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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!

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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]

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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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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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“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)

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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.

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I Reject This, WIP

November 2, 2009 in Art Every Day Month, Creativity, painting, writing | No comments

“I Reject This,” 11″ x 14″, oil on canvas board, WIP

i_reject_this_underpaintingi_reject_this_canvas_drawing

There’s a powerful moment when I ride my motorcycle, when the man-machine connection swells up and washes it all away, when I am. When I just fucking am. I arrive and put on the mask. I reject this.

There’s a part of me that does it because I must. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to. There’s a part of you that I see and I think as I narrow my eyes at you, “Liar.” There’s an inner monologue that just won’t quit. There’s a little bit of it that I wish I could just turn off. The nag chooses me and I begin to melt into the mould. I reject this.

I look across and see the danger and the white triangle consumes my thoughts. I push it down. I reject it. I reject this.

I see what you’re doing. I hear it in your voice but I go on like I didn’t notice. I see the sacred path unfolding. I hear the “musts” and “shouldn’ts” and I hear you whisper, “Conform.” I reject this.

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Falling, WIP

November 1, 2009 in Art Every Day Month, Creativity, Daily Painting, painting, writing | No comments

“Falling,” 11″ x 14″, oil on canvas board, WIP

falling_tonefalling_drawing_canvas

The fire burns cleanly when it’s hot. But looks can be deceiving. That’s why, just when you think you’ve got your shit figured out, that god-forsaken deck of cards comes tumbling down around you.

Only thing is, most of the time, for all your stalwart appearances, nobody notices. You quietly control the countenance. Just enough so you’re allowed to be alone in your inner fire. Just enough so it’s only you that knows you’re falling.

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Hotel Window

October 24, 2009 in Daily Painting, Process, painting | 1 comment

“Hotel Window,” 5″ x 7″, $100

hotel_window_2

 

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?!

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“Becoming,” self-portrait #3

October 14, 2009 in Creativity, Daily Painting, Process, painting | No comments

“Becoming,” 14″ x 18″, oil on canvas board, $700

becoming becoming_sideview

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.

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