Get Your Yah Yahs Out

As a fairly traditional, I guess "academic" painter, the methods that I use can sometimes seem restricting and methodical. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy most of the time with the results. It's just that sometimes you get the urge to paint thickly and broadly; you want to slash the paint on like the Van Gogh demon you've always secretly wanted to be. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I'm not in the Sargent-Sorolla-Zorn mode of painting. If you listen real hard to your inner voice, not to be confused with schizo like paranoia, you can figure out that there's a reason that you gravitated to a particular way of painting. Carefully applying paint to a fully mapped out drawing using a carefully mixed palette of values and colors suits me. That's just how it is, and I'm okay with it. I do however, enjoy dabbling in other methods, ones that I have no intention of selling, pressure free slathering, maybe the way that art is occasionally supposed to be.
       The "poster" study gives me a chance to step outside of my comfort zone. The idea behind it is to make a miniature version of the painting your about to start. I usually do mine on 6"x8" cheapo canvas boards. I don't want to start thinking of them as precious "masterpieces" because, as I previously stated, the idea is to have some fun, while also figuring out some things that might help me to make a better painting. I'm not about capturing the setup exactly as it appears. Maybe I have a God complex, my wife would say "no maybe's about it!", but I want to arrange the values and colors to capture the inner vision that sparked the idea of the painting in the first place. Right now I'm working a little bit in "back to the future" mode, because I'm making the poster study after already having transferred the final drawing to a larger canvas. What I really should be doing is making several poster studies, trying out a few arrangements, before I start the finished drawing and transfer. This is how the study was traditionally used and it makes a lot of sense. The problem is that in today's world it's just so danged easy to snap a photo of the finished drawing, print it out at 6 x 8 and make a quick poster. I'm at the point in my development now where I need to slow down and do things that will help me get off of this plateau and onto the next level. Spending more time on studies seems like the best way to get there.
  In the picture above you can see the poster study and grisaille umber wipe out for my current painting "Gloria Mundi". I decided to limit the poster study to no more than three values for each area. I don't blend the paint, I lay it down in separate value and color patches. I'm looking for the "abstract" quality of the painting as well as composition, color, and tone. I'm not trying to make "art". I love these little color studies but clearly they are an acquired taste. I once had a bunch of them at a solo show, priced very reasonably so that the less wealthy, or as I like to call them "cheapskates" could buy an affordable piece of art; really affordable, as in dirt cheap! I couldn't give them away. Not even one. I guess that's a good thing, because if I start to think of them as too precious, I probably wouldn't be dancing around my studio, blasting "Purple Haze", and letting down what hair I have left!

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?).

Squash Study and Ebauche

The ebauche (color wash), is on a 11"x14" canvas on panel, and the study is on a 9"x12" panel. I decided to do the wash in after doing the color study and realizing how complex the lighting was going to be. I was thinking about starting directly in on the vegetables but I decided to do things the way that I needed to and if I end up having to replace the squash, so be it. With the daylight savings time change, I may end up being able to get a few hours in after work each day, so maybe I'll finish before they spoil. This composition is a little different for me, obviously inspired by some of Jacob Collins' earlier still life paintings, meant more as an homage than a rip-off (hopefully it comes off that way).

My Adult Students

These are two examples of paintings from the adult painting class I'm teaching at the National Art League, by Karen and Rhoda. There's a third one by my daughter Krista, which isn't completed yet. It's so nice to teach a class with a block of time longer than 40 minutes, and it's also great to be finally teaching adults. I love teenagers but they are soooo high maintenance!. Most of the classes at the N.A.L. work from photos so setting up a life painting class was quite a challenge. I had to bring my own spotlight, attach it to the ceiling, turn off all of the room lights and clip a small individual lamp with 15 watt bulbs to each easel. It took them a little getting used to working in relative darkness but it was the best way to keep the still life simply lit with a single light source. Both are on 11"x14" canvases. I had them draw directly with charcoal, do a wipe-out, make a small color study, mix up color strings, and then paint each form directly, tiling across the forms, wet-in-wet. For the next one I'm having them draw on paper first, and then transfer, so we can work on some basic block-in skills as well as painting issues.

"Pancho"

Study (8"x10") canvas board, block-in (16"x20") pencil on strathmore, wipe-out (16"x20") oil on linen. I'm continuing to make studies that are a little bit larger. Using a digital photo, I'm able to print a nice 8"x10" that I transfer to a 9"x12" board. I feel that the larger studies are helping me to get more of a handle on what I want the final picture to look like. I'm moving away a bit from the more abstract poster studies of the Ryder school to something more in the nature of a painted sketch. I saw some of Jacob Collins studies at the Adelson gallery exhibit and they inspired me quite a bit. This painting didn't start off with a theme, it just kind of composed itself and the theme became crystal clear as I went along. Sometimes a bit of that "channeling" will happen and I just run with it.

"Turbans, Mermaid, and Rose"

16" x 20" on oil primed linen. The drawing block in was transferred using tracing paper and charcoal. Some artists will make a smaller drawing and than enlarge it at a copy center. I like to draw at the actual size because I feel it's a bit like a dress rehearsal for making the painting. After drawing, tracing, transferring and inking, I have the memory of those form lines embedded in my brain, kind of like a golfer practicing strokes. My inking of my transferred drawing is always a little wobbly. I wish I had Doug Flynt's steady hand. It doesn't matter too much because I leave the block-in kind of Bargued out (straight lines only) so that I can do a lot of edge drawing with my brush in the finishing pass. The colors of the homemade turbans are pretty intense and look great under the lights so I hope that I can get half of what I'm seeing, it'll be a good painting. Next step is to make a small study in full color and than I'll just start window shading my way across the canvas.

More Ericka

Here's the poster and ebauche for "Ericka as The Wine Seller" 16"x20". The poster photo came out a little glossy because the paint was still wet, but I guess it gives the general idea of what I try to go for in the study. Mainly I want to be able to quickly think of the color scheme as a whole entity and the 5"x7" size allows me to make rapid decisions. I find that this kind of color "gesture" for want of a better term, if done correctly, will carry over into the final piece. On the ebauche (thinned down color layer), I'm painting it in fairly broadly, I don't want to eat the icing before theres a cake. I've been thinking a lot lately about the approach used by the angel academy and I like the idea of a first painting where there's less pressure to nail down all of the detail. I prefer to keep the first layer kind of soupy however because when I start to paint the finishing pass I like some tooth and I like some of the pale underpainting to glow through the top layer.

Petit Dejeuner Au Lit

Heres the poster, block-in, and ebauche for "Petit Dejeuner Au Lit" 16'x20". I did the underpainting over a raw umber toned canvas, to get the paleness of the ebauche to look a little less milky. The background interior is a corner of my bedroom which I'm in the process of doing a small painted study for. I plan to paint the final version from the study and drawings. One of the things that they've been pushing at GCA lately is the idea of taking reality and altering it somewhat to suit a specific goal rather than just rendering things as they are. Although this scene isn't that much of a stretch, it does include an arrangement that couldn't actually exist in my bedroom. Eventually I'm going to include some figures with a bit of narrative. One of the things that I tell my students and workshop participants is that if you're not getting excited at the underpainting stage, don't go any further, this is where you'll find the spark to carry you through all the long, hard work that's ahead.

Progress Shots

"Study for Victoria" 5"x7", "Victoria" 16"x20", "The Still Room" 16"x20"

I painted the poster study of Victoria at my portrait group session. Then when I got home I transferred my drawing to a canvas and did a rub in. I feel like I've got a better handle on my flesh palette this time then my last portrait. The still life is coming along and some subtle changes are starting to happen in my work. I'm not sure what they mean but I'm digging them so I'm letting things progress naturally.

New Stuff

"poster for "Still Room" 4"x6", Underpainting for "Still Room" 16"x20", Wipeout for "Moon Box" panel, 11"x14"

Stages

These shots show a couple of the stages that a painting might go through, from the drawing, to the poster study to the underpainting. The poster is a little sunken in, I did it yesterday, but it helped me to get a handle on the skin tones and modulations. Andre is pretty dark skinned but he doesn't have an ounce of fat so he gets these really cool purple lights that react with his warmer body tones. My instructor at GCA gave me some tips on what colors to use and after that I was able to nail it. I spent this morning tubing up my colors so next session I'll be ready to go. I had meant to do the ebauche from life but the poster took up most of my time so the instructor suggested I do a simplified version at home using the study as a guide.

The still life drawing is for another 16"x20". It's just about ready for transfer. I'm including a peek of an interior in the background. I got the idea from looking at the paintings of Gerome where he sometimes shows a courtyard that unexpectedly opens up into a little slice of a vista.

Bird Bath

"Bird Bath" 11'x14" oil on canvas. Heres the poster study (5"x7"), drawing and wipeout for a new painting. I've been thinking about this composition for a while. My original plan was to paint it out of doors with the sky reflecting in the water around the flower but I procrastinated so now it sits in my studio. I still might do another one like that in the spring. Anyways I kind of like the idea of the contrast between this very dull colored object and the burgundy red background all being keyed off of the flower. The poster is pretty spot on so I'm debating whether or not to do a fully colored ebauche (underpainting) or just jump right in.

Figure Study

This was done on an 8"x10" panel from a three hour pose with my Tuesday night figure drawing group. After seeing some studies posted by Tim Stotz on Studio Escalier's blog, Silver Fortress, I was inspired to try a study in a similar vein.I'm not sure that I'm on the same page (I've never studied with Tim) but what I did here was lay down a brushstroke for each value change relative to the direction of the light, tiling my way across the form. I kept all of my edges sharp to keep the clarity of what each plane change was doing. The lighting that we're using is not ideal. The walls are all white and the model stand is light gray. I'm using a very powerful incandescent spotlight to burn through all of the ambient light and at least on some level give a unified cut to the direction of the light. Using this method was interesting because it made me conceptualize the light even more and coincidentally this came up as the main topic in the discussion of the figure painting I'm working on at GCA. How to unify the darks in the figure ground relationship and push the lights forward to give emphasis to the salient parts of the figure. So I think I will keep going with these little painting studies for a while before I pick up my pencil again.

Listening Devices

poster 6"x8", canvas 11"x14".

Covered Jugs Poster and Ebauche

I decided to alter my original lighting setup a bit. After looking at the painting and realizing that I had so many objects with a similar look I decided to put up some baffles so that the light would be dimmer on the left side while emphasizing the jugs on the right. I didn't want the painting to look like a catalog shot. It also has more of a natural daylight feel with the softer edges of the objects that are more in shadow. Generally I don't do too much blurring of edges to get an effect. I realized that if I'm working too hard to make an edge disappear than I probably don't have the correct value. When you have the right value in the right place very little smushing of edges are needed. The poster is on a very small 6"x8" panel which keeps me from getting overly fussy. Generally I do the poster before the ebauche so that I have some idea where I'm going and if I'm fortunate to be able to do them on the same day then the colors are already mixed and I can just blast it in.

Turban, Rose, and Goblet

Here's the poster study and wipe-out for a new still life, "Turban, Rose, and Goblet" 11'x14" on oil primed linen. I was looking at some of Charles Bargues paintings the other day and I wanted to do something with the color key that he used in one of his Bakshi-Bazouk (sic) paintings. I twisted up the turban from two pieces of silk like cloth. The rose is yellow and has that bright Naples yellow appearance that can be found in so many of his paintings. Anyways, the "turban" is going to be fun and challenging to paint. It has some whiplash highlights that remind me of graffiti. I love doing poster studies. You can really let your hair down and just go for it. I'm also finding them very helpful with getting a grip on overall tonal structure and color composition. It takes you off of the micro and on to the macro, thinking of the painting as a whole entity rather than a collection of nicely done parts.

"Rose and Cast 2" poster and ebauche

Making some progress. The underpainting ebauche is complete and I did a poster as well. Next step is to just dig in and start windowshading my way down the canvas. I'm using earth colors a bit more than usual and reserving those cadmiums for when I really need to punch up the color.

Water Glass and Mirror

Heres the wipeout (linen,11"x14") and poster study (canvas board, 5"x7") for a new set up. Originally I had planned to do a colored ebauche (underpainting) over the wipeout, but I went back into this wipeout a little more than usual because of the complexity of the arrangement, so I'm thinking I might just windowshade without the ebauche since I can use the poster to gauge my colors. I'm also worried as to how long I have before those carrots start to look brown.

I'm using a new lighting setup. I have two four foot GE sunshine bulbs over my easel and a compact flourescent daylight bulb pointed at the still life. I'm liking the way the colors look under the easel but I would like to get a little more intensity and warmth onto the still life. An artist who's work I greatly admire informed me that he uses a homemade fixture that holds five compact flourescents with most of the bulbs rated at 6500. He gave me a link to a similar bulb lamp at B&H photo, but I think I will try to build one myself. Why all this playing around with the lights? I'm trying to develope some paintings with a softer more delicate lighting similar to what I experienced when I did some daylight paintings last summer. Ideally, I would use north light, but the window in my studio is west and most of the time that I have to paint is at night so I want to set up conditions that are more reliable.

Anatomy Lesson

"Anatomy Lesson" oil on linen, 8"x10". I picked up this copy of Gray's Anatomy probably thirty years ago, when I was obsessed with the work of Leonardo Da Vinci and I fancied that I too would memorize every vein and muscle of the body.(oh to be young and idealistic!). I think I got the fake skull around the same time. It has a really nice patina, thirty years of dust, and I used to cover it with ketchup and scare my kids on Halloween.

I decided to make a black and white poster study as well as a color one. I was looking at the painting demo that Doug Flynt has posted on his website. www.DouglasFlynt.com and it got me to thinking about how these poster studies can be more than just an investigation of the values and colors but also a chance to think about the direction that the piece is headed in. What should be emphasized, what should be left out, etc; One of the things that I really like about Doug's work is the way that he judiciously uses his shadows to tie his design together. You can see that he very often will downplay the effect of reflected light and ambient light if it will strenthen the overall composition and keep the focus on the light areas.

I was thinking about that when I made the b&w poster study. You can see how the cast shadow of the book and it's form shadow merge into one strong, abstract shape, which also links up with the dark background.In the color study I tried to keep that unity but I felt like I could push the shadows towards a little more variation without killing the overall effect. I also tried really hard to keep the logic of the value scheme.(I have to purchase or make a black mirror. One of my former instructors told me how to make one out of a cd case but I can't remember what he said.)

In the final painting I found it really hard to resist the jewel like reflected light that was splashing up into the shadow side of the book. I did underplay the wash of light, as in my studies, that was falling onto the table cloth, to keep the light ascending, step like towards my center of interest.(Mr. Bones) The jury is still out on whether or not this trade off has hurt the design. I'll take a fresh look after I oil it out and decide then. The rule of thumb is easy "whatever doesn't help your painting, hurts your painting", making yourself an objective observer is another story.

Covered Jug and Bread

Canvas is an 8"x10" and the poster is on a 5"x7" board. I've always been drawn to the covered jars and jugs in the work of eighteenth century painters. Not really sure what the covering was for. Can't imagine it doing much besides keeping out bugs. It couldn't really have worked as a preservative. The hardest part was tying the little string around the mouth of the jug in a bow knot. I had to use a rubber band to hold it in place. It always amazes me how little info is needed in the poster study to give it a sense of reality. That coherence has to carry over to the finished piece or all the detail in the world won't save it.