Pilgrim's Progress

11/18/10 - Hm, yes. I feel like I'm on a pilgrimage, journeying closer and closer to a style I can call my own. Two sessions, today. Good progress--for me!
4/11/11 - I just realized, I never posted the final. So I've now swapped out the earlier for the latest image; I finished the painting sometime in November last year.

L'il Artistes

This is one of the times I'm tempted to stop at the underpainting stage! Well, at least I have a record of it, and will forge ahead shortly. These little artists were spotted on Monhegan Island, an artist colony off the coast of Maine, in the summer of 2001. I liked their intensity of focus as they were sketching their little hearts out.

The Tubes...

...were one of my favorite bands, waaaay back when. When? A lonnnng time ago and far, far away! (In Phoenix... I went to school with one of them.) But I digress. These simple paint tubes and little bottle of Gamblin medium don't look like much. It's a painting only a mother could love, but it's a big step in the right direction towards a looser style. Each facet: one stroke. No "licking it to death" as one of my teachers, Alexander Rokoff, used to say!

(Hm, speaking of The Tubes makes me want to paint some Su-su-sushi!! haha, inside joke. Maybe one of my Camelback classmates will get it!)

Joyful, joyful, joyful!

Another day, another David! What is so gosh darn compelling about this guy? Aside from being gorgeous, inside and out, and singing beauuuuuuuuu-ti-fully... he is just soooo joyful. Om mani padma davey! haha (Another one that's not finished. Think I'll ever get back to these incompletes?)

Tecalia

This one is much further along--just a few tweaks to go. (That nose just isn't right.) I'm hoping my cousins don't stop by and see this, because I think it will be a Christmas present to 'em!

I will not diss my camera any more!

I will not diss my camera any more!
I will not diss my camera any more!

I'll cut to the chase, and just say I've had a very challenging few weeks, trying to get my camera functioning again. I'll spare you the long boring saga of my camera woes, though, and just pop some things up--finally!!--that I've been working on.

This poppy is part of a panel that is slated to be part of a dyptich, which has (how like me!) gotten put aside for the next, more compelling canvas that I preferred to work on.

The dog days of... Fall?

I started a class last night, and the assignment was to paint with only vertical or horizontal strokes. No contours--it's not about drawing. Work applying only the color you see in the small spot you're looking at at that moment. Fun! This was a good one for me, to push me out of my head and into the paint. In addition, I chose to work from this random image of a dog while it was upside down. I took it home to finish, and all right all ready!, I cheated towards the end--you will see a few diagonal strokes. But not too many!

I'm calling it final

Too many others in progress, I'm calling this one good! Even tho' it's not very, I can see things I'd fix... but I'm moving on.

Roy is looking a bit bilious!

But that's because he's no where near done. (I said I'd post what I'm working on, right?!) This is the grisaille, but I wanted to use his trademark primary colors so I started him in yellows and reds. Hm. Looks more like Frankenstein than Lichtenstein at the moment... but stay tuned... We've only just begun.... [music to that corny song playing in background!]

Progress on last week's painting...

Still not done, but getting there. More work to do on flesh tones and some proportional issues.

Expressing the ineffable

The subject of this painting has stated that he is less concerned with getting his vocals technically perfect than he is with fully expressing what is in the song to express. Of course, David is technically perfect, and that is where this comparison ends. But that is what I'm attempting to accomplish in both the technique and style of this particular painting: to express visually the experience that emerges when one hears this artist sing.

The past week has been one of exploration. Source inspiration includes the current print exhibition at PAM in the Gilkey print center, which totally bowled me over and reconnected me with my original impetus to claw my way into the graphic design profession, way back when I was 12 or so (although I didn't realize it at that age!) I should also note here that the psychological aspects of advertising gleaned from Vance Packard's The Power of Persuasion was an equally motivating force back then.

But back to last week. I began to explore the opportunities that were opening up with this new (to me) surface I've been working on: heavily gessoed paper. An avenue began to appear, along which I might tell more than one narrative in a single piece. In this depiction, I'm attempting to render both the towering awesomeness of The Voice--the anticipation we fans experience in the introductory refrains of a concert--and the ineffable quality of that Voice to reach our "very marrow" (to quote a Van Morrison lyric)--to touch our innermost being with what feels like a divine love.

I'm still trying to work into this portrait all of that love that oozes out of this extraordinary artist. It pours out of his eyes, out of his Voice, out of everything about him, really. Obviously, this painting is not technically perfect because it doesn't accurately portray what he looks like. But hopefully there is an equal expressiveness that captures what is in the subject, and available to all ears that hear.

OK, back to work on it... I really do need to represent his likeness more accurately... just thought I'd pop in here, finally, to let you know what I've been working on. And to change the parameters of my blog: my goal is now a painting-a-week!

Where do the words go?

I was reading Letters on Cézanne, and two pages later realized that I hadn't absorbed a single word. Where did those words go? Did they flow into my brain and out again? Or straight into some nameless word receptacle that the Doctors of Science haven't discovered yet? Poor lost words. I have to go in and find them.

[Production notes: I ran the painting through a Photoshop filter (I like that splattery look!), then added the words in Illustrator.]
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Full text (I've used a portion of this) in the graphic is from Rilke's Letters on Cézanne: "He... lays his apples on bed covers which Madame Brémond will surely miss some day, and places a wine bottle among them or whatever happens to be handy. And (like van Gogh) he makes his "saints" out of such things; and forces them--forces them--to be beautiful, to stand for the whole world and all joy and all glory, and he doesn’t know whether he has succeeded in making them do it for him."

Berkeley Girl

It looks like I may have to lower the bar for weekends. I mean, a person's got to have some kind of social life, right? Last night was a wonderful "Night at the Museum" at PAM, and I really intended to come home and start painting at 10 p.m. That is, until my head hit the pillow. Well, I did get up early this morning and got a lot done... palette scraping, brush washing, studio rearranging... and the drawing for this roughed in... and some of the colors mixed... and it's underway, as you can see. Now life intrudes once again. But it's a good life, no complaints here! Another birthday festivity this evening... this may be as far as I get with it today.

This will have to suffice for Saturday...

It's all David Archuleta's fault! If he hadn't delivered the most extraordinary performance Friday night at the ALMA Awards--which I had to watch innumerable times Saturday!--I might have gotten something done! (Yeaaah! He won for best New Artist!) View at your own risk (it's addictive):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZN7hBq7bBo
So, in lieu of another in the painting-a-day series, this underpainting--commenced several weeks ago--will have to do. Guess who it is? (...or rather, will be.) This one's slated to be a real painting, I probably have about 75 hours to go on it though, so don't expect to see it anytime soon!

Yum... kohlrabi!

Today I thought I'd do something simple. Lovely Kohlrabi... how hard can that be? It's purple. It's round. (buzzer sound) Wrong! So, this is not finished, it looks like a hybrid right now... a cross between an "underpainting" (grisaille) and the actual painting. Posting tonight. Pondering tomorrow.

Koz... just because.

The current PAM member's magazine mentioned John Baldessari, whom I thought was a set designer in Italy but the internet produces unfamiliar work---I must be thinking of a different one. So I referred to my journal from an Italy trip and see that nope, same name, there's another one there. Hm. OK.

Anyway, all this pondering---oops, contemporary word would be Googling!---led me to a March 2006 NYTimes article that discusses "..three artists they thought would survive the crash: John Baldessari, Takashi Murakami, and Thomas Ruff." So now who's Murakami? In looking for him, I ran across a pic of him with Kanye West from the "Billionaire Boys Club" site (hmmm... tomorrow I'll research the Billionaire Girl's Club!!!!), and on that site I saw this cool-looking Koz building, so I clicked on that and went to thecoolhunter.co.uk and learned this about the building: it's a "...children’s sports and recreation center in Saint-Cloud, a wealthy community located in the metropolitan area of Paris, about six miles from the city center."

So that's how today's painting came to be. But I wasn't all that crazy about the painting---perhaps abstract architectural rendering isn't my niche? ;-) ? ---so I ran it through a Photoshop filter. There. Much better!

Freshly picked flowers

Nothing like a freshly picked fist full of flowers to perk one up on a drizzly Portland day. OK, it's night, actually--I had to take a break to watch the America's Got Talent Finale! As usual, light reflecting off wet paint makes photographing this a challenge. A full vase of flowers is depicted, but I especially like one of the roses, so I'll show that larger, and see if I can include a second image, smaller. I think it looks kind of Japanese--like you might see on a kimono.

Don't look at this if you're headed to bed!

{Ghastly image removed by artist!} I was going to go back into the studio tonight and see if I could do anything to turn this one around. But now, I'm afraid I'd have nightmares if I looked at it any more. Geesh. What was I thinking? Francis Bacon looks like the muppets compared to this. Sorry.

I better clean the palette, all those reds have fried my brain... maybe a nice pastel lavendar tomorrow!!!

Here's my excuse...

Um, a little slow-going today, but that's OK, a good time was had by all! (Love those Purple Nirples!)

Will try to do better tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to me!

Here's my painting for the day--haha--I'm taking a weekend hiatus while cooking up a storm for the big bash tomorrow. Big even-numbered birthday. Whoo-hooo!

Regularly scheduled programing will resume on Monday!

Well this is different.

What do you think this one's about? I saw what was goin' on here within about 6 brush strokes and just went with it! Make up your own story first, before you read mine.

So, Degas walks into a saloon, spots this long-legged dancer who looks just like Miss Kitty. He gets his first chakra in a twist--goes back to the theater, rustles around in the wardrobe department. Ah-ha! Nice hat, and these boots'll do just fiiiiine. He goes back to the bar, tosses back an absinthe, reaches a big strong arm out to her, and... well... the rest is history. (Art history.) You can see that she has a big heart (although his shows signs of life, there's hope), and is casting a second chakra spell on him.

No, I was not drinking absinthe tonight!

Oh baby, oh baby!

Burning the midnight oil again--not a bad way to go, though, painting the lovely lips of actor Jay Hernandez. This is a mini--on canvas for a change (3"x3")

Indian Hobo

The conservator I found here in Portland said, basically---although in much kinder terms---that my current batch of paintings will be dust in 4-5 years. The oil in the paint will rot the paper, no gettin' around it. And the proper preparation of the paper by mounting on museum board and coating with hide glue sounds like a major pain in the posterior. I'll give it a try... but it will take some time to do that kind of prep, so in the meantime... I'm still painting directly on paper until I have a chance to buy a bunch of canvas board.

Much to do today, I didn't get underway painting until 10 p.m. This beautiful Indian man (well, in the photo he's very handsome!) looks like he's carrying a burlap sack full of something---maybe his belongings---as he walks along, train tracks overhead. I tried to use bigger brushes, work fast, not get hung up in the little tiny bits. This will serve as an adequate study; I can see I'd like to do a larger version on canvas. Well, it's tomorrow already, I better post this!!!

The Extras

Between the morning activities and having to go out this evening--and the afore-mentioned extra work on the red shoes--I had very little time left. So I thought I'd try an abstract. Eeeck! Haven't done one before and don't really know where to start. So I just used the leftover paint from the last several days' work, and starting smooshing and streaking. Hm. Needed something, so I added the rows of dots on the right. Now that I look at it, I think I'll call it "The Extras" (for extra paint!) And also because the dots look like movie extras, lined up out in the rain, waiting for their audition.

Or something.

Update

For the record, I did a bit of work on Mr. Sexy Red Shoes, so here's the update.

Would have liked to talk to this guy...

He was reading a newspaper, all nonchalant there on the bench. But it's not my photo, so no chance of speaking with the gent. He looked to be very refined. Perhaps LaValle can tell me more about him--this is one of her images, and she has graciously allowed me to paint some of them. Out of all of her gloriously beautiful photographs, this fellow jumped out at me, and I've wanted to paint him since I first laid eyes on his sexy red shoes!

So, I'm back on track, I hope. Gosh, yesterday was awful! I had a glitch with trying a new surface (I'm not supposed to be painting with oils directly on paper--am researching this issue) and it went very very very badly. Yikes, Gesso, yuck. Back to my beloved paper for the time being! I tried to paint my cousin's daughter's child, but OMG--the poor little girl would be so frightened if she ever saw my effort. I will try again sometime.

I need to work on the back foot, here--but don't see what is needed right now. Perhaps tomorrow.

Argh... some days.

Yes, we have no... bananas.
Here's the deal. If it sucks, you ain't seein' it!!! (I get an E for effort though!)

What color is your.... hot air balloon?

Today--Day 6--I thought I'd answer that age-old question, "What color is your parachute?" Chartreuse and orange? Um.... yeah. I knew that.

It wasn't until I came in to post it that I realized... it's a freakin' hot air balloon! hahahahahaha

Oops.

FYI, I'm out of town tomorrow. I'll take some paints and paper, but it will be Sunday before I can post. Have a great weekend!

As I passed by LaValle's flowers from yesterday's lunch, I thought they were so beautiful--and would not last forever, you know--I must take a photo of them. It was a beautiful photo, and I thought I might paint that image today, instead of any of the other ideas I had lined up. A few minutes later when I walked by them, the center had fallen out of one of them and was lying on the table with its life blood drooling out of it. Oh, the shock of life's transcience!

Why is death always so much more poignant than life? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Oh well, here I have painted a beautiful death.

Love this happy guy!

When I walked out to the studio today, some of the leftover paint from Msr. Cezanne--the background aqua color--reminded me of the Newport Aquarium, and a photo I took several years ago of this little guy. When I saw him there, he just stopped me in my tracks. I put my face up near the glass and communed with him for a long time. I didn't know exactly what he/she/it was at the time! (Let's say he.) He seemed to be as fascinated with me as I was with him. He beamed me lots of ecstatic energy, he was so happy and curious and intelligent. OK, I'm anthropomorphizing! I've since learned that he's a "skate".

I'll probably tweak him at some point, I had to end off at about 3.5 hrs. Hmm... tomorrow something simple!!!

Monsieur Cezanne

Just for the record, here's a slightly better image from yesterday. Maybe? (!) I'm realizing a mounting dissatisfaction with my 5-yr old digicam. Hmmm.

Young Cezanne

I had no idea how much Rilke was inspired by the work of various painters. He was especially influenced by Cezanne, who was a "tutelary spirit" and loomed as a "Homeric patriarch" according to H. W. Petzet in his Introduction to Letters on Cezanne (transl. 1985, ed. by Clara Rilke). I'm so knocked out by some of the passages I'm reading, now I'm considering renaming my blog "Painting Rilke." Well, we'll see how long my focus and inspiration remains keyed to his works.

Today--Day 3--in honor of Rilke's muse, we have a portrait of Cezanne. As you can see from the image, I used a black & white photo (from Wikipedia) for reference; Cezanne appears to be an intense young man in this photo. I thought, initially, I might try my hand at Cezanne's style as well. It didn't come out that way. Oh well, I like the way it did turn out--perhaps I am finding my way a bit with my own style... which would be good, since that's the point of my painting-a-day challenge. Apologies for the rather awful image quality, I'll try again tomorrow in better light; my digicam wasn't up to the job.

P.S. - I'm enjoying this realization: While I'm inspired by a writer and his words, Rilke in turn was inspired by an artist and his visual output.

Do I look like Sophie?

Today's painting is inspired by this passage from Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge:

"Have I said it before? I am learning to see. Yes, I am beginning. It still goes badly. But I intend to make the most of my time.

To think, for instance, that I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several. ...The question of course arises, since they have several faces, what do they do with the others? They store them up. Their children will wear them. But sometimes, too, it happens that their dogs go out with them on. And why not? A face is a face."

So today's (Day 2) painting is "My Dog Face." (Miss you, Sophie!)

And she's off!

Yesterday I decided to do a painting a day. Not an original idea by any means, there are more than a few artists doing this. But I figure it's a good way to exorcise my demons. You know, the bile-colored critic; the baby-shit yellow coward; the crooked-toothed, pumpkin squash-your-ideas monster... to name a few. Kaboom! Outta here! Oh yeah. I'm going to lighten up, have fun, paint for the simple pleasure of it. So, I'm waving to you folks on the dock... my skiff is taking off.
Day 1 image: "The Hose"