New Year, New Resolve

Ingres is reported to have said that "drawing is the probity of art". My interpretation is that he meant that drawing is truth, and without it a work of art lacks a solid foundation. Whenever I start to feel as if I'm running in place, not advancing as far in my work as I would like, I know that I can go back to the source, drawing, and work my way from there. It's such a simple and basic process, yet profoundly engaging, and often frustrating. My academic training has gotten me away from the "contour line", one shot method, that was emphasized in high school and college, and more towards something fluid; like shaping clay for a sculpture. The nebulous quality of my initial straight line block-in pencil marks, gradually become more refined, and my analytical thought processes undergo a similar refinement. In this way each drawing becomes a new adventure, a self discovery that never seems rote or repetitive.
       With the advent of the new year I've decided to push myself a bit harder on the drawing front. I feel like I haven't fully made use of all that drawing has to offer in terms of advancing my art and so I'm determined to increase my focus. Normally I start a painting by making an actual size drawing, sometimes called a "cartoon", and then transferring it to my canvas. This is done on white sketchpad paper. I do spend quite a bit of time on the drawing, and I keep pushing it until I feel it's "canvas ready". I use a mirror often to check for mistakes, and I do a lot of measuring, and cross measuring. So, what else could I do, one might ask? Usually my painting concept is based on a small thumbnail sketch. I'm going to start making larger, slightly more refined sketches, maybe on toned paper, that include a value study as well. I want to use the drawing as a way of working out several possibilities in each arrangement that I set up, so as to arrive at the best solution. I also want to make individual studies of elements in the setup in order to better understand their individual specifics before encompassing them in the harmony of the overall design.

This is the "cartoon" for a painting that I'm currently about to start. At this point I've transferred it to a canvas, but I haven't started to paint it yet. If I were following my new years resolutions, I would not have made this drawing full size and transferred it without having first made some drawing studies and even some painted studies. It's not that I'm not happy with the drawing, I am, and I'm excited to paint it, it's really just a feeling I have that I need to push myself a little harder to not just come up with an idea but to come up with the best version of that idea. I did however make two miniature transfers on 5 x 7 inch panels on which I'll do a black and white and a color poster study. It's not completely what I resolved to do but it's not a total "cheat" on my "New Years Resolutions", so I'll take it and try to do more on the next one (isn't that what resolutions are all about?).

"Admiration" Process and Progress Shots

                Recently I read an article by an artist who was wondering if it's a mistake for artists to post work in progress shots of their artwork. His feeling was that it was somehow taking away some of the mystery of the work and possibly devaluing it by too much exposure. I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of the social media age, but one of the best things to come of all of this, is the glimpse into the studios and working habits of artists that I admire but will never get a chance to meet. I was able to introduce my work and get accepted into a new gallery, and this came about entirely through social media. So here's a look into the creation of one of my latest, "Admiration", oil on panel, 16" x 20".
               My initial concept for this painting was to show how our vision and perceptions of the world around us has been filtered through technology and how eventually we have to bring it back to looking at nature if we want to remove the scales from our eyes. How many times will a realist painter have to hear the compliment that it looks just like a photograph, when what they should be hearing is that it looks perfectly natural! I wanted to paint this one using daylight to add another "natural" element to my concept. Once I had set up the vase of flowers with the wooden bowl, I began to look for other circular forms and shapes to add to the composition. I had recently been talking with some students about the apocryphal story of how Giotto submitted a drawing of a circle to the Pope when he asked for a sample of his work, and how Rembrandt included two circles in the background of his self portrait, as if to say "I'm twice as good as Giotto". Once I added the wooden pulley, and silver bowl, the painting really began to take on a mind of it's own (yes sometimes that really does happen, it's not just artist b.s.) I start my making a careful drawing on paper, sized to the canvas, which I transfer using conte crayon on the back of the drawing. I used to save every drawing that I made, thinking I would need them for the eventual retrospective I was going to have, but my studio is small and I just can't store them, so now I use the originals and don't have to deal with the idiots at the copy center. Here's a shot of the transfer with a wipeout using thinned down raw umber. My wipeouts are kept fairly simple; two values. My theory is that if the painting doesn't grab me with a two value structure, it's not going to grab me with twenty.

                My next step is to make a color wash. Most artists thin their paint way down so that it appears almost like a watercolor. I put my paint on thin, but more opaque than a watercolor. I try to get it as much "like" in the color wash pass as I can, so that I can get it even more "like" in the finishing pass. I got this idea from reading Solomon J. Solomon and a workshop I took with Douglas Flynt. I used to make color studies for each painting, and I probably still should, but I've got a lot of ideas in my head, and I'm no "spring chicken" if you get my drift. I paint the color wash very carefully moving from form to form, usually starting with the center of interest and fanning out form there. Here's a shot of the color wash in progress.

          Once the color wash is dry it's time for deja-vu all over again (thanks Yogi Berra). I repaint every part of the painting exactly as I did it the first time, except now I'm noticing some things I didn't pick up on before, and I'm thickening up the lights a bit. My goal is to stay with each form, in a Zen like manner, until I'm completely satisfied, working wet into wet. I don't leave myself a back door option of fixing it later. I will occasionally repaint an area, but I never find it to be as satisfying as getting it right the first time. It loses some of the freshness and snappy brush work! I've always worked this way, even before studying at an atelier, and just assumed I was doing it wrong. Now I  don't care, this is how I paint, take it or leave it. Below is a shot of the final painting. This is one of those rare instances where the painting comes close to my initial concept. Let's face it, no painting is ever going to be as vivid as that initial bolt of lightning when an idea just pops into your head and you see it clear as day for one fleeting second. I guess that's the windmill that keeps me coming back.

Process Shots

"Julia" oil on linen on board, 11"x14", "Dome and bottles" 11"x14" graphite on paper. I finally got that overcast day that I've been waiting for, to finish Julia's portrait. I'm pretty happy with it but there are some things that I've learned that I'll be looking for in the next one. I'm going to make a conscious effort to keep the shadow areas simpler, thinner and more unified.

More Julia and Jug

"Julia Back From Moscow" oil on linen, 11"x14", "Jug, Pan, and Vase" oil on linen, 9"x12". I'm at a stage in Julia's portrait that I find very exciting. Blindly windowshading my way along, using my study to stay on course, and watching the portrait slowly reveal itself. I'm always hoping to get everything exactly right the first time, but that almost never happens. As I was telling one of my students the other day, you don't want to have a half-hearted stage, planning to be bold later on because that first stage will carry through. It's better to go for broke and then if you have to make changes at least they will be over something worthwhile. The painting is, as I had hoped, starting to take on the mood of the sitter, even the background, so I can't wait for the next session. "Jug..." is finished. This one took a lot of hard looking. I'm painting in north exposed daylight and I'm really paying careful attention to textures and edges. I'm pretty happy with this one and I think it's pointing the way that works best for me; simple objects, well observed.

More "Turbans, Mermaid, and Rose"

Some people might be wondering what's up with the turbans, if they're symbolic in any way. No, I just like painting cloth and the homemade turbans create interesting juxtapositions of light and color. Also, they are featured quite a bit in the work of artists that I admire such as Bargue, Gerome, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. I like having a model wear one of my home made creations because it involves a bit of role playing and by taking the model outside of their ordinary existence it allows me a glimpse into their real personality which will hopefully make for a better painting.

Erica's Nose

oil on linen. 9"x12" I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to be working from the live model in my own studio, with my own lighting, on my own schedule. The money that I've been putting into part time atelier classes for the last seven years has now been re-routed towards the hiring of models. Have I learned all that I need to know to make successful paintings? Who knows, but one thing is for sure; I'm learning a lot doing what I'm doing.

Self Portrait Round 3

This is my latest battle with my small self portrait. I'm going to put this one aside and start another one soon. I'm happy overall with the results. I picked up a few things working in layers this way that I'm going to play around with for a while. It's a little on the brushy side (less so than it looks in this photo), so in the next one I'm goin to use the same process but attempt to be more economical with my strokes; do more with less.

Svetlana and Petit Dejeuner au Lit

I finally got a decent photo of "Svetlana" 9"x12". I read a statement by William Whitaker saying that he takes his digital photos out side on overcast days, so I thought I'd give it a try. I set my cameras white balance and the photo came out pretty good. I'm going to try this with a few other paintings and see if I get better results. I'm slowly crawling around my still life painting and fortunately the bread hasn't gone moldy yet. I'm seting up north light in my studio so I'm planning to do a bunch of daylight paintings now that the days are longer.

More "Painted Vases"

That tall vase kept me on my toes, it took me a bit of noodling to get it to sit back and yet still have some light on the forms. This pure windowshading is a fun exercise but it can be nerve racking. My hats off to Scott Burdick and Jeffrey Larson for making it look easy. I'm breaking a few rules. My center of interest isn't on the right and it sits forward of the other objects. I'm also painting alla prima over a carefully worked up drawing, not really the way that alla prima is supposed to work, but it appears to be working out okay anyway.

More Eggs and Portrait Study

The portrait is from my bi-weekly figure group. It's on a prestained 8"x10" oil on board. I decided to use a grisaille palette to prepare for the figure painting class that I'll be taking saturdays at GCA. It was a three hour pose, so I had to work pretty fast. I drew directly with the brush and dove in. I was inspired by the small premier coup portraits of Travis Schlaht. The only problem was that one of my fellow artists started a conversation with the model while she was posing, so I got a real lesson in portrait painting on the go!.

More Turban

Got the rose in last week and finished the turban today. Took a week off to go camping. No painting, just chillaxing with the family. I can already see some areas that need touching up but all in all, so far so good. I really pushed the chroma on the rose to make it stand out.

Me and Eakins

So the other day I was hangin' with Eakins and I asked him if he'd mind if I took a stab at copying his portrait of Maud. He laughed and said "you think you're up to it, boy?". I said "well no, but that never stopped me before". He said "well go on then, it's your funeral." I asked him to give me some advice and to write down a list of the colors and mixtures that he used but by then he'd had enough of me and threw me out of his studio. So with the painting in hand I went back to my own place and began to try and figure it out. It seemed to me that he mostly used earth colors, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, raw umber, along with flake white and ivory black. He used a little bit of a strong red for accents, I'm guessing vermillion, which I didn't have any of so I used cadmium red light. I've seen Eakins spend months on some portraits and others he knocked out in a single session. I'm guessing that he painted this one pretty directly so that's what I did too. I can see a few things that are off and that will need fixin' before I would dare to show it to him, but I'll wait until the whole things done before I start fiddlin' around. Damn earth colors dry up so fast that by the end of a day's work I can't make any last minute changes because the colors already drying and lightening. I'll oil it out eventually and then I'll show him.

Tea Pot

More "Maud After Eakins"

I decided to model the block-in to help clarify my thoughts about how to proceed with the painting. My guess was that just like a photo of a person tends to highlight the darks and lights, resulting in a flat appearance, the photo of a painting would probably result in the same effect. So I decided not to copy the values exactly as they appear in the reproduction but to instead conceptualize the forms with regard to their angle to and distance from the light source. The way that I imagine Eakins, with his training, and interest in optics, would have worked. I spent a lot of time working and re-working the face trying to show the compressed range of values in the shadow side of the face without having it look spotty, or like a topo map. I think having this drawing as a guide will definitely help with the painting. If I had the time, I would make a drawing like this for everything I'm painting, including still lifes. There's something about the slow process of pencil modeling that helps me to slow down and really start to understand what's going on. I tried out a new kind of pencil that was recommended to me by one of my instructors. It's a mechanical pencil that holds .3 size lead, which is small enough to model forms without ever having to be sharpened. It's not quite as subtle as a sharpened point but it's pretty close and you don't have to stop, ever, which allows one to easily reach that heightened state of concentration.

More Self Portrait

Cast is in. Kept the value range kind of narrow and laid the tones one next to the other without too much overpainting. I'll try and complete the rest of my body tomorrow and then the next thing is to pull it all together as a unified statement.

More Self Portrait

I'm still pounding away on this one. I went over the entire drawing filling in all the little spots because I thought it looked a little grainy and I wanted that Camie Davis plasticity. Then I realized that overall the shadows weren't dark enough and that the portrait was looking a little soft, not showing enough of the bony structure that lies underneath, so I washed yet another pass of darks over the surface. I think I'm getting closer to the final range now and once I clean up the drawing I'll be ready to start the painting. One thing that I'll probably do in the future that I picked up in my figure drawing class is to make a small pencil poster study and use that to key the values , because everything looks dark when it's next to white.

Still More Mannequins

I finished covering the canvas today. I'll wait a few days, look at it with fresh eyes, and then I'll oil it out and tinker a little bit here and there. My goal is to get it right the first time, to keep it fresh, and to keep the paint skin all of a piece. It doesn't always work out that way, but for the way that I work, the best ones usually do.

More Rope

I'm making progress, slow but steady. My approach to chiaroscuro may be a little different from some. I don't squint away pieces of the form and deal with the parts illuminated by light. I prefer to paint up to the edge placing a dark value next to a dark value and in that way I can achieve a dissapearing edge effect without losing the shadow color. I don't rub the edges together with a fan brush or try to blend them, I let the values merge of their own accord. I have a mistrust of certain effects that I see abused in the work of so many painters that I try to stear clear of any mannerist tendencies. I'm not saying one way is neccessarily better, it's just my own personal preference.

"Stuffed Shirts"

I'm really having to keep my wits about me while painting these shirts. I think this is the most cloth I've ever painted in a single painting. It's good practice and I'm learning as I go so hopefully the next one will go a little smoother. The hardest part is judging the relative value of a given area, because surprisingly enough, my perception of it is going to change as I go along (or maybe not surprising). The other problem is that I have an image in my mind of what I want the painting to look like that doesn't necessarily correspond with what I'm seeing. I need to work from the object to get the "gravitas" I desire but if I copied it exactly as I'm seeing it, it would fall short of my goal. Hope that makes sense.

More Capri Girl

Started work on my Sargent study. There's a lot of nuance in Sargents painting and he seemed to be up on everything that I'm reading and learning about in terms of connecting forms, shaping the light, compressed values etc;. I guess a lot of the things that are being re-invented in modern day ateliers were just standard practice in the academic training of an artist during Sargent's lifetime. And of course it helps that he was extraordinarily gifted and probably was able to intuit a lot of things that might have taken a lesser artist half a lifetime to figure out. Anyway, I'm having a blast painting her. She never complains, poses as long as I need, and only takes a break when I do, and best of all; no modeling fee.