32-20 Blues part 1

 

Time for the third block to be started.  Originally I was going to wait until next week, but it was a nice day and there was no good reason to wait to start it.  The idea was sketched months ago, so it was just a matter of starting to draw it on the block.  The wood was ready.  I had no need to see anyone in the office today, or to stop at the store, so I just drove straight to Ocean Grove and went to my Studio.  One thing I noticed upon arrival was that some framed tent supports had been put up along side the railings of the main parking lot, I assumed for the big race tomorrow.  It's a good reason to stay away from this place for the next few days.  Inside the dark main hallway I could see tables were out, no doubt also for the race event.  I just went for the elevator and my trip to the basement.

I had my rock/pop set of discs with me today from last time, so that would do.  I had been in a mood to hear the debut self titled album from The Coral (a song had been running through my head lately, which turned out to be the unlabeled bonus track at the end of the album) and you can read about this on this blog back in June, 2020.  When that disc ended, I went with a home burned copy of Henry's Dream by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.  Not a blues album per se, but the subjects of the songs did fit well with the subjects of the Robert Johnson song I was starting today- violence, sex, alcohol, lowlife behavior, etc. You can read about this album back in August, 2019, the one I had longer which included the St Christina song.

The song "32-20 Blues" is one of the more violent of the recorded Robert Johnson songs, with multiple references to shooting a woman for disobeying his desires.  Or shooting men- he just wants to shoot everyone with a variety of guns.  The lyric I went with is, "Babe, where'd you stay last night?  You got your hair all tangled and you ain't talking' right."  (actually one of least violent lines in the song) For the image I went with a woman waking up in a bed, half sitting up against pillows, with sheet and blanket covering her mostly, some kind of clothing covering the rest of her (not knowing where these images might be shown, I'm avoiding nudity in them), somewhat disheveled hair, and a bottle and glasses sitting on the bedside table.  As I wrote earlier, the basic sketch was worked out on paper a while ago, so it was just a matter of copying what I had.  I decided I liked the angle of the original drawing, so I used a mirror to copy the reversal of the image to the block.  One thing I changed was moving the bottle and glasses to the other side of the figure, from her left to her right (on the block), just because it made more sense visually.  The bottle is meant to look like a whiskey bottle, the favored drink of blues men, and a thing that often leads to bad behavior for everyone.  The image above shows the drawing as it looks now.

Of course, when I formed the idea, I immediately thought of other cases where I saw something similar, and made sure I didn't copy those scenes directly.  For example, in the film "Raiders of the Lost Ark", there's a scene where Marion wakes up in bed on the ship carrying the Ark from Egypt to a non-Nazi controlled part of the world, but Indiana Jones (who we all assume was in bed with her) is already up and dressed, noticing the ship's engines have stopped and fearing the worst.  She is more under the covers than my subject, no alcohol is present, and the angle and distance at which she is seen is different.  She also looks a lot happier than the woman in mine.  Also coming to mind was an 1895 painting from Edvard Munch called "The Day After" which shows a woman laying back in bed, mostly a side view, blouse unbuttoned but still on, looking somewhat unconscious (arm and hair hanging off the side of the bed), with bottles and empty glasses in the foreground. I used to show the slide to my college students when talking about narrative, and asked them to say what happened.  They always came up with the same answer.   I didn't ask how many had experienced a story like that- it would have been rude and had nothing to do with narrative in paintings.  In my version, the woman is sitting up and awake, a 3/4 view, and more dressed.  

As for my piece, the subject is the only figure in view.  As to where she woke up, how she got there, and what happened while she was there, I'll leave that to the viewer's imagination.  A lot more work to go on this one, but this is where I am starting from.