rediscovering painting
Archive for October, 2009
That j-o-b thing is annoying
0958 days
I’ve been busy the past several nights making time for friends/family, so I haven’t been able to paint. After about 3-4 weeks of painting consistently, it’s absolutely driving me crazy and my mind is consumed with painting ideas.
Inspiration abounds. I’m jotting ideas down and re-visiting ideas I crafted a while back. Refining. Honing.
But I did manage to set up my first oil painting workshop! Some friends from work, but definitely my “artist’s circle” of friends that can only help. I’m no expert painter (is anyone really, ever?) but I’m a damned good instructor and facilitator and I’m looking forward to it (in 2 weeks). I’ll post some pics from the workshop!
I also just discovered Hazel Dooney, whose work I think is fantastic in its originality and edginess, and that inspires me to be me.
And isn’t that what art is all about?
I can tell you one thing, being a corporate cube drone is NOT all about being me. Patience, perseverance, and painting. That’s what I’m doing now. As my portfolio grows and as my trepidation shrinks, I intend to start making noise.
In the mean time, this j-o-b thing is frustrating the heck out of me.
Thinking about ditching ivory black
0960 days
Since doing my last painting in Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Ivory Black, and Titanium White, I’ve been giving thought to the limitations of that palette – both good and bad.
First, I felt my colors were really low key. But that forced me to focus on values more than color, which I definitely need. But I wanted a little more variety, more options in what I’m mixing. So I started to dig.
I Googled my palette on Google Image Search and came up with several examples of people using this palette, but also some people using additional colors. So I peered down the rabbit hole and continued my search through the maze. Slowly, the maze started to simplify and I came to some conclusions.
Mostly, I need to switch blacks. Ivory black was good but very dull. “These Are Days” has a couple of dull spots where I came back in to fix the value with Ivory Black vs. my original mixture of Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine (“colorful black”). The colorful black was nice and shiny and didn’t dry as purple as it looked when it was wet.
I discovered that Payne’s Gray is (essentially) Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine. And it has a slightly purplish tone to it when you mix in white. That would have done wonders for the girl’s sweater (which, you can see, was actually a light purple, not yellow, but I couldn’t mix purple without blue, and Ivory Black insisted on making a neutral gray).
Then I wondered to myself, “Self, what about green?” Hmm, without blue, it seemed I was in a pickle. Then my rabbit hole ended on a thread about copying Velasquez – a limited palette of Titanium White, Ultramarine Blue, and Burnt Sienna. That’s it. You mix your black from Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna. You mix your greens my washing blue over the underpainting – done in Yellow Ochre.
A ha! There’s that sneaky little devil. I knew I’d find you, green!
Seems that ditching black altogether and mixing Payne’s Gray for myself from Ultramarine and Sienna is the way to go. Very simple, very clean, and might do wonders for me. Still won’t do orange very well (Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre don’t mix to a very orangey orange), but that’s okay. I don’t need it right now. And I’ll be able to do some good stuff for my next painting, concentrating more on values and less on color.
So long, Ivory Black, and thanks for the fish.
“These Are Days”
0962 days
by shuste73
in Daily Painting
Finally finished!
“These Are Days,” 9″ x 12″, oil on canvas board, $300
I have to admit that the reason I didn’t work on this painting was because I was afraid of it. I liked the drawing and the under-painting so much that I was afraid I’d ruin it.
And I did ruin it. But I’d let it dry so I scraped the canvas with my palette knife, dipped a paper towel in turpentine, and proceeded to rub out the color on all 3 kids.
Sigh.
But then I decided that the colors in the photo were too much and I simply needed to simplify. So I decided to go for the “portrait palette,” AKA the “palette of doom” or the “palette of death:” Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Ivory Black, Titanium White. And, boy, lemme tell ya, it was HARD. The colors aren’t high-key but I like where it took me. I *desperately* wanted to keep working this piece, but midnight was fast approaching and I needed to push myself away. So I cleaned my brushed, scraped/cleaned the palette, put everything away, and came into my office to do the writeup.
The underpainting adds French Ultramarine and Alizarin Crimson as the “colorful black” that’s really sort of a purple. I let that show through because I just… couldn’t… cover it up.
This painting was an emotional roller coaster. As with a real roller coaster, the only fear is the anticipation of the unknown. Once it’s over, you think, “wow, that wasn’t so bad!”
Wow, that wasn’t so bad!
There’s an owl right outside my back door hooting to a friend a few houses over. I wish I could see him. He’s really loud. And I like owls.
Recording your ideas
0963 days
I get a lot of ideas throughout the day. The key is to actually record these ideas so I can make them actionable. Which is corporate-talk for “don’t forget to paint a picture, doofus.”
2 ideas today.
One is from Carole Marine. She had a workshop and told her students to paint 1 small item. 10 times. On one canvas. With a time limit of 10 minutes each! I saw some of them and the progress from first to last is impressive. I’d like to try this. Though I’m loathe to paint apples 
Second idea is inspired from an abstract print I have hanging in my living room. I’d like to do an abstract expression of my workday, from snooze (on the alarm clock) to snooze (getting to bed).
I still have 2 more ideas sketched out, the stop sign picture, and the picture of the three kids to do, as well. It’s nice to have a lot of paintings in mind, that way I can work on whatever tickles my fancy on any given day.
I’ve also been giving thought to a series of paintings exploring lots of darks. Perhaps with only a moderately light tone and an intermediate tone. I’ve been thinking of how to apply what I like about Banksy to my own work, and thinking about tone being more important than color.
For the record, I didn’t paint yesterday because I had some painful recovery from some dental work. My jaw was killing me from having it braced open for 2 hours (not to mention 2 hours on the previous day, too) and I drowned out the pain with motrin and a shot of whiskey. Which left me too tired to stay up late painting. I wanted to but just couldn’t will myself over the pain, drugs, and booze to do it.