With Pluckin' Joyful now complete, I've begun the process of translating Ginger Glass from digital illustration to traditional media. Once completed she will be the queen of The Slate Garden Gallery, providing a visual bridge between her sisters, The Farmer's Wife [patio privacy screen] and Pluckin' Joyful.

As is usual, I am working from sketches and digital mock-ups. My plans and notes follow.

The original digital work, created for iStockPhoto's Torn Pages contest. She won 3rd place.

The original reworked at the request of my client, The Bethelehem Book Loft.

Ginger Glass Edition 1: Created as an illustration of my poem by the same title. She got ink in many small presses.

The text of the poem reads as follows:

ginger glass

shiny as dusk
through ginger glass

Interesting this: I workshopped this poem at a small group in Kutztown. During the workshop we were asked to read aloud. At the end of my reading the room was silent but, after a few awkward moments, one woman spoke up and told me that she never heard body parts described quite that way. Yes. This is the point and I love this poem. It is one of my favorite spoken word pieces that I have ever written. Please respect my copyright on this and ask before publishing or printing. I don't do a lot of creative writing anymore and this piece is very precious to me.

Ginger Glass (Pencil Skirt w/ Kick Pleat) Created from 2 vintage t-shirts, to spec for Kim from Marietta, GA.

My digital rework to be executed in acrylic on plywood, 96" wide by 48" high.

The digital plan for hanging her in The Slate Garden Gallery.

Project Timeline:

06/24/2008
Prime and sand both sides of an 8x4 foot sheet of plywood. Complete

06/25/2008
Sketch, outline and color block artwork. Prep and hang in place.

06/26/2008
Finish work, per sketch.

06/27/2008
Sign and Seal completed piece.

This is the plan. If the weather holds out - that is. I will keep you all posted.

06/25/2008
I completed the color-blocked version of her over the course of the day and we hung her in place when my husband got home from his office.

06/25/2008: Ginger Glass: Color blocked and ready to be hung for finishing and refinement

GingerGlass hung in place. I lost perspective of face. She's too cartoony. Will fix and finish today

Yes. I did lose a sense of proportion in her face and she is way too cartoony to suit me. I will refine this issue and finish her today, 06/26/2008, and I am very happy to report that I am keeping up with my timeline.

06/26/2008: Added text and refined her face. I still need to work on her mouth but she's getting there.

06/27/2008
Friday morning, I was most intent on completing Ginger Glass. Hand lettering is not necessarily my forte so I had a lot of guide lines and "practice" text that needed to be cleaned up. I figured this would be my first order of business before I went to work on fine tunig the work. Of course, you know what they say about "best laid plans"... As it was, not sooner did I rinse the painting with a bit of water when the green lifted, contracted and peeled. This is very unusual with latex or acrylic paints unless you're trying to work over oil-based primer. This is not the case. I double checked to be sure. All of the paint that went into the work was, in fact, latex or acrylic.

ACK!!! I tested several areas of the painting and the only color with any sort of issue was the green so I dried the face of the board and went to get more green paint - something was obviously wrong with the green that I was using but I couldn't imagine what. The staff at Loewe's was little help with the issue and the best the man in the paint department could offer was that I needed a "special" primer to work with this particular type of paint. Hey! - It's latex paint for outdoor use. There's nothing special about it and the only color that failed [out of the four that I used] was the green. That clearly means that the formulation was defective in some way but I didn't have the time to get into a battle with the man. So I took a fresh gallon of the green home and set it aside.

I checked the board to be sure it was totally dry before attacking it with my handy-dandy belt sander. An hour or two later and I was back to priming the raw board as it was hung in place on the side of our garage. *ugh* it was a job and a half but it was really the only way that I could be reasonably sure to prevent a future failure. 3 coats later, I laid down my brushes and called it a day.

06/28/2008
Unsure of the real cause behind the failure of the medium, I tested a good field of the new green before going to work on the rest of the painting: 1 coat was laid down and allowed to dry before I applied a second coat. Once that was dry I wet it and rubbed it quite vigorouslywith a cotton wash cloth. The color stayed in place without a bit of cracking, peeling, or seizing and so I continued sketching in Ms. Ginger Glass and working her through the color block stage.

One of my issues with the first version was the fact that she looked a bit too cartoony and there was so much competition between the elements in the work. I rectified these issues, aided by the fact that I was working on her as she would normally be viewed and this did a lot to help me maintain my perspective on her and the work as a whole.

By the end of the day on Saturday, I was left was a mostly completed work, that I felt just needed a few finishing touches to be complete.

06/29/2008
I put the finishing touches to Ms. Ginger Glass and by noon she was ready to show her new face to the world.

06/29/2008: After many challenges Ginger Glass is finally complete - all 96 by 48 inches of her.

Several neighbors had come by during the process of my finishing the work and they all told me that they thought she was pretty before but that this version was so much stronger and much more beautiful.

Ginger Glass as seen from the street

What do you think?