Eggplants

7/23. Eggplants, oil on linen on panel, 6x8 in.

A piece from way back in summer before the mango, done over several nights. (What I remember is,) the first night I couldn't really get into it, partly because the big eggplant had a coloring that was a cooler purple than the skinny one and that I had trouble zeroing in on; moreover, I couldn't figure out how to "draw" the complicated striping on the big eggplant.

On the big eggplant especially, I found myself going back and forth between rendering form (the dullish, even spread of light) and surface gloss (the clean, juicy shadow tones), which process was complicated again by the busy stripy pattern.

The second session was either the next night or two nights later, and the third session a few nights after that, so that the skinny eggplant (which was already getting mushy) had enough time to undergo some natural transformation. A few of these "changes" I left out because they were either difficult to add on top of what I had already painted or because they were simply very unappealing. My backdrop must not have been simple or solid enough because I played around with some different colors (blues, greys) and was unsure how to keep it.

At some point I had gotten a tube of aureolin (cobalt yellow) because Williamsburg and others mention its use "in some of Turner's skies." I had taken to using Indian yellow because of its transparency but wondered how the cooler aureolin would work (good enough for Turner!), so I tried some of it in the yellow background at the third stage. I found it to be much greener than I would have liked and spent a lot of time trying to undo the experiment (it's quite strong), perhaps overcorrecting towards the too-hot—and making another example of excessive chroma syndrome, or whatever they call it. I don't dislike it though; and as far as the baffling stripy pattern goes, I was satisfied enough with the somewhat impressionist treatment of it (good enough for me).

Strawberries

5/19 - 5/22. Strawberries, oil on linen panel, 5x5 in.

These strawberries were still only halfway posted in "draft" limbo, when I saw the other day that my old teacher Jeff had done some as well. I can't say how good it feels to see his paintings online. It really takes me back. Not that he paints the same as I remember - in fact he described his recent Florence-influenced palette to me and it got me thinking differently about my own thinking. With Gary online as well I said it felt like we are walking the same halls again. The Internet is wonderful.

This painting is not illustrative of any new thinking, but rather how I haven't been doing much thinking while painting. I decided to take the in-progress shots of this piece when as soon as I realized I was having trouble with it, and if this is any lesson it shows how one could do things better in the beginning. These sessions were perhaps under a couple of hours each, plenty of time really, but the first night I failed to get the shapes right and I wasn't paying attention to even the basic light and shadow masses of the strawberries. Plus I got too much white/grey in everything.

The next night I tried to do better but still lacked focus - if you're like me, you sometimes do something without being wholly aware along the way, especially when you pre-suppose it to be easy - you can't paint subconsciously and effectively, apparently (at least in my case) not strawberries. The reds were giving me a hard time as always, and I knew everything had to be drawn better and I couldn't get around that. By this time the leaves were changing shape and mold had begun to show in places, which was upsetting because this batch of giant strawberries was probably the sweetest I've ever tasted.

I wanted to abandon the piece but a couple of nights later I went back into it. This time I arrived at a better sense of the form. Things finally were feeling round and I had had enough. I touched up the shadow area a little just before taking the last photo, but managed to somehow seriously mess up the darker red parts. So I was forced to unify the whole shadow area the way I should have in the first place - and it actually looks better, even if the end product is kind of stiff I think.

Management profoundly regrets and apologizes for the inconvenience and worries that have been caused; and Eddoes #2

5/6. Eddoes #2, oil on linen on panel, 5x7 in.


(in progress)

Well, I never thought I'd become one of those loathsome, horribly selfish people who could let their blogs languish for months with no explanation why. Originally I intended to stop for some soul-searching (whatever that means). I felt that I had been working too comfortably, that I still wasn’t getting at whatever it is I wanted to get at, if you get that. Most likely it started with my going to Charleston and seeing my friend and coming back and seeing a lot more great art online and getting annoyed with myself and with how I see (or don’t see) things. The old hermit in me said it was time to step away and hide out for a while, so I decided to put this (almost-)daily painting "project" face down and not feel too guilty about it.

I was telling myself I had to work out the composition of a new portrait of my daughter. Looking again at my old art history books reminded me of the enormous impact that Correggio, Bellini, and other Renaissance painters initially had on me, and it made me want to tackle something on a little larger scale in which I could play around more with light, do more subtle things. But I maybe just got more overwhelmed looking at more good stuff. And that portrait of Breagha never got started.

As my friend Gary put it, sometimes "life happens" - I found myself sidetracked by non-art projects (e.g. building a shoe rack for the narrow space by our front door, putting up some shelves, rearranging our computer work area). At some point though I helped do some tiny paintings for an artist in Southern California named Cameron Gray, who puts together these large mosaics with photos of body parts, food, and such things as reference (see a past show). Here are some:

A few of these are for a piece in a show opening July 26th from 6:30-8:30 at the Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica, Bergamot Station. I find/found painting these to be great practice (matching value and color), even if I normally wouldn’t force that sort of thing on myself.

My hiatus hadn't exactly been a vacation, though I must say it has been nice after the kid's in bed to once in a while spend the rest of the evening in the same room with my wife, and not at my easel. And a lot of times I would get lost in a book about falconry or abstruse Old English stuff (which relate to the portrait I want to do), but sometimes I'd just watch news and get mad at the political coverage, which just meant that I was in a worse comfort zone and that I needed to get back. Time the dragon awoke and came out of his barrow....

So, back to the eddoes above - I can’t remember when, but one night at least two months ago I had started painting them, and they then sat there patiently waiting to recapture my attention. So the other night I finished the painting - though by this time the little things had shriveled considerably (getting moldy underneath) and were sprouting real thick, sharp-looking green shoots. It was hard to overlook their present condition and rely more on my memory for some details, but I did my best.

Supermardi!

Flag of the U.S.A., wood, 9.3x17.7 in.

I hope everyone who lives in a Super Tuesday state took part today in this complex rigamarole (our voting day is next Tuesday). I can never figure out this process, but I guess that’s why they have panels of pundits on TV to talk about it.

While watching the tiresome, recycled news analyses last night, I decided to start something I had been wanting to for a while - a painting of the flag in its proper proportions. Is this a big deal? one may ask. I don’t know. But I know that almost all of the U.S. flags I have seen in my life have been drawn wrong, and I’ve seen a million of them just as anyone else has. Seeing the flag as it was meant is to me like a fresh reading of the Bill of Rights, so maybe it is sort of important.

Our flag is a beautiful thing. Graphic artists, more than anyone, should care that our most important symbol be reproduced like a trademark exactly the same everywhere. Imagine any famous company’s logo and lettering printed at different proportions from one location to the next. For whatever reason our flag ended up with the ratio of 1:1.9 – although "Executive Order 10834" permits official flags in three other sizes with different ratios. One of these is 3:4, which is also great for a bumper sticker, but I'd prefer the flag be more than a mutable and generalized pattern of stars and stripes. Do a search of U.S. flags and see the differing dimensions and the usually careless arrangement of stars in the union which leaves too much extra space. Notice the flag in the background when a government official speaks on TV. Perhaps many flags used by government are drawn to the specifications but I've seen a wide variety. Even if they're all being made in China, I would think their measurements could be regulated. If shirt companies can lay out embroidery according to a specific pattern, why can’t flag manufacturers do the same?

Some people don’t care about etiquette, and some don’t care about flag etiquette (I might not if I owned an inaccurately drawn and cheap piece of visual garbage). Some people refuse to salute the flag, and a candidate for president (I won't say who) was recently photographed doing this while the national anthem played. It seems bizarre to me that a person hoping to become the representative of the people would refuse to honor that symbol which represents them all. It represents each and every one of us and we really ought to treat it well.

Here I’m drawing it in its right proportions. I find sometimes I need this kind of mindless, mechanical and masochistic exercise. There’s no way to get it wrong because the numbers tell me what I need to do - I can’t imagine how long it took the person or committee to officially decide on these measurements, but they are what they are. Originally I had wanted to use a large wooden board, but last night I went with a small piece of scrap just under 18 in. (45 cm.) across. I hope all the little stars don’t drive me crazy....

Potato cairn, WIP

Potato cairn stage 1 and 2, oil on canvas panel, 10x8 in.

I allowed myself less time to paint last night, so I'm breaking up this piece into two sessions. Not having a bigger linen panel ready, I used a RayMar canvas panel that was sitting around - with the surface sanded down a little and a quick drying layer of paint scraped smooth over the canvas texture (I scraped with a palette knife, leaving paint in the little depressions).

I wanted a simpler exercise in light and dark, and a setup with potatoes seemed right. And I realized the previous night that I tend to get too wet with medium early on, so focusing on the light I thought would also slow me down and keep things dry longer. I stacked the potatoes like this because the more I thought about them the more they felt like stones, and what can you do with stones (non-violently) that is more primeval than stacking them in unnatural ways?

Lost and found, WIP

Lazarus, oil on illustration board, 6x4.5 in.

I was trying to catch up on some other work so I didn’t do a new painting last night. But I remembered this piece which I had wanted to share for a long time. Last July while we were visiting my parents in California, and before I had started this blog, I happily rediscovered a folder of sketches from (what should have been) my last year of art school....

We were given a sort of long-term project to illustrate the alphabet, and my old classmates reading this may remember it. I came up with something a little too ambitious for my feeble mind at the time – I could think it up, just not execute it. I see now how elaborate I had wanted to make it, and if/when I take it up again it could take god knows how long. When I found this stuff again after so many years it was like having back a substantial part of me that I had carelessly lost.

It was a neat little bundle, with some compositions fully sketched out and some just light doodles (though many blank), photocopies I’d made for reference, and all the little boards that I had gessoed ahead of time so as not to have anything hold me back when I was ready to paint - a few of them, like the one shown, had some paint work started. These boards were really small, as if I thought by working at a ridiculously tiny size with my usual brushes it would have somehow made things less complicated. This was the thinking of someone who, though often hesitant to start something new, could get so lost in his own mind that while working on a particular make-up assignment he wasted hours and ultimately several days painting and repainting an area only a few inches across. Ha ha. I don’t know how I got better but I am better now.

So my idea for the project was a pseudo-English medieval fair, with musicians mainly but with some circus-type folk and others of a pseudo-medieval sort, and each musical instrument or other specialty began with a different letter of the alphabet. Here, I have an Organ Grinder (originally a player of the Hurdy-Gurdy) whose name is Lazarus, and with him is his monkey. I wanted to portray a mix of skin colors and body types and evoke the parts of the wider world from which some of these strange little characters might have traveled, a variety aspiring to that which I might now read about in an Umberto Eco novel. Hence some obscure instruments and some very different moods from one picture to the next, someday to be seen....

I like to think that into each one of the scenes I put a little bit of myself, and maybe that’s why it was such a happy feeling to discover them again.

Clementine

12/12. Clementine, oil on linen panel, 4x6 in.



It seems as though everyone has painted a peeled clementine at one time or another so I thought I'd try as well. Again I photographed the very beginning stage and it shows how unpredictably I start to work sometimes - I was a little sad that I had to get much thicker with the paint.

I took a break last night from painting and instead wrote some of the thoughts I'd been having lately (after which I meant to post this piece but I didn't get that far). To the previous post I feel I should add that those "other" ideal qualities to strive for in painting were only the ones that came to mind the most easily to me. Also, in having the opinion that I do I might only keep myself from attaining the level of discipline needed to begin mastering those other qualities. Yet, I believe all of those things will just manifest themselves more and more with time, simply as a result of being productive and acting on inspiration, being viscerally receptive to paint's little accidents.

I must surely come off as offensive any time I suggest simply that some painters are a dead master's wannabes (I think they would easily outpaint me, as true wannabes have incredible discipline). Now couldn't someone say the same about me, based on everything I've said about Bonington? Yeah, maybe I'd give a body part or two to paint as well as he did, but if I suddenly could I still wouldn't reproduce his way of "seeing" and be attracted to the same things he was, composing pictures the way he did. Especially as I have my own quirks, as do most painters. And of course most aren't wannabes (and, like me, have wide ranging influences), yet there are so many who try real hard to turn into the next Sargent, say, and just become indistinguishable from all the rest. Well at least they employ a consistent "style," so who am I to say anything?...

Bunch of parsley

12/10. Bunch of parsley, oil on linen panel, 4x5 in.

I took the first photo when I realized I was working in a new way, that is I used a cool color to rough out the form (very rough) and stain the canvas - I don't know if it was simply because the dominant color here is green or if it was a subconscious experiment - but the surface seemed to have infinite potential once that amorphous shadow was sketched in. In some recent pieces I had thrown in some bluish-white at this early stage to get some of the "air" along the edges, though not here because the parsley isn't a solid form with a turning edge. In this case the blue went into the bulk of the parsley, more as an effect of the light than atmosphere. But I found as I went along that it was good to have the initial rough stage as a foundation, something to play off of for subtle space around the parsley. Normally I had used a brown all over for blocking in shadows etc., even in the broccoli piece, because I was so used to it.

(One of these days I might try something else novel, that is go to bed early so that I can think and write in the morning and am not like a zombie with a blog.)

Work in progress

10/28.

I painted for only an hour, after dozing off in front of the TV for a good while. One might ask, why bother if only an hour, when one has to stop and start again at a later time? But a short amount of time is better than nothing. In an hour a lot can be done to build on the work of the previous night, and it's not enough time to ruin a painting.

Work in progress: Hubbard squash

10/27: Hubbard squash, oil on canvas panel, approx. 12x9 in.

(This is not a very good photo.) It's a monochrome setup, and the various blue/green-greys here in the squash were trickier to pin down than I imagined, so there was no way I could finish it in one go. It's a big heavy thing and I'm hoping to capture its weight, but right now it kind of looks like one of those tiny white onions.

* * *

Something I wanted to mention several days ago: We were finally able to get our second car past inspection, owing in large part to Lee who runs the Honda & Acura Expert shop here in town. We'd been putting off some big repairs (big for us anyway) but brought the car to him as we've done in the past, and he was more than fair with us and even finished way sooner than we'd hoped. As always he went beyond our expectations for a repair shop, and I gave him a small painting as a sort of early Christmas present for the honesty he's shown us and for always taking care of us like a friend. I hope a couple of people in the Hampton Roads area may read this and consider taking their own vehicles there for service. So this would have fit under the topic of "grow," as we wish Lee and his family much growth and success in the future.

Work in progress

10/20.

I used some more neutrals, mainly some greys and a light warm brown-ochre sort of color, which I had been doing for a while but for some reason hadn't used lately. I took this photo more as a reminder to myself, as I have so many blobs of paint "saved" on my easel that I no longer know what's what. It's beginning to come together and I can see the end of the tunnel from this point. Loosening up a little has helped a lot, and I'd be happy with even more impressionistic color dabs. (I don't know where the background is headed; some of it was just an attempt at more sprezzatura or something.)

Work in progress

10/19.

I tried to simplify the colors more, using fewer to mix with - I find it very hard to switch to a more tonal palette suddenly, especially in the middle of a piece, but I feel I made some progress (at least psychologically) once I threw in more neutrals that incorporated the cadmiums. And it probably will have little immediate effect, but I took burnt umber off my palette completely; transp. red oxide and ultramarine can do the job of any dark brown and be a good base for some unifying greys - I've wanted to use more of the great greys I'd discovered before and I really don't know why I haven't been. Apart from reversing the value relationships in a few places and taking a better look at the pine cone, I haven't changed much, and as anyone can see this is still moving very slowly. But on what other blog can one watch a painting of tinder get dragged out this many days while reading Old English nature poetry?

Work in progress / Old English riddle

10/18.

It has been a mediocre week. I don't know where this piece is going and I'm sorry if I wrecked some portions that may have actually been ok previously. It has been like an ongoing color study, and I decided the fauvism is fine since it is an autumn piece after all. Thinking about how the subject amounts to little more than kindling made me think of this riddle I had read before, so the last few nights after painting I've been tinkering with a translation as a mental diversion:

Ic eom légbysig, láce mid winde,
bewunden mid wuldre, wedre gesomnad,
fús forðweges, fýre gebysgad,
bearu blówende, byrnende gléd.
Ful oft mec gesíþas sendað æfter hondum,
þæt mec weras ond wíf wlonce cyssað.
Þonne ic mec onhæbbe, hí onhnígaþ tó mé
monige mid miltse; þǽr ic monnum sceal
ýcan úpcyme éadignesse.

I am troubled by flame, sport with the wind,
wound with glory, one with the weather,
eager for departure, afflicted by fire -
a blooming grove, a burning coal.
Often friends pass me from hand to hand
so that men and women proudly kiss me.
When I rise up they bend down to me,
many with meekness; there I shall increase
the uprise of happiness among men.

This is "Riddle 30," a difficult one and clumsy when translated. The answer is generally accepted as a tree (béam) with its compound meanings of "cross/ship/log" and its further use as a cup, bowl, or possibly a musical instrument.

Here the tree - and the "tree" on which Christ died - speaks, as it does in another poem called the Dream of the Rood and as other riddle subjects do, in the first person. (I'd meant to keep all mention of religion out of anything I write as I'm not a religious person, except when dealing with Old English where Christian themes are so common.) It undergoes wondrous transformations, shifting back and forth between a flammable ("lightning-busy"?) flowering tree and the various uses of its wood, seemingly unconnected and in confusing chronology. "Eager for departure [the journey forth]," describing possibly a ship, has also been seen as a warrior kenning for "ready for death" - which reinforces the shift back to a log or ember in the fire, as well as foreshadowing the notion of the cross. From there it shifts to a more personal hand-crafted object going "from hand to hand" connecting people in everyday ritual. Ultimately it takes on its highest purpose as the cross of the Crucifixion – or a crafted symbol of it, the highest form of art and something that touches all members of society. In all, this could be meant as an illustration of how God is present in all things and how "[n]o other power but God’s can connect the unconnected things of the earth and the unrelated events in time" (S. L. Higley, Between Languages).

But it's very ambiguous - that is, to us today. The third half-line is usually taken to mean the glory or splendor of a tree’s brilliant foliage (which is then possibly "gathered by the weather" if you prefer a different translation). But perhaps it also implies the glory of being the Lord's chosen tree. Maybe it refers to a ceremonial cross typically adorned with gold, silver and jewels, or even an allusion to the Dream of the Rood or similar story in which the true cross is similarly decked out and surrounded by light (another sort of "beam"). These old poets were cræftig.

Work in progress

10/17.

This may have been a couple of hours further along. I spent a good deal of time trying to get the red/orange/pink of the middle leaf and red/purple of the right leaf to make sense within the larger scheme. Then I played around with different elements in the background and trying out different colors. It has been very slow going but I will finish it and not let it languish incomplete (as my self-portrait is doing). Please bear with me.

The stick got a little too delineated and will have to be knocked back a little, especially on the left end. So far the bark hasn't been very complicated, just a matter of finding the right colors to lay down. I get frustrated a lot of the time knowing in my mind the kinds of effects I'm after in my painting and not being able to recreate them. Once in a while I look in my art books for specific guidance, on textures for example, and last night looked at Lawrence Alma-Tadema again for the first time in years - anyone not familiar already should find a book on him and have their mind blown. Sheesh ... what is this fauvist junk I'm painting? I need to restrict my palette.

Work in progress / Color chart: purples

10/16.

Showing something in progress is like having a crowd watch me walk a tightrope (I don't like crowds much). With no one around it's a simpler matter of getting from A to B, and what might happen in between is my business.... So here I am inching along. Another hour and a half or so, but it didn't really shape up as much as it could have. I thought the other day that I was getting sick, but now it seems I'm just in one of those funks when I can't focus on what's in front of me (the kind that used to be much darker and lasted very long times). Or maybe I need to get a really good night's sleep.

Thinking about being sick only reminded me of the great ones who died so young, through no fault of their own, yet were able to create such great work. That's to say I don't mean Janis Joplin types who drank and drugged themselves to death. But those like the poet Keats who died at 25, and especially my painting hero Richard Parkes Bonington who died at the same age, only a month shy of his next birthday - both from tuberculosis. I know I haven't made the most of my time on earth, but I am grateful to be alive.

I left this piece at the point where I began to add the purple in the leaf at right, and then did a chart of purples:

Work In progress: Autumn arrangement

10/15: Autumn arrangement, oil on canvas, approx. 6x10 in.

I felt sluggish all day yesterday and could barely get this far on this piece. I spent only an hour but a long, slow hour, and my mind didn't seem to be at full power. Hopefully I can make something interesting out if this mess. I'm not looking forward to painting the little pine cone in front, or all the bark on the stick (like in the piece before). A subtler challenge might be to make sense of the stick with its cool undertones in front of the hot red leaves and pine needles in back.

It was interesting when I looked up "autumn arrangement" to find pretty flowers and harvested fruits and vegetables, and here I've set up some dead wood that I "harvested." It just shows what I find more interesting - some fallen things as they might have "arranged" themselves on the ground, waiting for an 18-month-old little girl to squat down to investigate.

Old English word of the day:

hærfest [hâr'-vəst]: autumn; this also came to mean the
month of August.

Hærfest derived from the same Proto-Indo-European root as did the Latin carpere (to cut, divide, pluck - "carpe diem").

Work in progress: Self-portrait

10/4: I tried to look at the light more closely and add more warm and cool notes. It got frustrating and I lost patience, probably wrecking some areas. I wish painting wasn't so hard.

Work in progress: Self-portrait

10/1: Self-portrait, oil on canvas panel, approx. 8x6 in.

Spent three hours to get to this point - now less like a Sculpey face and more like me. It has been tricky work in the eye areas, trying to see past the glare on my glasses. I would take them off if I weren't practically blind. The biggest correction from the first stage I think has been the shape of my nose, which I never feel I can get just right. From the side it is an obnoxious piece of landscape - even my teacher Jeff Markowsky couldn't get the profile right when I sat for him years ago. I think about that and smile, as it reminds me that even the people I look up to who are exceptionally good can sometimes get thrown off.

Work in progress: Self-portrait

9/30: Self-portrait, oil on canvas panel, approx. 8x6 in.

Lest this blog become just a series of tiny 20-minute sketches, I thought I’d better do something more involved. This time I wanted to do a more finished self-portrait. I can’t guarantee that it won’t end up an embarrassing mess, so here is what it looks like now. I think it is the beginning of a decent portrait, at least beginning to look like me – keeping in mind the fundamental structural concepts such as forming the sockets before eyeballs, I tried to address some crucial things before stopping: eyes going in the right direction (sounds simple enough), the corners of the mouth, and (in my case) looking like a member of the Taliban. Well, it’s on its way.

This is only an hour and a half of work so far and I tried to stay rough. The palette is typical for me nowadays: white, yellow, ochre, red, alizarin, transp. oxide red, burnt umber, cerulean, ultramarine, black. I should keep cad. red light off my palette and use it only in special cases (it’s not like I can't use the other colors to make everything way too hot); same with my old friend burnt sienna, as the oxide red pretty much replaces it. I might add terre verte or a similar green, if mainly as a way to remember to use greens more, but it still leaves the total number above 10, when painters like Nerdrum can work with 3 or 4.... I may well end up doing more of a dabby type of Nerdrumesque modeling here, thinking that I possibly relate to his style more than I thought. We'll see how it goes.

Work in Progress: Polar bears

9/22: Here's part of the sketch for a painting I'm working on for Highlights. They had dropped the deadline for it a while back but the other day decided that they do want to use it, so I'd better wrap it up soon. This was my painting work for the day....