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Back for a break

November 24, 2009 in Art Every Day Month, Blogging, Editorials | No comments

Sometimes things just don’t quite turn out how you’d like.

I started November completely intending to do the Art Every Day Month thing. Then I got really busy at work as schedules slipped and pressures mounted. None of it my doing, but all of it meaning I had to spend several nights working instead of painting.

Much to my chagrin. And utter annoyance.

Then I came down with a stomach flu last Tuesday that put me down for the count. I’m finally (and skip ahead because a TMI part is next) able to comfortably stay away from a toilet for more than an hour or more. Whatever this thing was, it had me down for 2 full days and my bowels haven’t quite made friends with me again until today. At least, they’re no longer my enemy. So that’s improvement.

However, we decided to head up to my in-laws for Thanksgiving… the week I was planning to use to catch up on paintings sitting around, cluttering my office (which really needs to be cleaned out entirely, which I was also going to do). I’m considering rekajiggering my art bin and seeing if I can manage to sneak up a basic paint set and get at least one small painting done while I’m there.

Saturday is my birthday, dear void, so I’m taking that day off from just about everything except lettin’ the wife “fuss” with me, as she calls it. Maybe she’ll paint my toes, maybe she’ll do breakfeast in bed, maybe we’ll sit around and play Super Mario Wii all day. I don’t care. But it’s gonna be slack.

I’ve got 2 more weeks of work after Thanksgiving and then I’ve got THREE WHOLE WEEKS off from work. It’s going to feel strange. But I’m going to make the most of it. I hope to have enough backlog of work to couple with my newer pieces that I can get a good eBay or Etsy Store (or both, why not?) going to list my paintings for sale. I’m also going to see if I can finagle a cheap HD camcorder (maybe the Mino or the Creative Vado) and make some YouTube videos.

Just exploring to see what works.

(FYI, posts may be sparse until the weekend – the tech possibilities at my in-laws aren’t so hot – they don’t even have wireless - ack!)

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Self portrait #4

November 12, 2009 in Art Every Day Month, Blogging, Creativity, Daily Painting, Ideas, Process, painting | No comments

Self portrait #4, 11″ x 14″, oil on canvas board, preliminary drawing, WIP

self_portrait_4

I had a painting I had done about 2 years ago when my son was 2. It was just me and him messing around. Mostly me trying to keep oil paints out of a 2 year old’s eyes and mouth. It began life as a terrible self-portrait so I intentionally ruined it with my kid. I scrubbed the canvas and then I sanded it down. Oil paint isn’t the best sanded material, in case you’re wondering. So I decided to go over it with a dark, dark brown. It’s been that way for 2 months. I have 2 other self-portraits prepared, but I’ve lost the muse on them. I might just paint over them.

So it goes.

I took a picture of myself with my digital camera, cropped it and shrunk it to fit the 11″ x 14″ canvas, and modified it in The GIMP (Photoshop-like clone for Linux) with the “photocopy” filter. That basically takes it down to an outlined drawing. Then I opened OpenOffice Presenter (PowerPoint clone) and made a 1-pager with a portrait orientation and a size to match the canvas. I dragged my image onto it, printed at actual size (my printer only does 8.5″ x 11″, so it printed 3 sheets’ worth), I traced the details I was concerned with onto tracing paper, rubbed white conte crayon onto the back, and then re-traced over the tracing paper to transfer the image to the canvas.

Next, I’ll spray it with fixative to make sure the conte crayon drawing doesn’t smudge. Then it’s ready for painting.

I haven’t decided how to paint this yet. I’m thinking that I should keep it dark. And drippy. And maybe lace in some wording/verbiage as it comes to me. I might just pull out enough lights to make it recognizable, attack it with thinner, pull out some more lights, and thrash with thinner again. I liked the effect I got yesterday so I want to get to it before it makes me want to pound nails through it. Hmm, now THERE’S an idea…

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Nagelesque

November 10, 2009 in Art Every Day Month, Blogging, Creativity, Daily Painting, Editorials, Process, painting | No comments

Update: here’s the picture:

“Nagelesque,” 9″ x 11″, oil on canvas board, NFS (this baby’s a keeper!)

nagelesque

I finished my “Nagelesque” painting last night. I decided to do some experiementing – I used my typical restricted palette (Cad Yellow Light, Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine, Burnt Umber, Titanium White) and I did a quick undercoating with a #10 brush… then decided I didn’t like that so I came back through with a palette knife for the rest of it. Thick, impasto painting.

To do this, I had to mix up a lot of paint to start out with, which is something I don’t normally do.  That was good for me. The first time, with the light purple, I didn’t mix up enough and had to mix more, so that sort of forced me to be able to duplicate my results. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds.

I decided to skip the underpainting, which I think was a mistake. I wanted the skin to be whitest white… so I left it unpainted. I wanted to see how that worked. Well, lemme tell ya, with no underpainting, the fine black outlining was tough because it didn’t flow, it stuck on the canvas’ rough texture. I had issues with a consistent line quality and came away a bit frustrated. Lesson learned – do the underpainting.

I didn’t take a picture of the completed piece last night – it was getting late and I was tired, and I’d really like to get some natural light on it because I’m tired of yellow and dark and non-representative images of my paintings. Ugh.

I also prepped another canvas with a more brownish mixture of Payne’s Gray (my own mixture). I’ve got 4 prepped canvases now. Quite honestly, I’m once again at the fear point of “oh, FSM, what if I ruin the drawing and underpainting?” that paralyzes me and makes me procrastinate on doing them at all. I need to remember: Break the Toy (TM).

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“Art every day month” is hard

November 7, 2009 in Art Every Day Month, Blogging, Creativity, writing | No comments

I work full time + I have 2 small kids + I have a house to maintain + I actually have a life, so actually doing some art EVERY SINGLE DAY is hard. I’m committed to it because, as I’ve said, I really want to be an artist. I really am working diligently towards it, even when it’s hard, even when I’d rather crawl up with a book and block out the world for an hour. Or just plain go to bed early… which is usually what gets me because staying up until midnight painting and getting up at 5am for work really wears me down. I can stop painting, I can’t stop working.

But in the spirit of Art Every Day Month, you don’ t have to actually do something every day, so I watched the rest of the movie, “The Cool Kids,” about art in the 70s in southern California while the world was going stark raving mad over the New York gallery scene. It was a good movie and I always love seeing people explain their breakthroughs as mere epiphanies brought about from just plain working at their art – like the guy that reduced his paintings to simple horizontal lines over a solid color because “everything either contributes or takes away from the painting.”

I love those moments. Just wish they’d happen to me more! But I suppose they will if I keep at it.

Today’s gonna be another hard day for Art Every Day Month – I had some cleaning to do, some errands to run, and a party to go to later (which is when I’m usually painting). So I may not get the chance to work on one of the 4 canvases I have prepped. Then again, I might. I’ve got some other ideas I’m forming, some themes.

One such theme is challenging people. I’ve got this Atheist group at work and I’m a pretty vocal member. One of the things I’ve been talking about recently is surrounding the arts and whether the government should sponsor them – and since the government DOES sponsor them (the NEA, et al.), should the government sponsor such things as Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ.” I say that if you’re going to do it, go all the way. Art is SUPPOSED to make you think, make you question.

Then I thought… “Hmm, does MY art make you think or make you question your beliefs?” No, not really. Sometimes, maybe, but not always. I just make most of my stuff intuitively and, moreso lately, just let myself go with whatever’s in my head at the time and let the artwork speak to me as it’s in the process of being created.

Now that I think of it, my old manager might be at the party tonight and her husband, apparently, has been taking painting classes and getting into art. If he’s there, I’ll definitely have to drag him aside and bend his ear. Ed, you should hope I don’t drink too much or you’ll never get me to shut up!

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Art Every Day Month

November 4, 2009 in Art Every Day Month, Blogging, Daily Painting, Process | No comments

“Lost,” 11″ x 14″, preliminary drawing on canvas board, WIP

travelers_drawing

November is Art Every Day Month. Okay, it’s not some real holiday or anything, and you won’t find it on any calendar or as an Outlook add-in. But I’m really going to give it a go this month. Something – ANYTHING – done, every day. Progress on a piece, painting, doodling, crafting spitball sculptures, whatever.

This particular drawing is on canvas and is prep work for the Different Strokes for Different Folks entry. It’ll be my third piece that I’ve entered to be displayed on Karin’s site. It’s actually sort of nerve-racking to put yourself out there like that, especially with so many great interpretations. But it’s also inspiring – your take is your take, how YOU see it, not how it is to anyone else.

As you can see, I did a grid this time. I was enlarging from a really bad printout, but that’s okay because I’m not concerned with much, just the outline. I could have free-hand drawn everything but the grid saves me some time. It’s nearly 11:30pm and I’ve got to get up before 6am and get ready for work, you know. One day this will be my full-time gig. Until then, grids are my friend. Well, maybe they still will be because I *have* learned to draw and to see but that’s not what I’m after here.

I’m calling this one, “Lost,” because it’s an image of 3 travelers, together but alone. Shadows touching without knowing. Each with their own thoughts that probably are more similar than we’ll ever know. Just being the busy little ants that we are. Where are they going? They don’t know, they’re lost in the continuum. Time-space is a void and they’re just along for the ride. They don’t know where they are or where they’ll end up. They’re lost. Aren’t we all?

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I want to be an artist.

October 29, 2009 in Blogging, Creativity, Editorials, Ideas, writing | No comments

“I want to be an artist.”

Those are the words I said back in 1987, my freshman year of high school, to my guidance counselor. I was 13 years old. He was a dull-looking man with pale skin, well-trimmed beard, short, black hair, and a glass eye. I don’t remember his name but I do remember that glass eye.

I wonder if glass eyes have gotten any better since then?

I was asked what I want to do “when I grow up” as a way of mapping out the classes I should take in high school. I ended up taking a LOT of art classes. I think that sometimes Mrs. Hammerman really disliked me but couldn’t do much about it because I was her little star pupil (much to my chagrin – I didn’t really like the attention, which made it all that much easier for me to push her buttons). In my senior year I had 2 study halls and always managed to get a pass to go paint. I was in Painting II and Directed Study, which was where I painted some more.

I would stand there in my backwards, oversized button-up shirt, Walkman on, and paint.

And, boy, did I love it.

Things went downhill after high school – the military left me bereft of art opportunities and I had built up a nice salary and a corresponding lifestyle by the time I left the military 8 years later.

Then I settled in and put the dream on ice.

Then I started to write out my ramblings and ideas on Facebook last year. As more and more people joined, I got more and more heat about it, and I eventually stopped. Now I’ll still write but I’ll do it on a scrap of paper that will promptly make its way to the recycle bin. My ramblings haven’t stopped, I’ve only stopped sharing them.

However, what I really wanted to untap was the artistic flow that I had stopped up all those years ago. Gone were my lame excuses. It was time. I STILL wanted to be an artist. I still WANT to be an artist. I AM an artist.

So I dove in one September night and painted a picture, Summers End. I was hooked.

It’s been just shy of 2 months and I’ve completed a decent number of paintings.

I work at a Fortune 500 company. I can’t say I hate it, because I don’t, but it’s mostly dull but mostly pays the bills. I’ve been coming to a slow realization as I read Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal” and reading Seth Godin and catching up to successful artists on Twitter that I’m a wage slave. I can’t quit my job. I can’t stop working today. I’m a slave to it. And a deep, dark loathing bubbles up inside of me to even type out those words. This isn’t who I was supposed to be.

So what should I do?

I should be who I’m supposed to be. It seems pretty obvious, but, like all things that seem easy and obvious, it’s all-at-once difficult and simple. It’s its own paradox.

I will break out and continue with my themes. I will capture the fleeting thoughts and ideas on my blog, on scraps of paper (that I’ll keep instead of making them grist for the 80% post-consumer waste mill), and on the voice recorder in my cell phone. I will continue to draw, the watch inspirational art movies (I just watched “Helvetica” and I could really relate to the guy that said “bad taste is ubiquitous”), I will continue to PUSH myself.

Sometimes I have an idea and I’m afraid I can’t reach that one quite yet. Sometimes I paint total crap and share it, anyway. Sometimes I see myself through perspective of dissociation, sometimes I sketch it. I have some ideas that I pursue and they become impractical. I have some feelings I forget before the shower is over. I have drawings in canvas where I’ve lost the muse; I have others where I’m afraid to destroy the drawing with paint.

Above all these things, though, I have a goal: I want to be an artist.

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Shadows of me

October 14, 2009 in Blogging, Creativity, Ideas, painting | No comments

So, first, I realized I’m only on my third self-portrait in the series of 5. And I’m not quite sure how to pull together tonight’s painting – I’m going to let it lead me in our subtle dance. I have documented some loose ideas for the other 2 – one’s an old post here and one’s on the nifty voice recorder on my cell phone. Though I’m struggling with one idea. I might pitch it to the bin. The circular file. Yes, the inimitable shitcan. Well, it’s actually a virtual shitcan, but you get the idea.

I was looking at Linda Apple’s bicycle shadow paintings yesterday and my brain did a lightning cross-check of stuff I’ve done, and I had a minor epiphany. Just minor, nothing big. Okay, more like a “duh” moment. I often take pictures of my own shadow. Yes, I’m a dork. So my wife tells me. And she’s probably right. But what just came together was a menage a trois of inspiration (bicycle shadows + my taking pictures of my own shadows + self-portrait series) – series 2, another 5 self-portraits, this time with my shadow lying across various objects, or showing me doing things. I’ve got some tungsten lamps in the garage that will make some nice shadows if the sun doesn’t cooperate.

I can also use this as a platform to get a little more detailed in my paintings. I can burn through 5 of my smaller canvases, toying with detail that way. I can play with contrast, exaggerating colors and values. I can play with various techniques for massing large areas. Hmm, perhaps some additional limited palette exercises.

(as an aside, I accidentally created Burnt Sienna last night from my Payne’s Gray mixture (“colorful black”) and cad red medium – these are things you’ve just got to experience by slapping down some paint on the palette and sloshing it around and asking yourself, “Self, what happens if I do *this*?”)

Eventually, I’ll get to the point where even my bad days are great pieces. For now, though, soldier on and learn, learn, learn by continuing to paint, paint, paint.

Did you ever notice how paintings are somehow disappointing when you get close up? It’s like you expect to see MORE detail when you get closer, but you just see how the artist deftly fooled your eye. I end up feeling a little let down but at the same time I get inspired because I see the mystery unravel before me. And I realize that I can do that, too. And I will.  Soon. By exploring some Shadows of Me.

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Sometimes I wonder

October 8, 2009 in Blogging, Creativity, Editorials | No comments

Sometimes I wonder if I’m going down the wrong path with my art. So many great artists do the “traditional” thing. While I use a fairly traditional method, my results are not something that would fit into the nice, neat categories of still life, landscape, or portrait.

Sometimes.

Then there are other times when I question myself, censor myself. For example, I’m an atheist and I see a lot of god-culture crap around me. I see a lot of church-state issues. I see a lot of zealots trying to ignore facts to get their church’s viewpoints made law for all to follow in obeyance.

It’s hard for me to say, “Fuck it” and do what I want to do, say what I want to say. “Oh, better not say that, there might be repercussions,” and “Uh oh, that might piss off so and so,” and, worse yet, “I won’t do that even though I really want to because it might impact my art market.” I don’t even HAVE an art market yet, and I’m worrying about it.

Fuck me.

So I’m going to do this self-portrait series that I started yesterday and sketched out another idea for tonight’s painting (inspired by Hazel Dooney – again) and just be me. It’s called, “And Still I Persist.” It’s all about me. Isn’t it always?

So if I say, “Fuck your god,” then it’s no personal offense to you, really. Just fuck that god that keeps trying to creep into my secular society.

And if I say “fuck” a whole lot, then so fucking be it! It’s my artwork, it’s my world, and I have to live it. Besides, nobody cares, so I’m told. I’m also told that I should ignore everybody. So I’ll selectively take that bit of advice, thank you very much. I’ll just create my art in my own little hole until I’ve got about 20 pieces or so to start to share. Which should be in about a month.

In the mean time, I’ll still have the nagging thoughts. I’ll still censor myself, despite efforts to the contrary. I’ll still wonder. And I’ll still say “fuck” a lot.

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Nobody Ever Said It Was Going to be Easy

October 6, 2009 in Blogging, Creativity, Daily Painting, Process | No comments

“Nobody Ever Said It Was Going to be Easy,” 11″ x 14″, oil on canvas

nobody_said

I had this idea today that I could so some self-portraits but with a personal twist – close-up and extremely simplified. I might go down to 2 tones, maybe 3. But that’s it. I’m going to outline the face in a dark color and the background may end up just being some flake white (because I want that pasty texture). I’ll use my normal signature brush to do the writing in a bold color. I might invoke the Sienna underpainting with the limited palette of Sienna, Ultramarine, and Titanium White. Except the writing. It’s taking a bit of limelight, so deal.

Back in high school I used to fill sketchbooks with a sort of “chain of thought” or “spoken word,” if you will. The drawings were fragments that meant something to me and then I would simply write the text along the path of the object. It doesn’t matter if the text fits the drawing. Because it will, no matter what. Either directly or in a Nietzsche Family Circus sort of way.

I refined the process over the years but I’ve never, ever shared them.

Well, here goes nothing.

I’m going to aim for several of these in this style. Let’s say, oh, at least 5.

Last night I watched “It Might Get Loud,” a documentary about Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White. Jimmy Page has a lot of screen time (he’s the co-producer) and really spends a lot of time talking about all the questions he had while learning guitar. He practiced and practiced, he experimented and experimented, and also did just regular Joe sorts of things like fill-in studio work.

No, I’m not Jimmy Page. I’m me. And I need to experiment so that my style will reveal itself. Reveal me. Reveal what it is I want to say. Or maybe what I don’t want to say?

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That j-o-b thing is annoying

October 6, 2009 in Blogging, Creativity | No comments

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.

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