rediscovering painting
Process
Bent
0929 days
“Bent,” 9″ x 12″, oil on canvas board, $300
“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.
Hotel Window
1939 days
“Hotel Window,” 5″ x 7″, $100
My second official (but fourth, actually) Different Strokes from Different Folks picture. I was actually more than a little reluctant to do this one and waited a bit on it. In the end, though, I’m glad I did it. As always, I learned quite a bit from it.
I painted over a few parts because those muddy yellows and distant bluish colors were challenging to get just right. I thought about tossing all realism out the window and going for a completely abstract piece, as many others have done, but I wanted to try a few challenges.
First, I switched Burnt Sienna for Burnt Umber. I’m glad I did – I think I got some better grays and I think it interacted better with yellow. My palette is now down to Titanium White, Yellow Lemon, Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine, and Burnt Umber. Just 5 colors (well, technically 4 colors + white). I can get a lot of mileage out of that palette, I think.
Second, I wanted to go a little thinner on the paint, so I did.
Third, my underpainting was a heavily diluted yellow that I then blotted up with a paper towel. It was dry just about immediately. I did my drawing directly in super thinned Burnt Umber, closing one eye and using the paintbrush to measure it out. Burnt Umber, unlike Burnt Sienna, dried really quickly.
I’m very pleased with this painting. Again, not something I’d normally paint, but that’s half the point of doing the DSDF, right?!
“Becoming,” self-portrait #3
0949 days
“Becoming,” 14″ x 18″, oil on canvas board, $700
Third in the series of 5 self-portraits. The series is about me, exploring me, exploring what it takes to become an artist after all these years of denying myself and trying many, many things instead. I’m trying to let the pictures paint themselves as much as possible. Myself the idle passenger, the casual observer changing the results of the experiment simply because I’m observing it.
“Becoming” had a few inspirations. First was the idea that I read somewhere that you should paint the human face with a yellowish upper, reddish middle, and bluish lower. While I understand the reasoning, my personal opinion is that you should describe the face you see, HOW you see it. How YOU see it. So, being the impish little prick I am, I exaggerated that statement in a pseudo-mockery of it. Because I reject things dictated to me by self-proclaimed experts.
I also wanted to do a painting without any white at all. And I succeeded in that – probably for the first time ever.
Burnt Umber has been my nemesis. It always turns to mud. So I re-introduced it here in the underpainting and let a bunch of it show. Look, mama, burnt umber and no mud!
“Becoming” is about edges, mostly. The paint is becoming something because I drew in the outline in my colorful black (or my hand-mixed Payne’s Gray, if you please), intentionally losing edges and intentionally bleeding color without abandon. I put some straight black on one side to push some contrast, but I wanted to keep the painting dark. I’m becoming, but I’m not there yet. I may never be what I am to become, but I am in the process, emerging from the darkness, pushing your fucking rules aside, rejecting what you’re telling me, letting me be me.
Which is all at once intensely simple while simultaneously eluding me at every turn.
“But Still I Persist,” prelim drawing
0955 days
This drawing took a lot longer than I’d expected. So I guess I’m not painting tonight. But I’m happy with the concept and the drawing, so it’s worth it. I *do* have a full time job. Maybe one day my art can be my job, in which case I can draw and paint all in the same day.
I’m not sure how I want to proceed on this. I’ve considered a few things:
- solid colors, no shading, outlined in black
- glasses and eyes/nostrils/mouth in black, the rest of my head one color, blue background, white star
- a light flesh and a slightly darker flesh (2-tone), black outlines
- a light underpainting (so I can still see the drawing) with broad, messy strokes that don’t stay in the lines. Come back through with black to outline. Come back through to clean up colors and hide all pencil lines
- throw it in the trash?
“But Still I Persist,” 11″ x 14″, preliminary graphite drawing
Nobody Ever Said It Was Going to be Easy
0957 days
“Nobody Ever Said It Was Going to be Easy,” 11″ x 14″, oil on canvas
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?
“I’m Not Chasing You”
0970 days
“I’m Not Chasing You,” 5″ x 7″ on gallery wrap canvas, $100
Lucy’s a nice dog. She has three legs. To compensate, she has massive muscles on her opposite leg. I mean MASSIVE.
Lucy is also very hyperactive. She needs a lot of attention.
This painting of Lucy isn’t really a painting of Lucy at all. You see, I sat down with one of my better canvases, the real kind that’s stretched over a wooden frame, and told Lucy, “No, Lucy, I’m not chasing you. So just sit there and be painted. The paint will fall where it may, and that’s that. I’m going to paint a warm background, and that’s that. I’m going to paint you without an underdrawing, and that’s that. I’m going to paint your pink skin and your blue eyes over a purple wash and that’s that. And I don’t care how you’re going to turn out. And that’s that.”
Lucy is 200 miles away, but I’m sure she heard me and howled into the warm California night. As is her wont. I told her I wasn’t chasing her, I told the painting I was in no mood. And I was true to my word.
I really enjoyed this painting. I had fun painting it. You see, I’m starting to believe. Like Neo, I didn’t believe it at first, but now I’m beginning to believe.
I take pictures. I take pictures that make people ask, “Why did you take a picture of THAT?”
“Because I like it. And it struck my fancy. That’s why.”
And I’m beginning to trust myself to paint. And I’m beginning to see that I can use my pictures as inspiration. I’m beginning to allow a style to form. I’m beginning. I’m becoming.
And that’s that.
These Are Days, darks
0971 days
Background / wash
I managed to work in a background wash using a mixture of Burnt Sienna and Ivory Black thinned down with turp. I blocked in the hair using the same mixture.
Laying in darks
I came back through a few minutes later (the background dries quickly when it’s thinned out with lots of turp) and darkened with an Ultramarine / Alizarin mixture. With the background slightly damp, the Sienna mixture mixed with the shadow color right on the canvas.
Pulling out the lights
Finally, I cleaned my brush and, while it still had some thinner in it, pulled out the highlights. In a few places, I used a paper towel to pull off even more paint. I was going for the strong contrast of the lightest lights against the darkest darks.
Goals
I’m pushing contrast in this piece. And I’m simplifying, though it’s hard, man, it’s really hard to stay simple and not paint what I see. But it’s art, not Xerox.
(the shadow at the top is the upper clamp on my easel)
Still plenty to do.
These are days, charcoal sketch
0973 days
I’m doing a bit of a complicated piece. Three kids together with lots of bright lights and shadows around them. When I do something more complex – especially with subjects I actually know – I like to sketch it out in charcoal. I do like to do a grid, but all I do is lay in guides in GIMP (free, Photoshop-like app for Linux) at the vertical and horizontal halves. Then I roughly guesstimate the lines on the canvas. No measuring. Then, using that rough guide, I draw.
Drawing skills are extremely important. Tracing does not develop your drawing ability. Only your tracing ability. If you want to draw better, then draw. I personally would like to paint better, but I already know how to draw. So I DO draw, then I paint. Sometimes I draw directly in paint. Well, usually I do; this is the second of these 7 paintings to have a charcoal drawing (“Summers End” was the other one). Take a look – all of the other drawings were done in paint, directly on canvas.
In case you didn’t know, oil paints don’t cover up graphite all that well. I’m going to spray fixative on the charcoal under-drawing and let it dry for a day so I can begin laying in paint tomorrow.
However, let it be said that this is still an experiment. I’ve been toying with a more limited palette. I think this is painting #7. I’ve got 93 to go before I’ve burned my first 100 “bad paintings.” Maybe then I can stop impersonating an artist and actually claim to be one? I don’t know. This, as with so many other things, becomes such a rabbit hole that I sometimes wonder what in the high holy hell I’m doing.
My typical palette:
- Titanium white (tried flake white but it’s REALLY stiff)
- Cad yellow light
- Alizarin crimson
- Ultramarine blue
- Burnt sienna
- Ivory black
So that’s about it. I will sometimes pull in Cad Yellow Medium, Cad Red Medium, pthalo blue, Payne’s gray, or yellow ochre. This gives me a full “split complement” palette plus a bit more in the earth colors. I’ve been staying away from the umbers because I ALWAYS end up making mud with them. They’ll probably be the subject of a future experiment.
“These Are Days,” or maybe “What They Don’t Know.” 9″ x 12″ on canvas board. Charcoal preparation for an oil painting. (I’ve made slight changes since I took this picture, but you’ll see that as I lay in painting). The torsos are all a little long but I like that. I see this painting as the end of a day of play, three friends bathed in partial but strong evening sun, long days giving way to winter, soon. By extension, the carefree days of their youth seem long and infinite to them, knowing nothing about what life has in store for them.
Contemplating Bernie
0“Contemplating Bernie,” 5″x7″, oil on canvas board, NFS
"contemplating bernie," 5"x7", oil on canvas board
Sometimes you take a chance and it doesn’t work out. But you know, deep inside ya, that you did what you could and you’re happy with how things turned out after all. Sometimes life is like that. Sometimes you just gotta sit back and contemplate your life. Consider. Reconsider. Evaluate.
I am trying to keep my paintings loose and bold. On this painting, I kept at the details. I shouldn’t have. My first idea was the right one – reach for the big brush, Steve! But, no, I had to go for the detail brush. The tiniest of brushes, the eensy little one is a foul temptress and she got the best of me today.
But you don’t grow if you don’t learn from your failures. I learned today that the bigger brush, the bold stroke is my friend, is my protector from the succubus, if only I will heed the warning.
Sketching – a quickie is better than not doing it at all
01735 days
In the August 11-19, 2007 weekly drawing thread on Wetcanvas, they finally came back to a portrait (I wish they would do portraits more often). I jumped at the opportunity and here’s what I came up with:
I rotated her head to straight-on for my own purposes. If you click the image, you can see a close-up detailing a lot of my reference lines in this portrait. Keep in mind that this is simply about an hour’s worth – about 30 minutes laying out the reference lines and doing preliminary work, then about 30 minutes blurring my eyes and sketching in the portrait.
I also did this portrait entirely with a 3H pencil. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used a pencil that hard but my 2 year old was drawing with it so I decided to give it a go to see how it came out. The darks were REALLY hard to get and nowhere near as dark as they should be. Now I better appreciate a range of pencils after this little experiment. Fun!
Not my best work, but that’s the point – keeping your skills up to speed requires some exercises. If you play an instrument, you probably warm up with scales just about every day. If you’re an IT geek, you probably read Anandtech.com, OSNews, HardOCP.com, et al, just about every day to stay current. Whatever your profession, you stay current with quickies to keep your “chops” up. And the same applies to drawing, especially portraits – practice the mundane every day and keep stretching your repertoire to keep it exciting and fresh.
Yes, just an hour for a quick sketch is better than an hour on the couch watching your TiVO’d episode of The 4400 (ooh, that reminds me, now that I’m done with my art for the day, I have an episode of The 4400 recorded!).