I painted her sister in September of 2009. I don’t have the link handy to that post. Hoo doggy, it’s been a while. I’m rusty as all get out.

‘S’ok. Don’ worry. Or so I think. And silently, pleadingly, chastise myself internally. Again. Dang!

So I painted this in one session, in about 45 minutes or so. I mixed up a Cadmium Yellow Medium + a dab of French Ultramarine Blue. Basically orange and blue, which make a grayish color if ya dunno. I thinned the heck out of it and blended it with a soft bristle brush and proceeded on.

Or so I thought it was that way a ways back. I made promises to myself and summarily broke them. One fell swoop and that. You know?

But then I just decided to paint with no drawing. I drew from a picture on a computer monitor, too small and too far away, and painted blotches of color. BLOTCHES! Very impressionistic. I wanted it to be that way. Blocky, blotchy. But warm, late summer. Warm, like it isn’t outside.

I’ve been entertaining the thought, of late, that my artwork isn’t really the thing you see. It’s me. That little girl is me. The picture of the other person’s kids are me. Really, it’s all about me. Except self-portraits. They aren’t me. They’re little demon spawn, impish creatures that dance with delight in my turp-soaked brain, laughing and pointing and otherwise indifferent to my very existence. I made a mental note to reject that, to derail that thought train, as it were. But it was warm, late summer. And I caved. I gave in. Don’t we all? When we beckon unto ourselves? Most especially when it’s warm, Late Summer?

I fancy myself a Linux aficionado. I also like The Gimp. Lemme set something straight – The Gimp is like Photoshop but doesn’t seek to replace Photoshop.

Lemme set something else straight: I used The Gimp in a graphic design class that required Photoshop. And I got an A in the class and the instructor (and everyone else) was none the wiser.

Now that I got that out of the way, I have to say that about 9 months ago I discovered that The Gimp had brushes, and that was the way to do the best stuff. Forget importing images and tweaking them – brushes have it down pat! So I messed around and my first image was a halloween drink menu for my wife (she’s a private bartender when she’s not in nursing school).

I got a new laptop at work so I had to reinstall my apps… along with The Gimp, obviously… so here’s what I did today after grabbing all the new brushes I wanted.

I’ve been eager to paint again but my time has been consumed with my main job at a Fortune 100 company, with my side job working for my mother-in-law, with my side job as the CIO of a startup with my Navy buddies, and, finally, as a painter. I’m pretty fucking busy, to say the least, but what I really want to do out of all this is to make art. So today was slow at work… and I used the time to do this. Not a total waste of time, mind you, because I use The Gimp all the time to whip out a quick graphic (logo, banner, icon, etc.) at work, so I do need The Gimp up and running well so I’m ready when called on, but the image started as I was playing with my new brushes and sorta blossomed from there. You artist types know what I’m talkin’ about. Dig.

But I learned something. If your art sucks, you probably won’t sell it, even on Etsy. You fucking retard.

First, make art.

Second, make GOOD art.

Third, steal a carcass for me. Mmm.

But the point I want to make is that I found several artists by searching the Etsy profiles of artists making a full-time living and/or have quit their day jobs. It’s inspiring. It makes me want to slam my face into the wall.

So I went to the galleries … the SOLD galleries of these artists to see what they were selling. Guess what? LOTS of crafts and jewelry. Painters were few, and of those, most were just coloring in drawings with acrylics. A few were doing oil paints. Many were making wonderful niches, like the lady that will make a woodcut-looking portrait from your photograph.

A couple of key things here…

1. Successful folks on Etsy tend to produce a LOT by making smaller, cheaper derivatives from their larger pieces – prints, art cards, even their images inside pendants, on teacups, plates, and a massive array of shit
   1. Make small shit
   2. If you can’t do that, make your big shit into small shit
   3. ?
   4. profits!
2. Successful folks on Etsy tend to have a strong visual style. Make cartoonish, doe-eyed dollish girly paintings? Stick to it. People eat that shit up. Doesn’t have to be earth-shattering, new, trendy, or anything like that – just have one! I know I struggle with this myself.
   1. Okay, well, if your style is bad, you won’t sell anything
   2. Come up with an idea that YOU like and run with it
3. Successful folks on Etsy tend to not just put up a store and expect people to flock to it. You have to utilize your other venues: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, your personal blog, giveaways (postcards), mailing lists, newsletters, etc. It’s a fucking business, in case you didn’t know

It’s been 6 months since I painted, and I didn’t even finish that painting. I got tired of it. I didn’t like the way I couldn’t post about it. I got busy. I got fat. I got tired. I got dull. I got a life. I didn’t get a life.

Secretly, though, I have to get beyond myself. I don’t really like showing my work. It’s scary. It’s like opening up my brain and REALLY letting people peek inside, maybe test the fit on the spark plug boot and blow some dirt off the manifold. I don’t like it. But, as I’ve said, if I want to do this – and I do – then I have to shut my fucking trap and get over myself.

Don’t we all?

So I’ve been seething, I’ve been Jones’in’, I’ve been building up this pressure until I couldn’t take it any more. This morning, I had a tube of Venetian Red on my desk. A really nice tube from Old Holland. I got it for myself around the December holidays (xmas, if you like  – I don’t). It’s been there, doing its thing… which is nothing, really, except the symbolism. We’re into symbols, aren’t we, silly humans. A symbol, a metaphor, a reddish brown bitch taunting me and mocking me.

I couldn’t take it. I had to do it. I’ve had no less than 4 paintings completed in my head in the past few weeks. That’s how I know it’s time. The paintings never really come out onto canvas how they are in my head, but that process itself is part of the magic of painting, the magic of poring through the vast recesses, the nether regions of the brain and unsetting the carabiners.

“What to call this one?” I thought. When I think that, I always remind myself that “red on white” is actually mentally retarded. So is “study with Venetian Red.” Who the fuck CARES about that shit? Nobody. It draws about as much passing interest as my dog shitting on the lawn. So reach down and really name your painting. Really give us some oomph, some gut-punching, soul-tearing name that’s likely to give you at least a whimper of a thought to everyone that’s evolved past Homo habilis.

I briefly considered a longer name, such as “bursting through from the depths” or “a torrent of pent-up desire breaches the surface” or something along that vein. But TOO wordy is also bad. You lose people after only a few words. People can’t even wait to get out of their cars before they’re fucking texting each other, for chrissakes. So I let the former ideas steep whilst I went out back and photographed the painting. True to form, that slush between the ears came up with “What Lies Beneath,” a more apt title hinting at the inner struggle of a calm countenance, a struggle that’s been raging beneath and just now burst to the surface. And that’s pretty close to how it is to go 6 months without painting for me.

This painting wasn’t a choice, it was a bursting through, a necessity, a respite, a power grab.

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!

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!).

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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…