Birds and the Bees

Lady Ganesh in the Forest of Flourishing

I have been invited to be a part of a show called The Birds and the Bees which will open at ARC Gallery San Francisco in April. One of the pieces I am creating for it is this one, whose working title is “Lady Ganesh” as Baby Hawk calls it. Lady Ganesh is a Forest elephant in her full creative, abundant glory, resplendent in her flourishing, watching the forest grow and thrive around her. By simply existing and moving among the forest, going to the various places where they find nourishment, community, and vitality, they literally garden the forest around them. Their steps and bodies carve paths, their food choices encourage and deny certain plant species and trees, their movements co-create their environment. Especially now, in the world we are increasingly finding ourselves in, this essential way of living has become my model of existence. By doing the things that give me nourishment, connect with my community, and help me thrive, I create mutual flourishing around me. It’s so elegantly simple and so profound.

Here she is in progress.

I did something special with this piece that I have been planning on doing pretty much since Hawk was born - I invited him to help me create the background.

This is not his first painting by any stretch of the imagination. He and I paint together regularly and he is really good at it for a 2-and-a-half-year-old, according to me, his Mama. For this background, I did a water wash over the whole thing and let him dab the acrylic colors on as he wanted to. I did a little curation here and there as he worked and voila! It was suddenly perfect.

Normally for my paintings, I draw the image on a white canvas, paint the ground a red oxide color, and begin my Mische Technique process with the white egg tempera. I did not draw anything on the canvas before we did the color washes so already I was in uncharted territory here, not to mention that I want to preserve the background so I can’t do my glazes the way I usually do them either.

But there is a way to do the TriColor Mische technique on a painting where you want to preserve your creative background! I just published a short video about it on my YouTube channel.

The basic idea is that you draw the image in as much as you can with either black or white charcoal or pencil and pen. But since your background could be really dark or very colorful, these could be hard to see or keep track of. The primary way of getting the image on there then, is to paint it in with the egg tempera. This requires a bit more layering to make sure you have all of the shapes as well as values in. As you can see below, there is a lot more depth in the white in this layer. I wanted the background to be a bit more painterly, allowing the fact that I was painting it all in the be a feature of the way the image was created. The forest elephant is in high resolution and the background will be a mixture of fine detail and painterly freedom.

Then, you do a red-orange glaze over top of this. This is a combination of the red ground and the first Indian yellow glaze in one color.

Next, you continue doing the Mische Technique as you would by painting on the next layer of white egg tempera. Once you’ve done that, you do the blue glaze over all of the painted in areas only, preserving the background as much as you want it visible.

I’m excited to keep sharing progress on this. I’m not sure of what to call this piece. Any ideas for a title?

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As a reminder, I will be holding online Alligator Lizards Creative Integration sessions on the Vision Train and the first one IS THIS SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1st. The Vision Train is an incredible online community started by visionary Amanda Sage during the very first lockdown during COVID and it is still going strong.

Alligator Lizards will be on a sliding scale cost between $5-$20 and once you register by sending me a payment on Venmo, I will send you the Zoom link. Venmo me at @KrisztinaLazar and include your email in the notes. If you are a paying subscriber to my Substack, you are automatically invited. I will share the Zoom link with you later this week and you can come if you’d like. I would love to see you!

I hope to see you on the Zoomz. I will be hosting an online Alligator Lizards every other month so count on the next one being early April.

That’s it for now. Love you all!

XOXOXO