3:38 PM:numbers were added at the last minute...continued tomorrow...
2:35 PM: long day on my feet. i might stop, since there's yet another thunderstorm and has gotten very dark. i don't have any opinion yet; it's too dark and too soon. today i got a stronger hit than ever about the relationship between encaustic, the medium used to paint the fayum, sometimes referred to as the hot wax technique, and egg tempera, which i used during my 15 years in greece and for 4-5 years after returning to the states. with both these mediums, you can't blend the colors as with oil. they dry too quickly and lack that oily base which allows the "wet into wet" technique. thus, if you look carefully at, for example, the shadows on the nect transitioning to lighter flesh tones, parallel strokes are used to create the illusion of a smooth transition. there can be a certain graphic beauty to this technique when used by a great artist, as were many of the fayum portrait painters.
4:38 PM: so tomorrow we're taking our trail walk, leaving the house at 5:30 am. However we won't be going all the way up to that spot we reached a few days ago, which is 1.5 hours. that gets us back too late and interferes with our work. we'll reserve that longer walk, which will keep increasing in time & distance, for maybe once a week, until we finally make the hike up to the lake; an all day deal.
