Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Series Work

Hello, Everyone. I am not in the studio today; but, I do have photos of progress on my 12" x 12" panel series. I haven't found a thread to hold it all together as a concept or color or design. I'm still working on that but not too hard.

Of the 6 panels I started several weeks ago, I believe 3 or finished. I will give you a little tour of the process these three took by starting with one.

In this first image, I was laying out shapes of different sizes and establishing some high contrast areas. I was not thinking about content or color and my application of paint was loose using whatever was on my palette. I believe at this stage, I imagined mountains in the background far in the distance at the top.


The next photo shows the painting after I applied an all-over orange-red glaze. Very bright in the mid-value range.


With everything at mid- to very dark value, I needed to bring back some light areas and I decided to make those larger in size:


With this version, I started to see green water and I stopped seeing the mountains. The triangles became boats and I added color to the edge of the large cocoon on the right and found the boat theme clearly coming forward. So I turned it around and emphasized a dark lagoon. Still very dark-ish orange.


I began to paint in some very light areas with a yellow gold azo transparent acrylic with white tint. This helped quite a bit...yet it felt pretty garish to me for a few days as I tried to figure out what to do next.

Eventually, I toned down the chartreuse green to indicate a burnt-grass environment around a boat harbor. I added the text on the yellow area but want to tone down that obvious addition. So the last version is what I came up with and called it done.
It still looks a bit muddy in the yellow area as a mid-value; but I had to allow the orange to stand out as a focus color. The very light and pale yellow along the edges of two boats and the round 'things' I hope create the kind of contrasts that draw the viewer's eye around the painting.

I will keep working on these boat images because they keep appearing without my calling them forward. Still not a consistent theme with the 6 boards though.

Comments? Please jump into the conversation about the process.

Have a great week.

Friday, July 5, 2019

First week of retirement

Friday, July 5, 2019
Monday, July 1, 2019 was my first day of retirement...or, what I prefer to call it "My Artist's Career Path"...from academics to a creative journey. It was remarkable smooth from Sunday to Monday and through the rest of the week. It could I feel like I am in an old 'vacation/holiday' mode; but my head, heart, and body are not fooled. I am in my Back Yard Studio every day.

The space in my new studio is so vast, I find I am adjusting my 'stuff' every day as I learn how to use it. Here is the heart of the studio - my work area:



There is an 8' long butcher-block work bench along the wall to the left in the second photo. So far, I find that is a great place to do some quick, 5-minute paintings to warm up for the work you see on the large wall space in the top photo. Here are some examples of where I put these quick painting 'sketches', i.e., in printing paper-sampler notebooks, a guide book for research security compliance, an old calendar notebook. Great places to make small art so quickly that you can't even plan for it. Just use anything to paint and glue anywhere!

 Printing paper Sampler Book

An old calendar of Georgia O'Keefe paintings

Academic Research Compliance Guide Book

Another Paper Sampler

Fun, inexpensive PLAY BOOKS. Right? I use gauche, acrylic, collage papers...You name it. Try it!!

I am also working on a series of 7 paintings; yesterday I brought one of them to completion. I'll show you that one and talk more about the series in upcoming blogs. I just want to get the word out today that I am retired and working full time as an ARTIST. Thank you very much!  😻