If It Ain’t Got That Swing

Portrait of Danny Armstrong

2011

Oil paint, acrylic gel, papier collé, marker pen and pigment ink on canvas

42 inches wide by 40 inches high

“If It Ain’t Got That Swing—Portrait of Danny Armstrong”, depicts San Francisco Bay Area trombonist Danny Armstrong. It was created from live sittings in my San Francisco studios. I have known Danny for over ten years through his playing with a local swing jazz band, Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers. I am a keen Lindy Hop swing dancer and have danced to his music many times over the years. What has always struck me about Danny is his incredible soulfulness in his playing and singing, and his outstanding warmth as a person. The title for this painting is inspired by one of Danny’s favorite songs, Duke Ellington’s classic composition “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”. The sentiment that music—and beyond music, life itself—doesn’t mean a thing if “it ain’t got that swing” encapsulates the way Danny plays music and lives his life. It is that sentiment I strove to capture in my portrait of Danny and that guided the way I painted it.

I started this portrait with a preparatory drawing made from a live sitting using a combination of Sumi-e ink applied with a hand-cut bamboo stick, Conté crayon, charcoal and gouache on Canson acid-free paper.

I scanned the drawing and made a digital file. Next I applied freehand brush strokes to the digital image using a variety of digital brushes in Corel Painter software on a Macintosh computer using a Wacom pressure-sensitive pen tablet. The resulting mixed media artwork was then printed on canvas using UltraChrome Pigment Inks and an Epson wide format inkjet printer. In the final stage I worked onto the canvas surface with oil paint, acrylic gel and papier collé.

Danny’s business card is incorporated into the painting surface in a tongue-in-cheek nod to Picasso’s famous portrait of Gertrude Stein. Danny added his own signature and musical notation to complete the portrait.

Danny Armstrong

2008, acrylic and collage on canvas, 23 inches x 36 inches

This painting was created from direct observation during series of sittings. Danny, a trombonist who plays regularly with Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, one of my favorite local swing bands, is a wonderful musician as well as a great person! I have enjoyed dancing to his music on many occasions. Here are some photos from the sittings and some details of the painting. Danny kindly brought along some of his original hand written notes and arrangements and permitted me to tear them up and inlcude them in my painting. If you look closely you'll see them...