“Sing” will be on view at Hidell Brooks Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina, as part of my current solo exhibition, up through March 27.
Hidell Brooks is by appointment only. Please contact them through their website to schedule a viewing.
Before I present the painting process for my new painting, “Sing,” I wanted to share this little story that I recently shared on my social media pages about what inspired me to paint it:
“Every spring, a robin makes a nest in my porch light. So I wanted to paint something that would celebrate simple joys like little baby birds coming into the world for the first time…learning to fly, learning to sing. For a few years, I tried to deter the birds with shiny objects, but it never worked, and eventually I realized, that having them is a gift…And I really hope they come back this year.”
Alright, now if that doesn’t warm your spring spirit, I don’t know what will!
Here’s a photo of the real baby robins on my front porch from last year. When they were big enough, they were happily dancing around in my front yard as they learned to fly, and they were quite friendly, too. While my relationship with the adult robin parents was a bit tense the first few years of nesting (they would divebomb me every time I tried to get a package off of the porch!), now we have a rather friendly understanding.
Now, let’s talk about how I got from the photo of the real baby robins to the eventual painting, “Sing.”
Designing the Foodscape Model
If you look at the initial sketch (top) and compare it to the cookie model I was starting to make in the photo below it, you’ll notice some pretty drastic changes. In part, I wanted to accommodate the size of the panel I wanted to use — 24″ x 12″. Scale-wise, this paper towel provided the perfect layout for the model — twice as tall as it was wide. The initial idea would have required either more height or width or possibly both to get it to work; otherwise, the details would have been too tiny. I had imagined the bird house would be made from the mini pretzel sticks, so maybe that is something I’ll eventually come back to in a future project.
I also wanted the theme of “singing” to be more prominent. This was, in part, because I have a background in music, having taken voice and piano lessons for many years when I was growing up. I have always felt that music, and singing in particular, can lift one’s spirits, and I still often find myself singing around the house as I carry out various tasks.
I decided on blue songbirds and tried a few different ways to frost the cookies with them to give them a whimsical, cartoonish feel. I also added the floating music notes. I almost took them out, but my husband encouraged me to keep them, and I’m glad he did (he’s very encouraging about keeping the “whimsy” in full!).
Painting Process for “Sing”
In this new series of works, I’ve discovered one surprisingly difficult thing to paint — pretzel sticks. Do you know how hard it is to paint a pretzel stick? To emulate the warm colors and their convex shape? I’ll spoil it — it is tough. But I found a process that works for my paintings now, using the dual color wheel theory I mentioned in one of my other blog posts, wherein I use the warm color wheel as the base colors and then pull out the curved area with the cooler color wheel. If you want to learn more about the dual color wheel theory, please read the original article I read by Professor Stephen Knudsen here.
Sometimes when I get immersed in my painting, I forget to record clips of the process. That happened with “Sing,” but I do have a few painting process clips in the TikTok video here and above.
In total, this painting took probably close to 150 hours, give or take. Why so much for something so small? It’s all about the details and the colors. You can read more about my general painting process here.
In the end, I was able to paint the broken ice cream cone that I used as the nest and all of the pretzel sticks as branches in a particularly impressive three-dimensional illusion, despite the whole painting being flat. Lots of thin glazed paint layers, bright happy colors, and a whimsical design — this piece really took that dream I had as a kid of becoming an animator and brought it to life in a magical trompe l’oeil painting.
I hope it lifts your spirits, warms you heart and that you see those little bird nests around your neighborhood in a whole new light this year.
Check out the close-up details of the painting below.
KIM T.
Photos of the Details of the Painting
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