A good weekend all in all

Yesterday the Wayne County Arts Alliance held the annual art auction fund raiser. It was a success. It was held in the Dorflinger Glass factory space in White Millls, PA. I'm happy to say that my painting of a Beach Lake Bakery Rustic Loaf was the first painting sold. That is if you don't count my wife's selection of my friend Ianni's painting that was really first.  We also bought two other paintings that we like very much. All tolled we gave the WCAA $1350 in donations and value. 

We also went to the Metropolitan Museum to see the Cubism show on the last day of the members preview. It was mobbed but what a great exhibit. Simply put it show how the heavyweights, Picasso and Braque developed and evolved the style what so many other have emulated. It also focused on Leger and Gris. Two of the better practitioners. Great great exhibit. 

To see that show we had to leave early to drive to the city about 120 miles. It was a beautiful ride. the light was just grand. We got to eat in the members only dining room not as pricy as one might think and way better than Honesdale's best. Sorry. The ride home was equally splendid as the sun set over the Borscht Belt of the Catskills. Oh and I can't forget I all but finished a portrait on Saturday morning.

Oh yes I now have  full sized giclee prints on canvas of the loaf available for $125.

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A Guy Named Denis  12 x 18 Oil on linen

This is a painting done for the annual portrait swap on the Draw Mix Paint forum. A loose group of artists from around the country and globe who share an interest in realistic painting. This is Denis who is from Australia. He is doing a painting of me from an image that I selected and sent to hime. There were about 12 participant that so far have produced some stunning painting. When the painting are dry we swap our paintings. Great fun.

Drawing with the brush

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1973 Beacon Hill, Boston

This week i decided to retire my charcoals and pastels for a while in favor of the brush. I've been trying to figure out how to make  my life drawings more expressive and at the same time begin to add color. It's been a very long time sine I painted from life. In fact the painting is hanging in my studio. 1973. 

That was awhile ago. 

A goal of mine since i started drawing from life again was to be more natural in gesture. To have a more immediate feel to the markings. I believe that drawing is a physical activity. You probably don't burn many calories at it but it take all the body to express the moment.

By working with simple cheap materials, canvas paper, laid finish printing paper, bristle bond and painting with a limited color set of oil paints Ive opened up my drawing style. There's something about the brush. Standing. the speed that it offers. It's a great tool. This is a great exercise for developing brush control and technique.

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Milanville PA 

So, here are a few pieces I did this week painting at Johan Sellenraad's studio and Ianni's studio. I have to thank that them and the other artists in the groups for letting me struggle to this point. Don't let me forget the models.

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Milanville PA

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Milanville PA

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Honesdale PA

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Honesdale PA

Soha standing

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Soha Standing oil sketch on linen roughly 20x24

For the second week I attempted an oil sketch. Soha was the model again. This is about 2 hours of work. The proportions and placement are good..ish. I have an iPhone photo that will use to tighten this pose up and hopefully add some color. The paint is applied using OMS (orderless solvent). It show stay open for a few days so I can adjust tones and shapes fairly easily. I'll let the thing go almost dry before adding the color sparingly. This intended as a sketch after all.

This life drawing thing is so important for me. Though it will be finished from a photo I know how the parts sit in space. There is an immediacy that forces decisions and a bit bolder approach.

The second thing I'm going to invent is a camera that takes an image from every point of view at once and lights each perfectly. That is of course after I invent the worm hole from Millanville to Honesdale.

Added some color in the studio using iPhone photo as reference. A nice sketch for a short time... for me at least..

Soha

This is a first at least since the 60s and art school. This is a brush drawing in burnt sienna oil paint. Oil and solvent. It was done starting last Sunday at Johan's Sunday 3 hour one pose drawing session. The model is an Egyptian art student spending some time here in the Catskills. I had an sketch after that and was going to let it lay. I had taken a shot with my phone just in case I might want to finish it in the studio. On Tuesday things were slow and I printed out a biggish print and continued with the sketch. I've spent about another hour and a half over 2 days and I'm happy with it overall. 

I don't know where I was going with this when I started. It was a completely different approach for me. My initial sketch was pretty accurate in proportions so it didn't take a lot to 'finish' it. It it's real finished.

Once it drys hard i might quickly paint over it in color. But not before I get a good scan of it.

the initial sketch

A little touch of home

After a pleasant vacation on the rocky shores of Maine eating lobstahs and oystahs its back to the Upper Delaware valley. Back to the board and easel. I made a few vain attempts at 'plein air' painting I'm glad to be back at my easel. 

We went to Rockland Maine and saw Colin Page's show (as hyped previously). I'm still seeing his beautiful  paintings in my head. A plein air painter by the way.  We walked the Boothbay Botanical Gardens which were gorgeous. But the most fun for me though was crawling around on the rocks shooting with my camera. I was lucky to capture some classic and some dramatic scenes. I now can fake a wave building and crashing in my warm dry studio.

Anyway here I am. The first thing I did was this color sketch of the Delaware River which is just about 800 feet from my house at the bottom of our road. There's a spot just as you start up the rise on River Road across from Bill's chickens that offers up this little scene. The river winding its way up to Skinners falls. Not really a falls  but a ledge that creates a chute that I no longer want to navigate. The time of year, angle of the sun height and color of the water and number of rafters affect the picture. I've been stopping and looking at this for years. I'e even photographed it in magic light.  I could never get it. I decided that I'd better give up the 'idea' of the perfect moment and just do it. Like I said I'm no outdoor painter so I did this quick sketch from a photo and I like it. As I painted it I imaging how a series of this scene in different conditions would be fun and a great study. So here we are Eel Weir number 1.

Jabba the Rock

This rock stands at the end of the trail to Whitehead on Monhegan Island, ME. Not quite finished yet but in the next couple of days, maybe. 

This is the most complicated painting I've attempted in a very long time. I love some parts of it and almost hate others. Only time will tell. The rock sort of looks like Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars. I painted this with thinned oils using Mark Carders medium formula (minus the clove). I'm happy with the technique. The exposure of the photo is a little soft. When it's done and oiled I'll shoot a better one.

Free Bread... Finished

I got it finished. I like it but would like to spend more time to give it a polish. But hey. 

Hopefully someone will like this one and WCAA can make a few bucks from it. I learned a bit from doing this about working with thin paint. I learned how wild it must be inside a loaf of bread while everything is expanding and exploding all over the place. Sort of like the beginning of the universe.

If you get the chance come the the WCAA auction in September at Main and Basin. I'll be posting date and time later on.

Free Bread. A Beach Lake Bakery Rustic Loaf

I've been working on a couple of paintings over the past 2 weeks. This one and a landscape that isn't ready for public viewing yet. This piece, Free Bread, is for a Wayne County Arts Alliance fund raiser. An auction taking place in September. I had to get it done to dry so I Can hand it in next week. We're going to Maine at the end of the month and I wanted this out of the way. Anyway...

About 25 to 30 of the WCAA will be submitting works on the theme of texture. the only limitations are it has to be 16 x 20 and hang on a wall. So this meets those guidelines. It took about 4 days overall spread out over a week. Getting the bread, photographing, printing full size, mixing intermediate colors then painting which took about 10 hours so far. When it's dry I'll glaze some and finish the foreground. I like this painting. I wasn't intimidating and was as always a great study in mixing complementaries. There are a couple of simple compositional considerations working here but nothing fancy.

I was a little stressful what with the time crunch but that feeling went away when I decided I liked it. Just like the bread. BLB Rustic loaf is out of this world. Lisa Woods only makes her breads and pastries for the public on the weekend. The bakery is off on a country road. Lucky for us we live only about 3 miles away on an even more country country road. 

This is an iPhone shot. When it's done I'll make a full frame of it and put it up. 

Another lost painting

Yet another painting almost forgotten. I did this in January 2013. Put it away to dry. Forgot about it found it 6 months later and varnished it. Put it away to dry and forgot about it. While I was cleaning up for the recent studio tour I found it and had a frame put on it. A lovely solid walnut frame.

This is the barn at the end of my field that I store the tractor and mowers and tav in of seasons. It's an old thing with rotted isles and a roof the we keep patching. It was build right on the ground. I been repairs many time in the past but is still serviceable and convenient. It also has great character and grunginess. It used to be home to many bats until the bat populations started to drop. Now it just houses a few field mice and my tractor.

It's now listed in available paintings. HERE

I've never painted flowers. Part 1

I have never painted flowers. At least that I can remember. As the Peones were fading we cut the last of the batch and slammed them in a vase with some water. Not much thought. I brought them to my studio and set them up in front of the camera. Over 3 days I shot the set up sometimes with side light sometimes with top light. This photo is a combination of 2 shots 3 days apart. One top lite on side lite. In photoshop I masked and merge the images.
I built a relative proportion grid over the photo. Transferred the grid 1 to 1 onto a piece of Arches oil paper stained with DMP stain.
My intention here is to first see if I like painting flowers... they're pretty fussy thing. How I feel about the result will determine if I do a larger version more complete on line. 
The real intriguing challenge here is the color matching. The subtle gray pinks cast with hints of green contorting with the purples and magentas. Oh boy.
I'm also doing this to show how important it is to sometimes spend the time and effort to solve problems before you commit to doing an expensive effort on linen. What I'll learn here will make doing a finished painting easier and quicker.

Today I start finding the formulas for all those delicious grays. Yummy.

Wish me luck.

Upcoming Studio Tour

This July The Way County Arts Alliance is having it's annual Studio Tour. I'm on it. Here's a link to the WCAA web site.

http://www.waynecountyartsalliance.org/artists--studio-tour.html

Painting with plastics...

I've mentioned how my studio is too airtight to paint with oils in the winter. Especially when the temps outside are hovering around zero most of the time. This winter I've been playing with watercolor, gouache and acrylic. Here is a work in progress using acrylic on a panel. 

Dead low tide

I haven't done an acrylic this big in years. Todays acrylics seem different. More like gouache in its flatness. My studio is so dry that I've had to spray the palette with water every 10 or 15 minutes. I'm happy-ish with it. About 70% done. It's a study in grays.

A real departure in composition style. More lyrical than boxy. Now I have to loose some edges. I only have 3 or 4 days that I can get at it before I trade in my knee.

Here is the finish as it is. I took a real different approach to the composition on this. The curves and arcs are the structure of the image. The arcs of the land and water mimic the arcs of the gunnels of the front boat. This was all carefully constructed as a photo comp over the past year. Though it's a  representational or impressionistic reality it's certainly more of an illusion creating the real look. The colors are all grays created by mixing complimentary colors.

Overall as an project I think it's successful. I like it. Is it beautiful art. I don't know. Style wise it's similar to the acrylics that I did early in my career because of the medium. I do prefer Oil or watercolor.

The painting itself took about 10 to 12 hours. That on top of panel preparation, and building the image which actually stared several years ago. I do like that when you look at this from a distance it looks realistic. Up close its a mess.

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Finish 3.9.2014

A little explanation of the composition

Arcs an diagonals

I mentioned that this composition is different for me. Usually my compositions are based on rectangular relationships within the defined rectangle. This painting is based on arcs and diagonals. The picture rectangle was defined by the interlocking of the arced shapes.

26.5 x 22

This happened unintentionally during the process of cutting and pasting for the photo comp in photoshop. I used a couple of versions of the same shot. Moved boats around. Left out outboard motors. Forced some tonalities. Ending up with an image in the 26.5 by 22 scale.

The arc shapes are all base on arc A defined by the foreground boat's shape. It's an abstract where nature and objects blend. Add the strength of the diagonals and the fact that the objects are boats... how can I go wrong. Most of the time in the process I looked only at the subject matter. The lyrical base composition  was difficult for me. I let it sit for a long time. I had distractions. I made a panel for it and let it sit some more. More distractions. frustrated by distractions I started painting. I used Acrylic for several reasons. Because I was unsure of how to handle the surface. Real or more representational? Acrylics can easily go either way. As I painted i realized the abstract nature of the painting. 

It turned out to be a good painting. Not because of realistic detail but the inference of detail. Not real strong colors all grays. A lot of motion based on the above abstract but not so much that the eye escapes the frame. The main arc shapes support the natural arcs of the objects and nature. 

Okay. This is the result of an unconscious process. Not an unknowing process. Because of many years of being a visual wrist in a lot of disciplines I have internalized many mechanisms. Developed an eye. I finally becoming happy with my eye. 

In a later discussion I muse on the visual eye. How some people have to nurture it and others gifted with it.

Santa season

Yes it's that time of year again. Santa time. Time for me to get dressed in my Santa suit and sit for pictures with little kids in my lap and have our photos taken. This year I have two gigs both for not for profit groups. 

Between now and Sunday I have to make sure that I don't accidentally burn off my beard or get my hair lobbed off by some Delilah. When it's all over maybe the lbs will magically disappear. Ha!

Why am I mentioning this? It's had me itchy for the past few days. It's the end of deer season the woods are all icy and snowy and it cold as a .... you know. So I started a watercolor painting to scratch the itch. It's of my young setter Trout. Trout the dog. I like it it still has a few sessions until it finishes. Paintings finish themselves. Sometime we go too far.

This isn't much of a post. I'm busy. I have to feed the reindeer.

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iPhone shot of Trout the Dog a watercolor in progress Dec12/13

Real or repro?

This is going to be a short post. I want to pose this simple question. " Would you rather own an original pairing or a reproduction." 

Maybe it's not that simple. We're talking about my work not Van Gogh. My oils sell for  anywhere from $600 to $3000. I haven't done a reproductions of this years painting because it's almost as much effort and a lot more expense than the original painting. In the past I've made reproductions and made a few bucks. Though with a less expensive option available in the print people mostly chose the print over the painting. I sold a lot of prints and a few paintings. Weighing the cost in time and expense it wasn't so profitable.

So I ask you this. Would you like me to make reproductions of my paints and if so which ones?