THEFLIPSIDEPAINTING

Carl Barks, as a painting artist, made his oil paintings either on canvas or on Masonite. Both materials have their characteristics. Where canvas is a rather coarse and uneven medium, Masonite comes through as a more smooth and polished choice. The materials also call for different work techniques; especially as the applying of painting layers are concerned. As a rule of thumb Barks started his lengthy painting career using canvas for his numerous titles featuring landscapes, buildings, and humans, only to continue with the much more detailed paintings on Masonite during his Disney duck years.
In 1968, during his first painting career, Barks made a daring and extremely unusual experiment; he painted a rather trivial motif featuring the usual ingredients at the time, but he painted it on Masonite. Furthermore, he painted it on the backside of the board thus leaving the smooth and appealing front side alone! The unique painting is known as 13-68 The Cool of Morning. This is the story.

THE PAINTING

13-68 The Cool of Morning

At the time of the painting - which appears in the size 9x12" (230x300mms) - Barks made several paintings depicting everyday scenes from the lives of diverse native Indian tribes. This time he chose an uninviting, barren landscape with towering mountains supplied with a Navajo hogan (hut or shack) flanked by a woman tending to her animals.
It is easy to see just how coarse the result looks, but still Barks' intention was to strengthen the textured surface using soft colours, giving the whole scene a hazy and almost romantic look. The latter part of his main idea functions rather well, but Barks left the experiment painting on flip sides. In the next section you are presented to a few similar motifs painted on the front side of Masonite boards, and it is astonishing, how different the above painting looks compared to the others, although he used the same type of colouring and soft look.

Carl was living with his landscape painting wife Garé in different parts of California during those years, and they used to sell their individual works in the vicinity. Some were sold at fine galleries such as Chriswood Gallery and Little Gallery, while others were sold at fairs and park shows (see more HERE). The Navajo painting was sold at an Art Mart on March 24, 1968, i.e. immediately after its completion, and fetched 20 dollars plus tax.

THE SIMILAR

670 Painted Land*				22-66 Hogan With a View
Above are two examples of earlier paintings that are very similar to the one from 1968. They are also painted on Masonite, but this time on the normal side of the board. The sizes are identical. * Already in 1965 Barks had introduced a rather puzzling number coding system starting from #0 later escalating to two sequential codings (see more HERE).

THE SKETCHES




Barks always jotted down numerous sketches before he started a new naturalistic painting. Some were just idea sketches, while others were dreamt up or even taken from real locations. Above you are presented to a few sketches featuring the same basic motifs - a barren landscape, a mountain range, and a native Indian home.

EXTRA

Prime time...

A typical board of Masonite has a smooth and a coarse side. Usually, the smooth side is used by artists for their paintings, while the coarse side is almost never used, as it is rather rough in texture. Also, it comes in different natural colours that can be hard to cover with painting mediums.
Both Carl and Garé agreed that the most tedious and grueling job when preparing for a new painting was the important task of applying primer to their canvasses or Masonite fiberboards, but the job had to be done and they would often share the work.
A typical canvas or board from the Barkses took several coats of primer which the couple applied using paintbrushes, and in order to cover up the inevitable traces of strokes they smoothed out each layer by sanding it. The trick was, of course, to be sure to apply the correct and controlled thickness of each layer of primer in order not to risk sanding through it in different places.

It is not known how many layers of primer and how much sanding was sufficient before The Cool of Morning could be painted, but it is conceivable that the session took such a long time, that Carl did not find it worthwhile to use the same technique again. At least, he never made another flip side painting...