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.

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!

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!)

“Nagelesque,” 9″ x 11″, oil on canvas board, NFS (this baby’s a keeper!)

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).

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!

November is Art Every Day Month. Okay, it’s not some real holiday or anything, and you won’t find it on any calendar or as an Outlook add-in. But I’m really going to give it a go this month. Something – ANYTHING – done, every day. Progress on a piece, painting, doodling, crafting spitball sculptures, whatever.

This particular drawing is on canvas and is prep work for the Different Strokes for Different Folks entry. It’ll be my third piece that I’ve entered to be displayed on Karin’s site. It’s actually sort of nerve-racking to put yourself out there like that, especially with so many great interpretations. But it’s also inspiring – your take is your take, how YOU see it, not how it is to anyone else.

As you can see, I did a grid this time. I was enlarging from a really bad printout, but that’s okay because I’m not concerned with much, just the outline. I could have free-hand drawn everything but the grid saves me some time. It’s nearly 11:30pm and I’ve got to get up before 6am and get ready for work, you know. One day this will be my full-time gig. Until then, grids are my friend. Well, maybe they still will be because I *have* learned to draw and to see but that’s not what I’m after here.

I’m calling this one, “Lost,” because it’s an image of 3 travelers, together but alone. Shadows touching without knowing. Each with their own thoughts that probably are more similar than we’ll ever know. Just being the busy little ants that we are. Where are they going? They don’t know, they’re lost in the continuum. Time-space is a void and they’re just along for the ride. They don’t know where they are or where they’ll end up. They’re lost. Aren’t we all?

“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.

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.

Those are the words I said back in 1987, my freshman year of high school, to my guidance counselor. I was 13 years old. He was a dull-looking man with pale skin, well-trimmed beard, short, black hair, and a glass eye. I don’t remember his name but I do remember that glass eye.

I wonder if glass eyes have gotten any better since then?

I was asked what I want to do “when I grow up” as a way of mapping out the classes I should take in high school. I ended up taking a LOT of art classes. I think that sometimes Mrs. Hammerman really disliked me but couldn’t do much about it because I was her little star pupil (much to my chagrin – I didn’t really like the attention, which made it all that much easier for me to push her buttons). In my senior year I had 2 study halls and always managed to get a pass to go paint. I was in Painting II and Directed Study, which was where I painted some more.

I would stand there in my backwards, oversized button-up shirt, Walkman on, and paint.

And, boy, did I love it.

Things went downhill after high school – the military left me bereft of art opportunities and I had built up a nice salary and a corresponding lifestyle by the time I left the military 8 years later.

Then I settled in and put the dream on ice.

Then I started to write out my ramblings and ideas on Facebook last year. As more and more people joined, I got more and more heat about it, and I eventually stopped. Now I’ll still write but I’ll do it on a scrap of paper that will promptly make its way to the recycle bin. My ramblings haven’t stopped, I’ve only stopped sharing them.

However, what I really wanted to untap was the artistic flow that I had stopped up all those years ago. Gone were my lame excuses. It was time. I STILL wanted to be an artist. I still WANT to be an artist. I AM an artist.

So I dove in one September night and painted a picture, Summers End. I was hooked.

It’s been just shy of 2 months and I’ve completed a decent number of paintings.

I work at a Fortune 500 company. I can’t say I hate it, because I don’t, but it’s mostly dull but mostly pays the bills. I’ve been coming to a slow realization as I read Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal” and reading Seth Godin and catching up to successful artists on Twitter that I’m a wage slave. I can’t quit my job. I can’t stop working today. I’m a slave to it. And a deep, dark loathing bubbles up inside of me to even type out those words. This isn’t who I was supposed to be.

So what should I do?

I should be who I’m supposed to be. It seems pretty obvious, but, like all things that seem easy and obvious, it’s all-at-once difficult and simple. It’s its own paradox.

I will break out and continue with my themes. I will capture the fleeting thoughts and ideas on my blog, on scraps of paper (that I’ll keep instead of making them grist for the 80% post-consumer waste mill), and on the voice recorder in my cell phone. I will continue to draw, the watch inspirational art movies (I just watched “Helvetica” and I could really relate to the guy that said “bad taste is ubiquitous”), I will continue to PUSH myself.

Sometimes I have an idea and I’m afraid I can’t reach that one quite yet. Sometimes I paint total crap and share it, anyway. Sometimes I see myself through perspective of dissociation, sometimes I sketch it. I have some ideas that I pursue and they become impractical. I have some feelings I forget before the shower is over. I have drawings in canvas where I’ve lost the muse; I have others where I’m afraid to destroy the drawing with paint.

Above all these things, though, I have a goal: I want to be an artist.

I was looking at Linda Apple’s bicycle shadow paintings yesterday and my brain did a lightning cross-check of stuff I’ve done, and I had a minor epiphany. Just minor, nothing big. Okay, more like a “duh” moment. I often take pictures of my own shadow. Yes, I’m a dork. So my wife tells me. And she’s probably right. But what just came together was a menage a trois of inspiration (bicycle shadows + my taking pictures of my own shadows + self-portrait series) – series 2, another 5 self-portraits, this time with my shadow lying across various objects, or showing me doing things. I’ve got some tungsten lamps in the garage that will make some nice shadows if the sun doesn’t cooperate.

I can also use this as a platform to get a little more detailed in my paintings. I can burn through 5 of my smaller canvases, toying with detail that way. I can play with contrast, exaggerating colors and values. I can play with various techniques for massing large areas. Hmm, perhaps some additional limited palette exercises.

(as an aside, I accidentally created Burnt Sienna last night from my Payne’s Gray mixture (“colorful black”) and cad red medium – these are things you’ve just got to experience by slapping down some paint on the palette and sloshing it around and asking yourself, “Self, what happens if I do *this*?”)

Eventually, I’ll get to the point where even my bad days are great pieces. For now, though, soldier on and learn, learn, learn by continuing to paint, paint, paint.

Did you ever notice how paintings are somehow disappointing when you get close up? It’s like you expect to see MORE detail when you get closer, but you just see how the artist deftly fooled your eye. I end up feeling a little let down but at the same time I get inspired because I see the mystery unravel before me. And I realize that I can do that, too. And I will.  Soon. By exploring some Shadows of Me.