Copper bowls - Water Music

 
There's a little more to do on this one. Copper has an amazing range of colors.  I think that's why I'm so drawn to these little bowls over and over again.  They sit on an end table with glass votive candle holders inserted.  I find my self staring at them all the time.








A few touch ups and some brighter brights.  I'm happy with this one, the reference photo I took has been sitting on my desk for a while.  Frankly, the photo is so striking that I had a lot of thoughts about whether to paint it or not.

I am particularly fond of the upper background area.  In fact, the backgrounds of all of my paintings seem to be getting to the 'real' quality I'm leaning toward.  Most all of my work to date has been intentionally very academic as I reacquaint myself with gooey media after years of doing architectural sketches and renderings with colored pencil and markers.  I'm nearing the point of boredom with the academic approach.  Expect some new explorations soon!!

I think that if my previous still life evoked hot late night jazz riffs, this one seems more in the mode of a Handel oboe or brass interlude in the Water Music Suites

Making paintings out of sketches

My Studio class at the Lawrence Arts Center wrapped up yesterday.  I never got the hang of working on a work in progress in class, so I brought in what I was working on for comment and spent the short 2 hours doing sketches of the studio gang.  Some went better than others.  I'm going back and fixing them up as I plan out my next paintings.  Its kind of cathartic to take an older dry sketch and try smacking it into shape!

Class sketch with mud.

reworked sketch done in the studio.

Something completely different

Need a break and something to sketch so I took part in this challenge at Gary Keimig's site. You'll have to scroll down a ways, meaning you'll get to see Gary's stunning paintings of snowy valleys in Wyoming. Beautiful work!

This was fun...spent about an hour, pretending I was using a pencil and using up paint on my palette from another painting.

Reality Check and discussion.

 

I woke this morning with a high level of anxiety and a fear that I am wasting my time and energy on trying to make painting a second career. The following article was the first thing I saw in my mail box.
Sue Smith, whose website Ancient Artist provides some of the most sound and reality based information on the business of art, posted this new article about the realities of art in this crazy economy. It deserves a good read and a great deal of thought and discussion.

Is There A New Art Economy?

The cruelest thing about the economy right now is that it creates self doubt. And self doubt is an insidious thing, tempting you to see patterns and competition and fear everywhere.  As time wears us down, we're left wondering if we'll ever sell paintings at the same rate as before...if we're not as good now as we were then...if it's because others are moving into our markets and pushing us aside.  The answer to those questions is a resounding...

And that's the second most cruel thing about the economy right now.  There are no answers.

The rest of the article cant be found at ANCIENT ARTIST .  Read it.

I open up this post to discussion for all about your responses to this article.

Are you making art to sell?  Is it selling?  Do you have a plan?

If there is enough discussion, as there I think there may be, I'll start a new blog page for a continuing dialog.

Jazz trio

little bit of touch up still needed.  this one has been really difficult in large part because I bought a really cheap no-name gesso board that turned out to be so slick I couldn't get the paint to stay in place.  Painted the whole thing twice. that made it tighter than I had intended.

won't make that mistake again.went out and and bought real gessobord yesterday.

dogs on parade

The Westminster Dog Show was on last week...and I was able to catch a bit of it. I always find it interesting and amusing and fortunately had a pencil and paper handy to catch some of the latest canine fur styling!

Drawing from TV can be a good exercise in very quickly seeing the lines and shapes and getting the essential information down. If you make good 'notes', you can work up a bit more detail during commercial breaks!

not sure who's showing whom!

3 copper bowls - 1

I did this one really fast.  I told myself that it was a drawing, not a painting.  I was just drawing with gooey paint instead of a pencil.

I think, if I can continue the rouse, this may be a good practice in the future.




oil on 5x7 canvas panel

Sweeping up.

Ok...I've been working on a few paintings which I'll post soon.  But its time to clean up the studio and make it presentable.  I have started a new blog page, collecting and collected, as more of a gallery with only finished images that I would consider ready for the public at large.  It's not at 100% just yet, but feel free to take a look:


This one needs to get cleaned up a bit.  You might think I don't have much to say about my work...anyone who really knows me would get a good laugh about THAT!  Look for continued progress shots, and some longer pieces of thinking 'out loud' on the new Page feature.

I may end up moving the whole thing, both blogs, to wordpress where there are so many more layout options and flexibility.  Thoughts on that, anyone?

A shot at the daily painting method

Allowed myself two hours. Quit at the 2 hour mark.

Not sure about what I believe is the 'blocking method' which seems a lot like the 'coloring book method'. I don't mean to offend dedicated daily painters, but this is really hard for me to do. On the other hand, its really fast and clean.

oops...forgot to take photos. a lot of stuff happened.

self portrait in the surround of globes....

Most of my work lately has been focused on working with my collection of art pottery. I find the forms and colors very strong elements to work into compositions and 'pot portraits'. In discussing this--and cats and words and house paints and all kinds of other topics-- with my friend Elaine I mentioned that I also collected globes. She said "Image- you held in the surround of globes." I was struck with that particular string of words and it kept rattling around in my head.

I was starting to collect together some ideas for exploring this word image when I happened across Alice Thompson's new challenge blog Calypso Moon Artist Movement. The first challenge was to do a self portrait using Black, White and one single color of choice. Van Gogh for inspiration. I thought I'd pass on this one as I was planning on starting another group of paintings and I am not at the moment taken with Van Gogh Portraits. I've been in a Vermeer frame of mind lately. But my globe lamp, my nearly global white swirly urn, my big glass marble ball started leaping around in my field of vision and I quickly changed course. No, I don't mean I had to dodge the leaping moderately valuable collectables! This was figurative or metaphorical leaping of ideas only, I'm ok! So with a quick look at Van Gogh I went ahead with a more Vermeerish layering of space and started "self portrait in the surround of globes".

The one color? Torquois-y blue like the globe? Too chilly. The shade on the lamp is a lovely rust color which lead me directly to Burnt Sienna. As you can see, I started with a clear direction and was going to make a quick sketch of it but I dawdled and got too much paint on the itty bitty canvas so I let it sit over night. First thing this morning, I sat down to look at it before donning my white painting shirt and it was clear that this needed to be a black turtleneck portrait.

Conte pencil rough-in.

I have no idea who the ghastly nearly dead looking guy in the white shirt is. Oh...its supposed to look like me. Scrubbed out the face as it was out of control.

White shirt was grabbing too much attention, and it started to look kind of shabby. Repainted the face using the Burnt Sienna. Did the Skebneski black turtle neck.

Much better layering of values, I think.







oil on 5x7 canvas board
mars black, titanium white, burnt sienna.













The next day I had a brush with some white paint on it and couldn't help fixing that face a bit. Photo is better now that the paint has dried a little and not reflecting so much canvas texture.




and then I had to add the missing color.