Sekouba Traore

Sekouba Traore
9” x 5.5”
oil on wood, 2010

To document the process of making a Top 100 painting I took a snapshot of the painting after about an hour’s worth of work, and then again after another hour (see above). Usually I can’t finish a painting until the second or even the third day but with this one I’m hoping to get it finished after one more one hour session. I won’t do it until after it dries though, probably later tonight. I will keep making one hour snapshots until it’s done, even if it will take me ten hours (as it sometimes does). I use oil paints cut with liquin, a fast drying medium. Typically I start with yellow because that color is hard to get back into a painting late in the process. After the yellow I pick up white, then red, then white again, then blue, then brown, and finally black. I don’t follow this process as a rigid schedule: In the early stages of the painting I don’t put much new paint on a palette, I just use what’s there from the last one and just add the yellow and white to it –those colors need to be clean at the start, they will get muddy soon enough. The first focus of the painting is to get the dynamics of the pose right –as with yellow this aspect is hard to get into a painting later on– then the proportions and the likeness. The concern for clothing, background, and props comes later. Please feel free to compare the stages of the painting with the original image found on http://awesometapesfromafrica.blogspot.com/
And while you’re there you may as well listen to the music right away. It’s the blog entry of March 21, 2010. The artist’s name is Sekouba Traore and the song that will be featured in the Top 100 2010 is Walinyumadon, the second track of side A from the cassette with the same name. Credit due to whom it belongs: Brian Shimkovitz is the proprietor of Awesome Tapes From Africa. He has been collecting these tapes for a while. If you are like me and still work with audio tapes; click on Shimkovitz' image of the cover for the tape, set your print preferences to 64%, print, cut, and fold and it will fit nicely into your audio tape cassette box.