Turpentine diaries 11/25/17
Yesterday’s Thanksgiving holiday was wonderful at our house. We had three of our children here to share my wife’s delicious turkey and stuffing. Daughter Jane baked an apple pie, and son Keith made deep-fried mac and cheese. The latter was something I’d never eaten. Everything was excellent and, for once, I didn’t eat too much. This morning
Turpentine diaries 10/22/17
To some, my studio might look like a jumbled mess, but to me, it looks ordered and purposeful. I have three easels. I use the third one, the one not shown, for drawings. I expanded my palette from my habitual dozen colors to what you see now on my home-made palette. Just because I no longer count
Dream
I frequently dream about paintings. Sometimes I’ll act on the dream and make a painting or drawing. I dreamed about the image in this little study three nights running. This small oil took 10 minutes to paint. Dream is 12″ x 16″.
Some watercolors
Odds and ends. Today, I finished the landscape (somewhere around Monterey) and worked on the figure with the striped shirt (my wife Kathleen). It still needs work. Both are watercolors. The pen and ink drawing of the figure behind the landscape is on bristle board. My watercolor kit. The bottom drawer contains watercolor tubes. I
Two paintings today
I used to think speed is important in art making. Speed relates to spontaneity–some say–and spontaneity guarantees authenticity, if not creativity. While spontaneity is important in art making, it’s not fundamental. Even if you insist that spontaneity is essential, you can’t make the same claim for speed. Speed is simply irrelevant. Another important idea for
Turpentine diaries 9/4/17
I started working on the painting on the easel, Along 4th Street, yesterday. I’ve had two long sessions on it, but it still needs a lot of work. I’m careful about cutting off figures by the canvas edge. One of my teachers, Pearlstein, is well known for cutting figures. He used the device to
Turpentine diaries 8/27/17
The finished painting on the floor in this photo, Dare, is another painting of my son Keith standing in front of an earlier painting with him as the subject. Dare is 24″ x 30.” The large, unfinished painting on the easel, Picnic, is the last painting from my batch of poor-surface paintings. And it’s the
Boating season soon
Even though the winter was mild, we are just now at the beginning of the boating season. The Betty Jane is the middle boat in this photo. It’s shrink-wrapped like its winter-storage neighbrors. Shrink wrapping protects the boats during winter storage and, as you can see, it’s commonly done in marinas along Lake Erie in