UPDATE: January 21, 2014
I want a meringue! And not just any meringue.
Totally unrelated to anything I’ve been up to lately, I finally got around to doing a proper photo and cleanup of my Artlibs piece from 2012. My Illustration of La Colmena Bakery in Barcelona. It’s also now available as a photo and canvas print on deviantArt. I wish the meringue was available too. I think mail order from Spain will take too long.
June 5, 2012
Delighted that I had been asked to submit an illustration proposal for the Artlibs show, I decided that I wasn’t busy enough moving, trying to sell our house, participating in Artomatic, and chasing the toddler, and I happily submitted. Thanks, Sherill, for the push. Though I am starting to think that quip in The War of Art about Leo Tolstoy writing War and Peace with a housefull of kids and a lot of other crap on his plate, might have left out the teensy detail that his wife was probably taking care of everything so he could work! That’s currently supposed to be MY job.
The Artlibs show is a nifty idea. We artists get to fill in the blanks of the stories with our art. I was assigned a noun.
Because I haven’t yet learned to do things simply (I REALLY need to read up on my Picasso), I chose to illustrate La Colmena Bakery in Barcelona from photos I took a few years ago, though I could have simply illustrated the cookies and left it at that. Bill was just pleased I finally did SOMETHING with some of my photo references. He’s still waiting for me to illustrate some of the houses on the Venetian Grand Canal from our honeymoon (among countless others). I did borrow the Catalan labels from the bakery’s website.
By the way, La Colmena has THE best meringue on the planet. I wish I knew of anything remotely like it near here. After painting miniature versions of their enormous crunchy-gooey meringues that you eat with a spoon, I am seriously craving them. Any local suggestions are welcome.
To complicate my life further, and because I’ve spent way too much time on the computer over the years, I wanted to paint the illustration in guache. I haven’t used guache in over 10 years. After tossing out half my dessicated paint, buying more, and wondering how long this was ACTUALLY going to take, I did finish the painting the morning I was supposed to turn it in. Oops. But it is done. There are plenty of things I would like to have done better or clean up. But all in all it was a good learning experience. And it felt nice to use actual paint again.
Artlibs
Artist Profile – Mishka Jaeger
June 18 – August 10, 2012
Arts/Harmony Hall Regional Center
10701 Livingston Road
Fort Washington, MD 20744
Some press from The Sentinel. I’m pretty sure I’m “The Bakery.” http://www.thesentinel.com/pgs/Art-Libs-exhibit