somebody— ought to— kiss you, laura!
inspired by the glass menagerie.
somebody-- ought to-- kiss you, laura!
faerie tale feet painting inspired by the glass menagerie by tennessee williams.
i had a little too much in common with laura back in high school. i didn’t have pleurosis, or a debutante mother, or a brother, even, but i was crippilingly self*conscious. for no good reason. shy & ever with a crush on the out*going, popular boy who dared to talk to me, laura was my spirit animal. i got her. she understood.
see below for the painting process (i love how the gouache colour scheme turned out!!) and then i'll tell you all the story icons i used to tale the tale.
the glass menagerie pattern taped down and ready to be re-traced onto the illustration board i’ll paint on.
my favourite element of this painting was the couch with the Blue Roses. if you know the play, you’ll get that. you can also see all the blue transfer paper lines from when i traced the drawing onto the illustration board. i'll paint around all those shapes with my background colour in a few more steps...
this couch was So Much Fun to paint!
couch upholstery and the background colour painted and ready to start on the icons…! (the background pink had to be painted in one sitting for the gouache to try evenly; it probably took 5 or 6 hours.)
i mix & paint one icon colour at a time… so here still filling in one story element at a time.
you can see the “fancy” palette i always use – yep. a paper dixie plate. they store well to re-use touches of colour as needed. and gouache is of course re-chargeable for future paintings, too. hurray!
the final print of “somebody– ought to– kiss you, laura!” based on tennessee williams’ genius piece of theatre.
included story iconography:
amanda’s jonquils of her debutante youth. {the yellow flowers}
tom’s blame-shifting. {pointer finger}
tom’s escapism to the movies for the adventure they all have. {movie projector}
laura’s abandoned typewriting & shorthand classes. {typewriters}
laura’s most precious glass unicorn {unicorns} who loses his horn.
when she & the gentleman caller bump into the table and knock him off when dancing in the dark by the glow of the candelabrum. {candelabrum}
the “silver slipper of a moon.” {moon}
without his horn, her favourite figurine is less freakish, but just like all the others: a souvenir. {there’s one horn-less unicorn in there}
the rosy colour of the new lampshade. {the background}
the violet of laura’s gown. {the now-hornless unicorn.}
“blue roses.” {painted on the settee; what popular jim thought laura said when she said “pleurosis” back in high school}
may this painting ever remind you that as self*conscious as you are, people probably don’t notice what you judge yourself by. or if they do, it makes you special. unique. different. worth being celebrated for you.
original gouache painting available framed for $450 (+$40 for safe US shipping). just contact me to collect her for your home library wall! (painting is 11x11” and framed in a soft black handmade wooden frame to 19” square.)
“when you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.”