Dr Andrew Katelaris faces trial in the District Court(transposed from the Downing Centre to Paterson in the Hunter Valley), and wins, establishing a defense of medical necessity against charges of cannabis supply.
Below are images of the work in progress
A few things to finish, in particular the forest at the right and the planter box, and retouch maybe like the water and the swans.
And a few things to fix, like the faerie prison guards with the hemp leaf, all shiny now , and Andrew's pants, which I had a go at this morning, as well as his armpit and shirt! So that's a couple of things ticked off. I want to have this done in the next few days so the paint is hard when we parade it into the Art Gallery os NSW on April 1 - my Facebook birthday
the shiny crest with a couple of lines out of place - I might just put them down to a clutzy jeweller, and leave them alone
The plant impeisoned by faerie creatures
more greens in the hills
Back to work after a hiatus while I helped put on There's No Place Like Home an exhibition with Martin Walsh, Sandy Parfitt and Sean Buckland and me (catalogue) at Chrissie Cotter Gallery in Camperdown. I;ve now done skin tones on Andrew and just a big pile of detailing and the odd repair remains, so I'm hoping to have it just about done over the next day or 2 to give ample time to dry before I have to take it in to the AGNSW
The plant imprisoned by Faerie Creatures
Veggies and herbs in garden trays
in front of the prosecutor
The painting at the start of today(8 March 2019)
Swans in the dam
Andrew came around to the studio today to check out the work in progress
Legs, with an old pumphouse and swans
The prosecutor, slightly out of his element
There's not much more to add to the composition, and the colours are kind of like there now except the figures which still have a reasonable amount to do. A lot of finishing and detailing remains - so I'll start adding more closeups, there's a couple just below
The Dope Legal Crest , with Lion and Unicorn, and Andrew and Maria's rooster
The Judge observes proceedings
The first bit of green, I;ve done more this afternoon but it will have to wait for daylight tomorrow to photograph
I've started moving on to what NASA lovingly terms TrueColor(TM). (The sky is blue now!)
Paint on most of the canvas now so I'll start moving on to more like 'real' colours
This portrait of Andrew Katelaris defending himself in the District court is starting to be a bit of a likeness - More images and info below
Dr Andrew Katelaris
Andrew studies and treats severe childhood epilepsies with cannabis, preferably home grown. And advocates for the use of hemp, in medicine, but also as a foodstuff (hemp-seed smoothie - yum!) and fibre.
He recently faced, and defeated serious criminal charges in the NSW district court using a defense of medical necessity.
I tried to get some hemp canvas to stretch for this painting but Parkers factory and the other art shops didn't have any or know how to source it. Andrew had some hemp fabric the right sort of weight but it was something like a denim weave, so didn't stretch evenly or shed water, letting the size soak through when I made a couple of smaller test canvases. I had to fall back to using cotton canvas.
Hemp seed oil is a drying oil like linseed (and sunflower, safflower, poppy seed etc oils as well). To sort of infuse the painting I've added a little hemp oil into the simple gumturps media(plain turps, and turps with 5-10%stand oil )I mix out my paint with. And I got some raw umber pigment, a colour I use a fair bit, and which, being basically dirt, is nontoxic and not too fluffy. So most of the umber in the painting so far is hemp paint(and all the rest will be,
Making oil paint is a bit like mixing cement or pastry on a board, and like cement, it should be 'bony', use the absolute minimum amount of oil possible to create a thick paste(to add turps and media to as you use it later). Use a respirator especially with anything toxic, and wash your hands and clean work area afterwards. Do it somewhere the air is still so the dust isn't stirred up
Set up a glazed tile or sheet of glass on a flat stone slab. get a metal spatula or old school butter knife(you can get a flat pestle if youre doing this often). Pour or scoop a little mound of pigment onto the tile and make a little 'dam' in the middle and pour a bit of oil into it. Some pigments shrink heaps(eg pthalo green, which is incredibly light and powdery -eek, horrible stuff) so be sparing with anything unfamiliar. Raw umber doesnt shrink so much . Start folding in the pigment with the spatula, and grinding it against the tile to create a putty-like paste. If its way too dry remake the dam and add more oil. Putty, BTW is chalk in linseed oil.
Scrape up the blob and put it in a jar and cover it with water, to stop it from drying, get a bit out as you need.
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