Traveling Riverside Blues part 2

 Today was a nice day, predicted to be the best of the week.  I had no duties to the shed, and Mary had told me she was too busy to do any printing this week (plus the gallery is delaying her show until Mid-August), so I was free today.   Since I had to move my car anyway, I decided to go up to the Studio and do some needed drawing.  To save weight I brought a disc from my rock/pop book tucked into a page of my jazz/blues book, which was a copy of my home burned Breeders disc, which includes all the early albums I have.  I've written about this back in January of 2020 if you want to know more.

The parking lot was nearly empty today, so no problem finding a parking space.  Found my way to my basement space by late morning, and got to work.  I had looked at my photo of the block to this point (on this blog) and knew what I wanted to do.  Molly had been there since the last time I was there, and even left a Pixies disc in my boom box, which guaranteed I would listen to the Breeders, as both bands featured Kim Deal.  Despite the fact that I was working on my latest Robert Johnson project, and blues would not have been out of place. 

This new piece is called Traveling Riverside Blues, and like all prints in this series, is my interpretation of lyrics from the Johnson song of the same name.  The lyrics I chose were, "She got a mortgage on my body and a lien on my soul."  But it's not so simple, as in my research I found that there were two takes of the song, with two different versions of that line. (same words, different order)   I ended up going with the version above.  Then there was the question of what it means.  My interpretation was that a man was singing about a woman who completely controlled him- body and soul.  I suppose this could happen a number of ways, but I thought the way to go would be by means of sex.  It seemed to work for Johnson himself, who had a history of shacking up with women in each town he played in. and it may have been a woman who caused his death.  Of course, I can't do anything too explicit, especially because I don't know where these pieces may go, and I don't want to do anything that may give a place an excuse not to include my piece.  It's happened before.  All my work starts with narrative, and I figured I could tell this story without upsetting the wrong people.

My original sketch for the idea was fairly similar, featuring two people, a bed, and a lamp, with the main difference being that the male figure was elderly.  In the end I decided this was too much, and may cause a viewer to interpret the story as the woman being a prostitute.  I didn't see this as the story.  She has some kind of hold on him (as the lyrics state), but I think he has a hold on her as well, which I guess is why she has come to see him.  Whatever it is, I don't think it's just a cash thing.  Maybe she just likes the power she holds over him.  In any case, I leave it to the viewer to decide what is going on.  I do this when possible, as I feel it causes the viewer to be more engaged in the piece, as the piece becomes about what they are feeling, not what I have come up with.

A few days before the session I sent the model via email a detailed description of what would be needed, including the specific wardrobe, and the pose itself.  I wrote that I would leave it up to viewers to decide if she was in the process of dressing or undressing, as it really could be either one based on this image.  She praised what I had sent her, appreciating that I had given her detailed instructions and knew exactly what I wanted to do.  Perhaps most other artists don't know or keep it a secret.  

As for today's drawing- I had looked a bit at what had been done already and concluded that the male figure and the lamp were too small, and the bedside table was too tall.  So my first task today was to do some new drawing.  For the male figure I went back to the same source, a sample book from professional photographers, showing off their stuff.  I started with his head, redrawing it at a larger scale, to bring the two figures closer to each other in size.  That ended up being all I did with him, and let the rest of the body stay the same, as foreshortening would require me to shrink the body anyway.  It seemed to look right, so kept things like that.  The lamp and table are just placeholders out of my head, something to put down for now.  I expect changes will come eventually.  One thing I did last night was look at the light and shadows created by the lamp next to my bed, and noted them.  The walls and floor may also change a bit but I'll figure that out later.  The results of today's session can be seen below:

At this point I'm thinking the standing figure is more or less where I want it, the bed and reclining figure are close but may need more work, and the lamp/table and walls definitely need more work.  But there is definitely an improvement from where it was, and I have no deadline for getting this done, so I may as well take my time and get it how I want it.