I came across a photo I took some years ago in Cuba and it made me smile. Pulled out my gouache set and took a stab. It turned out too precise, but I’ll try to be looser next time. It was fun anyway.
While on a trek to visit a tobacco farm in Cuba some years ago, I spied this diminutive lady trudging down the dusty road, clutching a load of huge tubers. I snapped a quick photo of her as she moved away and finally got around to painting her as homework for my watercolor class with Ed Praybe. Sweet memory.
I feel much less comfortable using the ArtRage watercolor brush (and oil painting tools) than I do with chalk, pen, pencil & paint roller. So I’ve been trying to trudge up the learning curve in watercolor. Here are my two most recent efforts:
A flamenco dancer I photographed during our trip to Cuba last Spring:
Dancing in Havana
And a scene from Glen Echo Park, based on a photograph I took a couple of years ago:
Cuddle Up at Glen Echo Park during a Cloudy Sunset
The Kensington Armory/Town Hall is the site of my third show over Labor Day weekend. The hours are noon to 4 pm Saturday and Sunday, and 9:30 am to 4:30 pm on Labor Day. There will be a public reception Saturday evening from 6:00-7:30 pm.
For this exhibit, I plan to hang four framed paintings and show 10-12 matted originals and possibly prints of recent iPad images in a nearby rack. The slide show below gives a sense of these works — but they look much better ‘in person’. Come see them!
We saw some memorable things on the day we traveled from Vinales to our Havana hotel — especially Hemingway‘s house with its lovely view of Havana. We weren’t able to go inside and had to content ourselves with ogling through the open windows – but there was still plenty to see.
Comfortable living room with mounted trophies . We all agreed that, unlike celebrity homes we often read about, we could see ourselves living in this room.
His simple desk and chair, surrounded by books and mementos.
A stash of books by his john — and note that pickled something or other on the shelf!
His Spanish Civil War uniform, boots, shoes and hats, all as he left them the day he was exiled from Cuba.
Another desk and more of his thousands of books.
The next post will show a few more highlights from our drive to central Havana.
We had beautiful days in Vinales, sunrise to sunset. I took lots of photos and, while waiting for evening activities, made a couple more paintings. A gouache of the valley below our balcony (the black paper didn’t photograph well):
‘Gauzy’ gouache of the valley beneath our balcony.
and a watercolor of a lone palm tree presiding over the pool (painted happily with a Mojito at my elbow):
A proud palm by the pool at Los Jazmines,Vinales.
Here are a few more photos in and around Los Jazmines Hotel, made primarily to fix the place and its beauties in my memories:
Early sunrise at Los Jazmines.
Tobacco barn underway in the valley.
The cozy cafe-bar in the hotel.
We DID drink coffee in addition to plentiful Mojitos!
Pink hotel and blue pool made a cool combo.
A casual evening around the pool.
We sigh and snap a photo of our last Vinales sunset.
We pass a ‘colorful’ mural en route to the morning bus.
Goodbye, Vinales! Goodbye, Los Jazmines! On to Havana!
After our time at the tobacco farm, we met up with the non-painters in our group. Most of them had visited a tobacco farm that morning via horseback, while we painted the ‘bull boy’.
Back together, we meandered through the cozy town of Vinales, taking in the sights, as illustrated by the photos below. Charming cars, wagons and other make-shift vehicles. Old and new-style housing combined with primitive construction techniques. Tired populace and garbage-strewn streets following three days and nights of a long-awaited music festival. Well-tended and prominent references to the revolution: Che on a chimney top; Jose Marti in a stark white lane-side memorial; cardboard street signs on bars and painted slogans gracing the local ball stadium.
For the next cultural-artistic adventure, we bused to nearby Vinales town and hiked to a small tobacco farm out on the valley floor.
Our first glimpse of the farm.
The farmer’s wife brews coffee.
In the thatched kitchen — an outbuilding, so as to minimize the risk of fire — we enjoyed a complimentary coffee brewed by the farmer’s wife from beans grown and roasted by the family.
As we sat around with some of the best coffee we’ve ever had, her husband demonstrated his cigar-rolling technique. It was interesting to learn that each farm family uses its own secret recipe to ferment its 10% share of the annual tobacco crop.
We were able to persuade the farmer to move his table outside and demo his technique again — this time, we painted. Another wonderful local subject!
The farmer turns model for the afternoon.
I was grateful to snag a small chair and a sliver of shade for our painting session. Here’s the watercolor I made.
The tobacco farmer with background bull.
Not happy with my first gouache effort of the day, I decided to try another – this time, a profile of the farmer’s head. He wasn’t sporting his cigar at the time I did my sketch, but then again, my sketch didn’t merit a cigar. After my piece, see a photo of the real deal.
My take on the farmer's profile
Our courtly farmer, in the flesh.
Our model, with Cuban hat and cigar.
No disrespect intended! Walt Bartman had promised us a cowboy and his horse. What we got was a grizzled, droll, and patient farmer . . . and his bull. Of course, both were way more fun to paint than a horse and cowboy would have been.
Walt, painting the 'bull boy'
My perspective on the bull and rider.
This was my vantage point.
And my gouache sketch. It’s not great — I spent most of my time watching Walt’s gouache techniques, trying to learn more about this unfamiliar medium.
Oh well . . .
A word about the gouache: Walt had encouraged us to use this easy-to-tote medium, rather than haul oil painting gear all over Cuba. This was good advice in view of the strict weight limit and our plan to bring giveaway items. But NOT so good for painting quality, in my case anyway. I’ll brief you ‘later’ on the painful months spent acquainting myself with gouache in advance of our trip.