You could do anything

February 3, 2010 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

“you could do anything

you could do anything

you could do anything

you could do anything”

So goes the lyrics from Nirvana’s “Blew,” a great song from the Bleach album.

And so spot-on.

Forgive me as I pontificate.

I’ve been waxing nostalgic a bit lately. As I come back from a business trip and, once again, play “fix it” guy for a whole host of stuff in the corporate supply chain world, I get stressed out and no time for play makes Stevie a dull boy. Or so it’s said. But the important thing, and there IS an important thing, fucker, is that I haven’t had time to finish cleaning my office and turning it into the studio it needs to be.

For you regular followers. And there are exactly ZERO of you, so I’m speaking to myself here, which is par for the course, I never got to finish cleaning out the office. Which I need to do. I heard that the area rug I wanted to use, one that’s stuffed neatly into the rafters of the garage, was never properly cleansed of dog shit. Yes, you read that right. So I need time to steam-clean that puppy because I don’t need oil paints embedded into the Berber, thank you very fucking much.

And I can’t do that while the kids sleep. And work’s been, well, WORK. I’m earning that motherfucking paycheck, I gotta say. And it kinda sucks. I liked having little to do, knowing the gameplan fully in advance, and executing on what’s easy for me but hard for most chumps. I’m feeling a little arrogant tonight, fuck off if you don’t like it.

But I found this cool site where the blog owner has a geographic area selected and you do Google Street View and you paint a random scene somewhere in that geographic area. Pretty tits, huh? Well, yeah, I thought so, too – glad you’re along for the ride, Skippy.

As I was playing with this thing, I started finding all the old places where I used to live. Very nice stroll down memory lane. I really, haphazardly, lazily realized that I really miss New Hampshire. The yards are big, the streets are narrow. The green is so goddamned green. For reference, I’m literally 20′ from my neighbors. Actually, I’m about 12′ from one neighbor on one side. That’s California for ya. I grew up where I was probably 100′ from the nearest neighbor. I couldn’t even *see* the nearest neighbor through the trees. The people across the street were probably about 1000′ feet away or so.

And here I am, just about sitting my cornhole right atop the neighbors. And I really hate it. I REALLY hate it. My wife says that California is a sinking ship. I’m inclined to agree. Only we’re upside down on the mortgage, thanks to irresponsible lending and irresponsible borrowers. Where’s my motherfucking bailout?  Whatever. I don’t really want that. I want my house value to go back up to a reasonable level. 40% drop in value sucks dog nuts. Especially through no fault of my own. The strong Libertarian bent in me really gets fired up about other people fucking me like that. So I’ll shut the yap now.

The POINT of all this rambling, ya see, is that I CAN do anything. I can also find every fucking excuse in the book to rationalize NOT doing anything, too. I’m too smart for my own good, it seems. I’d love to quit my day job and plow full-on into the dark unknown faster ‘n uncle’s day in a whorehouse, but that’s a huge step and scary. And I’m not the kind of person to stop suckling at the corporate teat so readily. Mmm, corpo-milk!

But I know I can do it. I know I can get myself on a painting routine. I know I can get better. I know I can sell enough to live off of it. I know I can leave the cubicle nation. I know I can find a way. I know I can get back to the East Coast and sustain myself. I know I can. because I can do anything. I can do anything. I can do anything. I can do anything.

If you wouldn’t mind I would like it blew
If you wouldn’t mind I would like it loose
If you wouldn’t care I would like to leave
If you wouldn’t mind I would like to breathe

Is there another reason for your stain
Could you believe him when you discussed his stain?
Here is another word that rhymes with shame

You could do anything

(trivia: I sometimes use “stain” as my online identity. Because I think it’s funny. But I heard it here first.)

If you want to be a writer

January 26, 2010 in Uncategorized | No comments

  • “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” – Stephen King

Same deal with being a painter. Or chef. Or programmer. Or sniveling media darling.

If you want to do it, do it. And when you’re not doing it, learn more about it any way you can.

  • “You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.” – Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel)
  • “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in the human condition.” – Graham Greene

Traveling

January 24, 2010 in Uncategorized | No comments

Traveling for work. Won’t be able to post any updates. Well, I could post some updates but they’d be meaningless. Well, not really *meaningless,* per se, you know. But I won’t be able to paint for a week. I suppose that’s what I’m saying. I can’t actually paint. And I’ve got a couple of prepared canvases and a b&w value study that, come hell or high water, I’m turning into a finished piece. Damn it all.

Though I’m 100% confident I’ll hit the due date of Jan 31 for the surprise portrait.

I did manage to get most of my office cleaned out, now I’ve got to move the furniture around, repurpose a couple of things, and get an old area rug out of the garage (and steam-clean it), and situate my easel in a good spot in the office. An added benefit is that all my music is in my office, and my monitor is a nice 19″ flat panel (wide screen) so I can use it for reference work.

I got 4 “day light” fluorescent lights in here and it’s bright. Could be brighter, but I’m probably just getting anal retentive about the lighting.

On the bright side (I crack myself up), I did dig out my old Northwood PC (my previous one to the current powerhouse, my quad-core QX9650-based machine, which, admittedly, is aging by modern standards but does all I need and then some), found another Core 2 Duo machine I’d been meaning to put Ubuntu on, and found a really old Pentium III-based machine (no case, though). Don’t know what to do with THAT – though I’m sure it works and I’ve got a 6GB hard drive hanging around for it.

The computer graveyard, for those keeping tally, is down to a remarkable 3 – count ‘em, THREE – PCs, and they all actually work. I don’t even have enough spare parts layin’ about to build another PC. That’s probably the first time in 15 years. Good thing, too, because I need the space for my art stuff. Because I’m really giving up on the career in IT and going back to my first calling – painting.

My “studio”

January 22, 2010 in Blogging, Editorials | 1 comment

I’m moving my studio.

Ha! That’s really funny because I don’t have a studio. I have to drag everything out, unpack, set up, THEN I can start painting. In my kitchen. That’s not so bad. The hard part is breaking it all down when I’m done painting for the night – scraping down and wiping my palette, washing out and drying all my brushes, moving a still-wet painting on the easel to a safer place (kids and a cat and a dog, oh my!).

[sigh]

Garaged
I *tried* the garage, but Sacramento has 2 seasons: freakin’ hot and freakin’ cold and rainy. About 2 weeks between them on either end that are nice, and for about 4 years I managed to paint during those 2 weeks, but it wasn’t easy and quickly got either freakin’ hot or freakin’ cold.

Office-slash-studio
So I’m experimenting with putting my studio in my home office. We have a 3 bedroom house + office (with French doors!). The office is right off the dining room/living room/main entrance to the house and it’s not quiet at all. Hollow French doors and hollow walls don’t really help.

Not to mention that my office is a total mess. Or was. Or, well, half-is. I spent about 3 or 4 hours last night cleaning out my “computer graveyard,” as my wife calls it, and just flat-out tossing stuff. I had gone through the bookshelves (10 shelves quadruple-packed with books, with books on top, too) in the Fall and those are in the garage, in boxes, awaiting a trip to either the used bookstore or the Thrift Store. Or both.

Multipurpose space
The office isn’t a one-trick pony. It’s a workhorse. Now it’ll be even more so!

  • Office space for when I work from home one day each week + evenings and some early mornings
  • Home office for paying bills, sorting through the bank account, paying taxes, etc.
  • Important paperwork storage
  • Computer room
  • Home studio (music recording on my PC, though haven’t done much of that since I usurped my mixing board for band practice)
  • Managing and/all side businesses (there’s been a few, still a couple)
  • Book storage
  • CD storage
  • Music room (guitar, bass, amp)
  • Art studio!!!

Did I mention that this is a small, 10′ x 10′ space? I manage to cram a lot of crap into a small space.

It’s all about me, of course
I need a space where I can just go paint. Where I can sneak in and paint when I’ve got a half hour while the kids are watching Dora or otherwise engaged in making each other scream and cry. I need a space where I don’t have to completely build up and tear down every day. I need a space where I can be more productive. I need a space where I can use my computer at the same time that I’m painting.

The only down side is LIGHT. There’s no overhead light in the room and the window is in the sheltered area that is the front entryway, shaded by the garage and the dining room (the sidewalk is between them, the window is way back in the shadows). Ventilation is good, though – I can open the window in the winter and not worry about rain at all because I’ve got at least 5 feet or so of distance from where the rain can reach. I’ll need to see if the light is good enough or if I have to invest in one of those fancy art lights. Or maybe a full-spectrum bulb in a $5 clip-on would work?

I suck. So I did a value study instead.

January 19, 2010 in Blogging, Creativity, Daily Painting, Editorials, Process, painting | No comments

In the process of painting, one comes to realize that it’s just not happening. That canvas is fighting you all the way. It’s taunting you. Calling you names. Dripping hot wax on your nipples and bustin’ out the hot pokers. Then it gets nasty. But we won’t go there.

What matters is that I just couldn’t seem to get anything to work in the painting I was working on today, which I can’t show you until the surprise is sprung. Anyway, I got pics and everything to show just how bad it got. Yes, I documented my shame. And I’m going to share it with you when I can (after Jan 31).

So… I persevered and kept at it and suddenly I realized I’d lost it. Not my mind; I lost that years ago. I lost the painting. It got away from me, a naked child running away and laughing. So I grabbed my palette knife and scraped the whole damned thing down, then rubbed it down with a turpentine-soaked paper towel.

I’ll teach you to run away, you little bastard!

Remember that I preserved the charcoal drawing with fixative, so I was essentially down to a toned canvas with my drawing. Square one, for all intents and purposes. Sigh.

I stood back and decided that I wasn’t going to admit defeat. Not me. Not today. I was going to do a value study. It was the color and the values that were getting the better of me. So I did the value study. And it came out great. But it’s in oil and I want to paint some more tomorrow night… so, um, I don’t know what to do with it now. No way it’ll be dry for about a month. I got a pic of it and I think I may chalk it up  to learning and move on. I have another canvas prepped but I decided to go bigger at the last moment.

The reference photo just isn’t working for me. It’s all browns – you can’t see any of the richness of the flesh, the underlying veins or rouge of the cheeks or any vibrancy in the shadows. So I’m struggling to basically paint a portrait in a series of yellows, oranges, and browns. LOTS of browns. And I don’t like it.

I might just throw caution to the wind and make the best of a bad reference photo by going hyper-creative and pushing an extreme coloring of the portrait. Or do something similar to my self-portrait series and go completely random and push my own style. I had wanted to do another really good, realistic portrait but I think I’m going to have to put that on the back burner because I don’t want to do a brown portrait.

Or, and this is an idea, I can tweak the value study with splotches of color here and there. Maybe draw a horizontal band and “colorize” that area. Hmm. That would work. And I’ve been itching to use some of my bench warmer paints. Hmm. I think I just helped myself figure out a solution. Thanks, self!

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Working on a secret portrait

January 16, 2010 in Blogging, Creativity, Daily Painting, Editorials, Materials, Process, Techniques, painting | 1 comment

I know it looks like I’m not doing as much here, what with the filling up of the space with crap out how it sucks to have a good painting. I know some people were like, “Yeah, I totally GET that,” while others were all, “Boo fucking hoo, jackass.” Cie la vie.

It remains that it IS hard to follow up. I suspect much of a book I’ve been meaning to get, Art and Fear, is about this very subject. I’ll probably read it and be thinking in my head the whole time, “Yeah, yup, uh huh, totally, exactly, YEAH, that’s me,” on and on. It’s a good ego stroke. And if there’s something I like, it’s to be stroked.

So, anyway, I do have something to say that actually ties in to the title of this post. I’m working on another portrait, but I can’t reveal it. Though the recipient, I guarantee, won’t come here… I suppose I can wait. Thought I don’t like to not have regular posts.

So far, I’ve done my color study in The GIMP (Photoshop-like app for Linux), I’ve done a charcoal drawing, and I went a little further with this one and something I’m trying to see if I can get my on-demand drawing skills back up to where they used to be.

(Back when I was in the Navy and single and bored and living in the barracks, I drew. And drew. And drew! It got to where I could whip out any ‘ol picture and make a really good drawing/likeness – in PEN – in the first pass. Those were the days of drawing for hours each day. Those were days that are looooooong gone.)

Instead of doing the drawing from my computer screen (how do YOU do commissions when all you get is a JPG?), I printed it out on my laser printer. I like to use it because it’s black and white and lets me do my drawing without the distraction of color. Oh, and color laser printers are farking expensive.

So, anyway, I tells Maude, ya see, that Doris told me that Ethel tells her that she overheard Frankie and he said…

Oh, sorry. I like to ramble at times.

I did a charcoal drawing directly on the canvas, trying to match the size of the printout exactly. Then, using tracing paper, I traced the printout and laid it over my charcoal drawing. Hmmm, I was pretty close on most things, but was off on a few key things – one of the eyes, the angle of the nose, and the neck line. But I was pretty close overall, and mostly pleased with myself.

[stops for applause, takes a bow]

Charcoal, in case you don’t know, comes off the canvas in a stiff breeze, unlike graphite (your trusty #2 pencil for you non-artists). I use a paper towel and it wipes right off. So I twisted the paper towel and selectively erased some parts and came back in with the vine charcoal and gave it another go. Then replaced the tracing paper to see how well I did. I got everything but one eye this time. Back at it again and I think I got it nailed.

I think this method keeps me honest in my drawing skills but also lets me quickly troubleshoot problem areas.

And, in all honesty, the first time I came through with the tracing paper I ended up wiping the charcoal off of the ENTIRE CANVAS. Ouch. It was that bad. The next time through, I relied less on measuring and more on just looking, feeling. Use the Force, Luke!

A coat of fixative to secure the charcoal in place and we’re set for a first layer of paint.

After the reveal, I’ll upload the process pics (yes, I have process pics!).

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Successful paintings suck

January 12, 2010 in Blogging, Creativity, Editorials, exercise, writing | 1 comment

Reading Andrew Loomis today. And sketching. Not painting, unfortunately. A funny thing happens to me. I have a successful painting. And it’s the worst thing. You see, what if I can’t follow up with another winner? What if it was a fluke? What if my next painting is total shit?

So to counteract that, I’m doing some drawing basics – copying Loomis drawings using his technique. Not my favorite technique, but a good technique nonetheless. And good to put charcoal to paper again. I’m dating them so I can see the progression (if I do this more than a few days in a row).

But I’m really no good at copying drawings that aren’t real people. I’m flat-out terrible, in fact. I’d love to get the Bargue book – but it’s a cool hundred bucks. Not in the cards for the time being.

So, in the mean time, I’m still here, I’m still drawing, trying to make it every single day, even though that ends up being 10pm or later. If you want it badly enough, you’ll endure. Or you’ll delay by doing anything but what you should be doing because your last painting was successful. And that sucks.

A novel approach

January 8, 2010 in Blogging, Daily Painting, Process, painting | 1 comment

Well, not really. I don’t have an approach. But I’m prepping 2 canvases tonight. I have a couple of paintings to finish tonight.

I’m told… well, I’m told but I don’t always listen to what I’m told.. that I should paint every day. Every single goddamned day. You know, like, daily and stuff. So I’m going to try. Though I’m telling you it’s hard. It’s really hard. But I want so badly to start selling my work that I have to run through my first 100 bad paintings before I start getting to the good stuff. And at about 10 paintings each month, that’s damned near the whole year.

Hey, I rhymed.

So here goes. I’m posting the ref photos even though it bugs the crap out of me to do it. Because then I’m ON THE HOOK, man. I’m freakin’ on the hook. [sigh]

10325_1274647906221_1230648909_833190_5833692_n

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Steve Husted: portrait artist?

December 30, 2009 in Creativity, Daily Painting, Process, exercise, painting | 14 comments

HOLY CRAP this was a hard painting to do. I spent a little over 3 hours just on the oil painting. That’s more time than I’ve spent on any one painting since I started painting again in September.

Phew!

This portrait is of Rajashree Raghavendra, and is for the Different Strokes for Different Folks (DSFDF) painting challenge blog that Karin Jurick hosts. It’s a lot of fun and very challenging and, for me, can be pretty stressful. She painted me.

By the way, I should say that, yes, I am available for commissions if you so happen to see this painting and think you’d like to have one done for you or a loved one. Or a despised one; makes no diff to me.

I was going to take a bunch of pictures as I went through the process but I got sucked into the painting and next thing you know, it’s 10:40pm and the wife is headin’ off to bed and I’ve still got at least an hour of work to do.

Here’s the reference photo and my painting. Please note that I tweaked the ref photo for brightness and contrast and saturation a bit. It was dark when I got it. Also note that my painting was photographed in my kitchen under fluorescent lights (it is just about midnight so I’ll have to get the full sunlit painting tomorrow, hoping the weather permits) so it’s not really representative of the work (it’s brighter than this). Edit: got a picture outside – it’s overcast but the colors are definitely coser to reality. Not exactly, but pretty close.

PORTRAITraj_portrait_dsfdf

Okay, okay, enough blathering, here’s the process for this painting:

  • Started with drawing in graphite pencil, made it permanent with fixative
  • Came in with the gray background and outlined the face and laid in the major landmarks
  • Came in with darkest darks (always scary at this point!)
  • tried mixing up the darkest flesh tones – took me probably 5 puddles of paint before I got color/value I liked
  • laid in the dark flesh tones, followed by the mids, and came back through with the lights (bright yellow, not pure white)
  • Worried over the mouth. I ended up getting it pretty good. Note: I don’t paint teeth. I paint a grayish yellow area with a darker shadow and a black line at the top
  • Freaked out over the eyes, so I blobbed some black outlines, black pupils, and dark gray “whites” to set it in. Left it at that for a while
  • Came back through to get the reflected lights. Could have done better on the nose but the paint wasn’t agreeing with me. I need better brushes.
  • Scarf/hair laid in
  • Used a palette knife (the sharp edge) to scratch in some gray hairs. Sorry, Raja, but they’re there so I put ‘em in!
  • Re-did the glasses shadow like 4 times. It’s a purplish pink flesh tone and was hard to get. I ended up adding some Burnt Sienna to get it to look right in the painting
  • Worked on the eyes like a freak
  • Decided to go with an “unfinished” look. I like that look. Also wanted to include some blue in the shirt for unity (there’s blue in the hair and a touch of green in some of the flesh to “gray” out the red)
  • The part in the hair gave me some trouble but I think I nailed it
  • Finished the eyes. Again.
  • Came through with some highlights and a smaller brush
  • More eye work
  • Used the palette knife to suggest glasses rims – a black line and a gray line, top and bottom
  • MORE eye work – reworked most of the eyes and liked them better
  • Reworked the neck to make it darker and to add the single brush stroke for the entire lit side (I like when I can get something done in a single stroke… of course, it took like 8 strokes before that one to get the right color/tone)
  • Finishing touches, ensuring I didn’t miss anything
  • Finished up eyes with highlights on lower lids and “alive” highlight on pupil
  • Put the earrings in (they’re grey, believe it or not)
  • Done!

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Portrait challenge – graphite under-drawing

December 29, 2009 in Daily Painting, Process, painting | No comments

I took my last charcoal drawing and overlaid it on the original photograph. My drawing was off in a couple of ways:

  • I didn’t make her face wide enough
  • I didn’t make her lower lip and chin large enough

Other than that, the right-hand side (as you’re looking at it, not HER right-hand side) was dead-on. Not bad since I haven’t done a portrait in years. Anyway, I fixed it by getting some landmarks placed correctly and re-drawing it directly on the canvas with an HB pencil, sprayed it with fixative and it’s drying as I type this.

dsfdf_portrait_canvas_prep

I emphasized the darkest points and some landmarks so that they’d show through as I painted. Once I did that, I filled in some darker shadows so I could be sure I got the bottom of the chin in the right spot and I proceeded to draw in the eyes, nose, and mouth. I pretty much kept the hair the way the charcoal drawing was.

Her right eye (her right, not your right) isn’t really that droopy – she has dark make-up under her eye (well, either that or some REALLY dark skin and really thick lashes) – my pencil was getting dull from the shading work on the canvas. In case you’ve never used a pencil on canvas, I can tell you that the texture of the canvas really wears down your pencil in no time flat. And stuff.

I offset her on the canvas to make the composition interesting. I’m considering doing an “unfinished” look to the surrounding features and background, a la much of the work of John Howard Sanden- yeah, right, as if I could pull THAT off. I’ll be happy if this doesn’t look like a paint-by-numbers or like I’m some sort of hack. Well, I AM a hack, just that I try not to let that get out too often.

Truth be told, I’m afraid to do this. What if I screw it up? What if I can’t get the values right? Or the colors? Or the background doesn’t recede properly? Or I don’t finish in time. I’ve got tonight and tomorrow to finish this or I’ve missed a deadline I’ve committed to. And I can’t let that happen. And I’m afraid to ruin this thing. Oh, well, only one thing to do… the copyrighted “break the toy” phrase to the rescue!

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