"joyeux mimi" is a painting of my niece at Christmas. like every painting, it started as a drawing of her sweet little face. when i decided to make it a full painting, i drew her whole self on another paper, scanned and combined the drawing of her face with her jammies on the computer, and printed out the combined drawing. I had prepared the wooden board with six plus coats of gesso (sanding in between each!!) which was a feat as i had to carry the 18x24 board to school and back to use the sander each day that week while studying in new york city. Once i finished two small color studies, i transferred the printout of my drawings to the board by covering the back of the printout with graphite and tracing off my drawing. this process unfortunately loses some of the gesture of the drawing, but i just have to make sure to use the brushwork to make up for that~!! once the transfer was completed, i was ready to paint!! working on this painting absolutely consumed me and got me through a new york winter. i was so eager and anxious all week for saturday to roll around so i could work on this piece!! below are the stages it went through to reach completion. the green underpainting of the jammies was completed on march 16, 2020. shortly thereafter i discovered i needed to fly out of new york THE NEXT DAY because of the coronavirus (cover-19.) the fact that this VERY WET painting survived, UNSCATHED through multiple cross country flights in my beleaguered and desperate state the next day was one of many, many miracles surrounding my escape to park city, utah. the rest of the painting was completed during the quarantine, in park city and walnut creek, california when i was finally able to make it home that may. there is always joy amidst the gloom; i was quite delighted for the excuse and opportunity to stay home and PAINT!!

​color study 1

​color study 2