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.

A novel approach

January 8, 2010 in Blogging, Daily Painting, Process, painting | 2 comments

Well, not really. I don’t have an approach. But I’m prepping 2 canvases tonight. I have a couple of paintings to finish tonight.

I’m told… well, I’m told but I don’t always listen to what I’m told.. that I should paint every day. Every single goddamned day. You know, like, daily and stuff. So I’m going to try. Though I’m telling you it’s hard. It’s really hard. But I want so badly to start selling my work that I have to run through my first 100 bad paintings before I start getting to the good stuff. And at about 10 paintings each month, that’s damned near the whole year.

Hey, I rhymed.

So here goes. I’m posting the ref photos even though it bugs the crap out of me to do it. Because then I’m ON THE HOOK, man. I’m freakin’ on the hook. [sigh]

10325_1274647906221_1230648909_833190_5833692_n

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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!

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Portrait challenge – graphite under-drawing

December 29, 2009 in Daily Painting, Process, painting | 1 comment

I took my last charcoal drawing and overlaid it on the original photograph. My drawing was off in a couple of ways:

  • I didn’t make her face wide enough
  • I didn’t make her lower lip and chin large enough

Other than that, the right-hand side (as you’re looking at it, not HER right-hand side) was dead-on. Not bad since I haven’t done a portrait in years. Anyway, I fixed it by getting some landmarks placed correctly and re-drawing it directly on the canvas with an HB pencil, sprayed it with fixative and it’s drying as I type this.

dsfdf_portrait_canvas_prep

I emphasized the darkest points and some landmarks so that they’d show through as I painted. Once I did that, I filled in some darker shadows so I could be sure I got the bottom of the chin in the right spot and I proceeded to draw in the eyes, nose, and mouth. I pretty much kept the hair the way the charcoal drawing was.

Her right eye (her right, not your right) isn’t really that droopy – she has dark make-up under her eye (well, either that or some REALLY dark skin and really thick lashes) – my pencil was getting dull from the shading work on the canvas. In case you’ve never used a pencil on canvas, I can tell you that the texture of the canvas really wears down your pencil in no time flat. And stuff.

I offset her on the canvas to make the composition interesting. I’m considering doing an “unfinished” look to the surrounding features and background, a la much of the work of John Howard Sanden- yeah, right, as if I could pull THAT off. I’ll be happy if this doesn’t look like a paint-by-numbers or like I’m some sort of hack. Well, I AM a hack, just that I try not to let that get out too often.

Truth be told, I’m afraid to do this. What if I screw it up? What if I can’t get the values right? Or the colors? Or the background doesn’t recede properly? Or I don’t finish in time. I’ve got tonight and tomorrow to finish this or I’ve missed a deadline I’ve committed to. And I can’t let that happen. And I’m afraid to ruin this thing. Oh, well, only one thing to do… the copyrighted “break the toy” phrase to the rescue!

Portrait study

December 16, 2009 in Blogging, Daily Painting, Process, exercise, writing | No comments

Okay, I did my first study for this portrait. First? Well, okay, maybe the only study. But I learned a ton and I’m thinking of doing a bunch of small sketches to get down some details that were givin’ me some trouble.

portrait_study

Some notes: I realize that I’ve never done an Asian portrait before. I made this girl look caucasian. She’s Indian (East Indian, not Native American).

Her glasses are crooked or her eyes aren’t on an even plane. I’m not sure which. I’ll have to measure a few more times to be sure what it is. Also, her mouth has a grin/smile thing going on that I didn’t capture here that well. And her neck is darker than what I have. My stump did more erasing than blending. And I need to get the direction of the head correct – she sort of looks like her head is turned a bit but sort of doesn’t look like it. Her nose is off-center if her head isn’t turned. I might take a creative license here and do it how I think it looks best. It isn’t, after all, a commissioned portrait – and Karin Jurick (it’s her site!) said to have fun with it. Well. Um. Fun, here I come!

But I did get to do a charcoal on toned paper with both black and white charcoal. Which I’ve never actually done before. And I really like the effect – it gives a realistic glow to the image.

I’m going to take my study and overlay it to the original image in The GIMP (Photoshop alternative for Linux) and see where I went wrong. I did do this while watching about 4 episodes of The Office. It took me about an hour and that hour went by really quickly. So it goes.

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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.

Portrait challenge

December 9, 2009 in Blogging, Editorials, Ideas, writing | No comments

I got my image for the DSFDF portrait challenge… er, uh, maybe it’s not a challenge, maybe it’s a portrait swap? Hmm. I’ve had some ideas but I’m not sure which way to go.

I might have to take my advice again – break the toy. I should trademark that shit.

Seriously, though, I’m probably going to have to do a few. I haven’t painted a serious portrait in years. Except my 5 self-portraits, which I still have to finish #5 (my mother-in-law told me to leave it as-is and I’m seriously considering that – talk about knowing when to stop painting!). But those weren’t stuff that I’d do on commission. They were revealing, personal inquiries into myself. They told me stories and slapped me around like a Nancy-boy when I deserved it. They were friends, except when they weren’t. They were trysts in the night. They were harlots and she-devils and succubi come to tempt my flesh.

They won.

But enough about me. Now to grab the charcoal and work up some sketches for the DSFDF challenge/swap/skull basher.

Update: here’s the picture I’m painting. I hesitate to post this because now I’m on the hook for a likeness. Ouch.

PORTRAIT

Prepping last self-portrait

December 1, 2009 in Uncategorized | No comments

Okay, I was going to paint tonight but I realized my last self-portrait hadn’t been sprayed with fixative and I didn’t want to lose the under-drawing… so it’s been sprayed and is in the garage drying for the night. Back to painting tomorrow!

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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