I know if you’ve seen some of my Blog Illustrations you’re not going to really believe this, but I’m pretty good at drawing. Give me some photographic references, a sheet of typing paper, some HB pencils, and my lucky eraser, and I can usually get the job done. Not that I’m great at drawing, but I like doing it, and the work usually turns out to be satisfactory, or at least recognizable.

          So I was thinking, when I was planning out my schedule for Volume Four of the Absent Classic, that the illustrations would be the easy part – two weeks, maybe, or three if unexpected emergencies (lost brushes? Ipod failure? Barfing kids near the artwork?) happened. I sketched out compositions for the first six paintings, found all my supplies, bought some expensive painting paper, and then put brush to paper with a beautiful sense of smugness.

          It turns out that painting is not as easy as drawing. You’d think it would be, since you generally have to draw in order to be a painter, but it’s not. There are more shading and volume issues to consider, plus you don’t get to erase and start over if you screw something up. Finally, and most problematically for my project, it turns out that you can’t make acrylics look like oils. Even if you’re using the most expensive acrylics you can find, and being very careful about blending and clean brushes – it just comes out looking duller and more uneven than it should. After a week of struggling with the acrylics, I said some swear words and put them away. Last weekend, under a heavy gray cloud of Failure, I slunk back to the art store and purchased two tubes of oil paint.

          After a few days of trial and error, yesterday I finally started getting some good-looking backgrounds: flat-looking and pale, with high horizons and precisely receding greenery – exactly what I need for my Very Early Renaissance Dutch allegories. It was a huge relief, but if that’s my shallow little learning curve, I am never going to finish my paintings in time to have the book printed in September. Plus, I haven’t worked with oils since high school art class, (eleven years ago) and I’d forgotten how much I dislike them: they smell awful, for one thing, and are nearly impossible to clean up after, and they take an age to dry, and are poisonous; I could go on, but that list is depressing enough.

          The whole point of this bookmaking project is to stay in practice with my art and writing skills, and maybe push a few boundaries and get better, so I guess that theoretically a little failure is a good thing. But, yow, it’s expensive and painful and I do not like it.