Waiting for the train

This is one that I did last year and never got around to posting.  It is a half sheet (15" x 22").  It is really all about the value changes and the light coming through.  I think it is an early morning on some European train platform.  I did this one after doing the cow pictures and you can see the similarities.  There is something about this color palette that I like and keep coming back to.

Beyond... part 3 (my favorites)

This is the last bunch and they are my favorites.  I'm not sure what happened in my head, but there isn't any way that I could have predicted that this is where I would be at this point.  If you look at the first painting you don't really see the connection, but looking at the series I think you can see how I got here.  Painting in series like this is really a different experience.  It really does push you to go beyond the obvious answers when you don't have to rethink the subject each time.  For this last set the shape design was somewhat similar.  My brain was tired of trying to come up with new shapes.  So I kept the shapes more or less and redid other parts.

#15

On this one I love the swoopy blue ribbony things.  It feels free.  And there must be something I like about the blue/gold/brown color combination because I keep coming back to it.  I think it works here.  I wasn't thinking of this while I was working on it, but now, looking back, there is something about this painting that makes me think of a giraffe.  Maybe it's the irregular rectangles I taped off.  Maybe it's the black/blue tongue.  Maybe I needed more sleep.  Who knows.

#16

Another favorite.  I love how this evolved.  I wanted to try my 3" ugly brush again and see if I could make it work.  When I used it last time, the black ink was too dark for the rest of the painting.  I knew I needed some other dark to balance it out.  I also tried to mix black and brown ink to soften it a bit.  That didn't work.  It still looked deep black.  But when I washed some clear water over to do some wet in wet the brown ink bled.  The black is waterproof, but the brown isn't.  What is really cool is that it didn't bleed brown.  It was like liquid paper chromatography separating out the pigments in the brown.  It was oranges and pinks.  I was surprised and really like it so I went with it.  I love how it turned out.  In the dark center portion I wanted something rich and deep.  I think of it as a starless night sky with a bit of Northern lights.  The darker on dark shapes give it more dimension. 

#17 - stone

As I was trying to figure out what to do next I came across a post from an art blog about a painting by John Singer Sargent. (here)  The painting was of a family crest carved in stone.  I especially liked his advice to "flatten the lights and open the shadows".  I tried to do that here.  I think you really get the effect of the dimensional stone.  It feels peaceful and strong at the same time.

#18 - fire

In class we had taken way too long discussion luminosity and how to create it in our paintings.  The teacher boiled it down to this, surround pure hue with greyed colors of similar value.  I tried it and I like what happened.  This painting makes me think of a glass blowing furnace with the white hot glass and the surrounding metal furnace.  I wanted to show delicate perforations in the "metal" like what you see in the stone screens in Moorish architecture.  Overall I think this is pretty cool looking, like something that belongs on the cover of a science fiction novel.

#19

For the last two paintings I was running out of ideas so I thought about what types of surfaces I like to paint, old wood and metal.  I also saw a picture on Pinterest of blue Japanese pottery.  It was beautiful so I added that in as well.  I love how the textures in this painting worked.  This painting is fairly light and bright.  The second one a bit moodier.

#20

This last one is the same basic idea as the one before, but a bit different in feel.  My favorite part of this is the way the rusty rings came out.  The color is layered and so rich in real life.  This is one that I might actually frame and hang.  The problem is that I'm about out of wall space.

This class has been so fun.  It made me dream of being a "real artist", painting and showing and selling my work.  I even had an offer to buy some paintings at the end of class show.  Nothing came of it.  I was willing, but not eager to sell, so I gave a high price and the potential buyer backed out.  For as much as I dream about being an artist, there are always trade offs.  Once the class finished and the show was over all of the other things I need to do came rushing in.  There may be a time when I can put more into painting and art, but I don't think it is now.  But I keep doing what I can and I may take this class again next year if I can work it in.

Beyond... part 2

The content of the class isn't about painting techniques, applying the paint to the paper.  It is all about design, how to use the elements of design to create the characteristics of a good painting.  The seven elements of design we discussed are:

• line
• size
• shape
• direction
• color 
• value
• texture

We spent most of the time, three weeks each, on value and color.  The last week, texture, we talked about actual painting technique, but that was the last day of class.

You manipulate these elements to create:

• unity
• harmony
• dominance
• conflict
• repetition
• variation
• gradation
• balance

It sounds simple enough.  Not so easy in reality.  Probably the most valuable part of the class was the critique session at the end.  Each week we would bring in our 2-3 paintings for critique.  It was really great to get the feedback on my own paintings as well as see what the others were doing and how they were progressing.  I can see why people take this class multiple times.  For one class member this was her 17th time through the course.  She could have taught it herself at this point.

#10

I was tired of the dull browns and blues I had been working with so I wanted to use mostly intense, pure colors and let the natural value of the different hues do the value work.  I wanted to stay away from the human form of the wood carving so I cropped it and focused on the swooping lines of the bottom.  This image doesn't really do justice to the intensity of the color.  It is pretty bold.

#11 - red rock by firelight

Here I simplified the shapes even further.  The inspiration for this was a red rock arch uplit by a campfire at night.  I used a flat brush and a stencil both positively and negatively to apply and lift paint to get the texture in the "stone" areas.  I used resist to make the little swirly stars.  This is one of my favorites.  Probably because it reminds me of a landscape I like so much.

#12 - ice

Class members went on and on about how hard it is to use Pthalo blue and Pthalo green paint.  So I decided to do a painting with primarily these two pigments.  Here the inspiration went from desert stone to icebergs.  The composition is a little weak with the darks spread out the way they are.  It needs to be more cohesive and lead the eye around the painting in a better way, but I like the color and texture.  I definitely get the icy feel.

#13 - primary

I wanted to move further away from the objects themselves.  I really like the textures I created here and the strong value pattern.  I usually work wet in very wet.  This can lead to a rather soft mushy look so I wanted to do something completely different.  I worked much dryer and left the individul brush strokes.  You can still see the original objects if you look for them, but it isn't obvious at all.

#14 - surreal

You can see the lines of the wood carving in here, but they have taken on a completely different form.  The head became a cracked moon, and the body a keyhole to the sky where the object became the negative space.  The empty rim of the drum holds them together.  The blocks and metronome are still there.  The arrangement of those objects could be better, but it's not bad.  

The thing I like best about this painting is the textures I was able to create.  The pigments I mixed for the grey of the planet separated back out on the paper leaving a pretty interesting effect.  You can see the cad red that floated to the surface.  On the outer rims I was going for a sort of old metal look.  I'm not sure if it looks like metal, but I like it.

This class was so much fun.  I really enjoyed the work.  There were other things in life that didn't get done, but I'll catch up later.

One more set still to come...

Beyond the Obvious Paintings

In January I decided to take a painting workshop.  It was a bit of a last minute decision, but I had heard good things about the class and knew I wanted to take it at some point.  There was a rumor that this might be the last year, so I jumped in.  I am teaching classes online this year so I had a bit more time that in the past.  (I spent a LOT of time Fall quarter getting everything set up so that I could take it back later in the year.)

The class is taught by Mike Bailey, a nationally recognized watercolor artist who lives in the area.  This workshop is a bit different than the others.  The typical format is to have 3-4 full days of classes where you work in class.  This class is once a week for 10 weeks.  We do all of the painting outside of class.  It is intense, twenty full size (22" x 30") paintings in 10 weeks.  The last day of class was a show where the community was invited and each student showed all 20 of their paintings.  So, 20 paintings in 10 weeks.  And they all had to be derived from the same still life.  The first one was supposed to be realistic, the obvious, and then you just keep going.

 #1 - realistic

This is the first still life.  The main piece is a wood carving I bought in Ecuador years ago.  I also included a cardboard box, a block of wood, a metronome, and a hand drum.  You can see the face and rim of the drum, but not the wooden rim.  I played around with the set up and lighting a bit.  I wanted to get the shadow in an interesting spot.

#2 - line

During the first class we talked a lot about line.  So for this variation I reduced the elements to lines.  It sort of works.

#3

The feedback I got from the first two was that I needed to fill the page.  So I did.  I also started abstracting the shapes and changing the surface colors and textures.

#4

The wooden figure is still there, but now it is metal in varying degrees of wear, from shiny smooth on the head to rough and oxidized toward the bottom.  The circle of the drum is still there, but it is no longer a drum.  Same with the rectangles of the box and block.  I really like the variations in the skies.  Day, night, and cloudy late afternoon.

#5

For this one I wanted to get away from the figure and change it a bit.  I used a chopped bristle brush in India ink to make what I hoped to be rather calligraphic lines.  I really like the geometric background of this one.  The blue, gold, and brown are a rich combination.

#6

This one was difficult and is my least favorite.  I struggled and it shows.

#7

At first I did this one with just the black line work.  I wanted to build on what I had done before and make the line work a little bit more free.  I liked it.  It looked very spare and reminded me of a sumi drawing.  I was tempted to leave it like that, but at critique the teacher said the it was a nice drawing, but not a painting.  So I took it back and added the color.  It has grown on me.  For awhile I was afraid I had ruined a beautifully simple drawing.  It is interesting, but a little reminiscent of the Bat signal.

#8

This one is OK.  I was trying to work on the sumi drawing idea, but it didn't work out as well as I had hoped.  The composition is just OK and the black ink is too dark to relate to the other colors.  Not a favorite, but a step forward? backward? sideways?  Anyway, it's a step.

#9

I felt like I was going in the wrong direction so I wanted to completely change the look and feel of my paintings.  I also wanted to get rid of the figure.  Even though I love that carved wood figure, the human form dominates the composition too much.  Here there are shapes and the edges of the shapes echo some of the lines in the objects in the original still life, but it is much more about the relationship of the shapes, colors, and values themselves.  I like this one better.

More to come...