Creativity

You are currently browsing the archive for the Creativity category.

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!

Tags: , , ,

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!).

Tags: , ,

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.

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!

Tags: , , , ,

Portrait challenge – prep work

December 11, 2009 in Blogging, Creativity, Editorials, writing | 2 comments

I do a lot of prep work digitally for my oil paintings.

Sometimes I just look at them in The GIMP. Sometimes I digitally manipulate them – increase brightness, contrast. Sometimes I blur them so I can see the masses better.

Today, I applied a GIMPressionist filter to simplify the image down to color swatches.

portrait_min

So you get the idea – it breaks down the colors. I also spent about a half hour using the “eyedropper” tool in The GIMP to pull out colors. I’m ALWAYS amazed – “Really, that’s the right color?” I ask myself. Sure enough, if you isolate it, it’s right. But looking at the picture as a whole, you don’t see that. The color swatches you see with this filter actually help quite a bit – you can see what looks like detail but it’s actually very washed out. And I can see that I need a traditional portrait palette, so it helped me decide on:

  • Cad Yellow Light
  • Yellow Ochre
  • Cad Red Medium (not normally on my palette)
  • Alizarin Crimson
  • Burnt Sienna
  • Burnt Umber
  • French Ultramarine
  • Viridian Green (yes, this is a new color to my palette)
  • Ivory Black (okay, I’m mixing this from Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna)
  • Titanium White

**NOTE** Some important stuff – no white in her eyes. All greys. Don’t believe what your noggin’ tells ya. There’s actually NO pure white on this whatsoever. Though I’ll probably make the brightest brights from straight-from-the-tube Titanium White.  I bumped up the contrast so there’s a wide range of values here. Probably 1-10, though I’ll likely simplify the values and not quite use all 10 of ‘em. Or I’ll wait for the hot whisper in my ear as I’m painting it to tell me what to do. Yeah. That’ll do.

I’d like to do a value study – I’ve already desaturated the image digitally so I can see what’s to be expected. I’ll probably spend a LOT of time getting the landmarks place correctly – pupils, nostrils, corners of mouth. Once those are in, I can fudge the livin’ shit out of it and it’ll still look decent.

Above all, I’m scared that I’ll fuck this up. I don’t know why. I just have high expectations for myself and I end up convincing myself that I’m never going to achieve the vision I have for this piece. But at least I *have* a vision, so that’s something most people never get to.

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…

Tags: , , , , ,

“Hidden in Shadows”

November 11, 2009 in Art Every Day Month, Creativity, Daily Painting | 3 comments

“Hidden in Shadows,” 9″ x 11″, oil on canvas board, $300

hidden_in_shadows

I know I’ve said it, but I’ll say it again: sometimes you HAVE TO break the toy. You must. You can’t help it. You just gotta. It’s like throwing your keys down a storm drain and not being able to get them back again. You get the urge that most people resist. But not you. Oh, no, not you. You dirty bitch.

Taking chances on a painting can be awkward. Sometimes you make total crap. I mean total, fuck me I can’t believe I call myself an artist, crap. Crapola. Shitty shitty bang bang.

Sometimes, though, it just works. Like this painting. I was going to call this something else, but the painting, as is their wont, spoke to me as I painted it. It told me that I was on the wrong path, it whispered, “A little dab of light here, a subtle variation in shadow here… now BREAK IT, bwa ha ha.” Yes, it gave me the bwa ha ha evil laugh. I swear. You’da heard it if you was here, I tells ya.

You’re never gone, are you? Sometimes you just hide. In the shadows. And most people never look. You’re a crafty little demon! Ah, but you’re not going to get away with it this time. I’m gonna look. I’m a gonna stare ya down. I’m gonna grab on with a Chuck Norris fucking death grip and not let go. I’m gonna go where others dare not.

I’m gonna see it. You. Me. Hidden. In the shadows. Because I dared to look. Come, hold my hand as I swan dive over the edge, into the abyss!

(I painted this alla prima… then I came back with a brush full of thinner and smeared the crap out of it. Then I refined some more. Then I took a 2″ brush and splashed red all over… then I took that brush, dipped it in thinner, and whipped thinner at the canvas repeatedly… then I painted back in some parts… then I used a small brush and whipped thinner at the canvas a few more times. I was having too much fun. If that’s possible. BTW, I fucking LOVE this painting. I’m considering labeling it NFS)

Tags: , , , ,

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).

Tags: , , ,

“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!

Tags: ,

Bent

November 3, 2009 in Art Every Day Month, Creativity, Daily Painting, Process, painting | No comments

“Bent,” 9″ x 12″, oil on canvas board, $300

bent

“Sometimes you have to break the toy.”

He said that as he was smashing something of his that he really liked. He wasn’t talking to me, he was talking to my friend, Derek, the same guy whose wife blew his head clean off with a shotgun. Different story. Anyway, Derek laughed and I didn’t really get it at the time. I wonder if Derek was laughing because the guy was crazy or if he thought it was really funny.

The moral still holds true: sometimes you have to break the toy. I get it now.

I got this idea for a painting while watching Helvetica and I sketched out a thumbnail over the weekend: a painting split at the Fibonacci point with the top half blue, tainted/dulled with a wee dab of orange, and orange on the bottom, turned rusty/dirty with a wee spot of blue. The word, “Bent,” HAD to appear across the horizontal line and HAD to stretch off the edges. Sometimes I don’t know why they come to me, these ideas just DO. Okay?

Today, as I was prepping to continue my last 2 paintings in the self-portrait series, I flipped over a canvas board and found this really old self-portrait I had begun YEARS ago. The drawing was good in a technical sense but lacked emotion. Vivacity. So I thought to myself, “Self, why not do that blue and rust thing right over this old self-portrait?”

Then, devilishly, I continued, “BREAK THE TOY.”

Bwa ha ha ha!

I broke it. I borked it. I smashed it into little bits. I covered it up in thick paint then rubbed it back out again and left the canvas raw and the paint rough and the strokes mish-mashy and every which way, and I threw in a thought that I couldn’t dismiss as I was painting: “My, you’re a dirty little boy, aren’t you?” Mmm, yes, deliciously dirty.

Tags: , , , ,

« Older entries