incoherent rambling.

With a reference image under my belt, now I needed a surface on which to draw. 30x40 is about as big as it gets without buying paper on rolls.  I wanted this image to be 30" x 60", so it would rise almost two feet above the top wall of my art show tent. I also wanted a rigid, lightweight surface that I could varnish and frame without glass. I decided to glue a 30x60 matboard onto a double layer of 30x60 foamboards. I ordered a 30x60 frame,  the mat and the foam boards - which the frame supply store cut to size.

The charcoal goes beautifully onto the matboard, however, the matboard did not like being covered with varnish. I had about 10 long skinny bubbles appear, all in the blackest section above and below the rolling pin. I cut them open, worked a little glue inside and pressed closed. At one particularly bad spot, the paper came away completely leaving a 1/2" white circle between the mirror and the rolling pin. Fortunately, it was in a black area as well. I added charcoal, sprayed, then coated again with varnish. Its obvious to me, but no-one else has noticed it. Not even the Mainsail judge who gave me an award!