I am keeping everything simple and direct with The Woman in the Red Pants. Overworking can be death to a painting. On the other hand, I have a horror of the blast, fire, shoot, throw, and fling army of ala prima painters who’ve taken over the Art World, at least the ‘figurative’ part of it. …
Here is my first session with Keep Talking. Today, I just threw paint onto the canvas without worrying overmuch about details, although I was–as always–careful to preserve the drawing. It’s risky to share such raw, unfinished paintings but I think there’s enough that you can get the gist of it. Keep Talking is 36″ x…
Painting Tom is a short film by Jake Harness. Jake is a young filmmaker and Painting Tom is part of his documentary on creative people.
To my suprise, I enjoyed the experience. Painting Tom is, as you might guess, about me painting.
Many artists have trouble determining when a painting is finished. It can be excruciatingly painful to let a painting go, especially after you worked on it for a long time. If like me, you focus on problems as you work, it can be easy to fixate on them. But fixing problems does not equate to…
I used my homemade drying oil in recent sessions with Down on Prospect Avenue. I substitute the oil for black oil in my medium recipe. Large paintings (Down on Prospect Avenue is 44″ x 60″) have issues that smaller ones don’t have. Matching tones previously used, to name just one. Anyway, it’s getting there. It’s…
The crude container that I made with a lead sheet contains 16 oz. of cold-pressed walnut oil. I’ll leave the oil in the container for several months before straining it into a jar, like the one in the upper-left of the photo. The lead imparts drying qualities to the oil making it excellent for mediums.…
The drawing on the easel in the following photo is lead on pastel paper. I’d intended to highlight it with white but decided it was OK as it is. The painting on the easel, Woman in the Plum-colored Hat, is still newish, not many sessions yet. It’s 30″ x 40.” I was satisfied by today’s…
The thing about this Fabriano drawing pad is I can work-up drawings with pencil or pen–my two favorite materials–without mess or fuss. The really good paper I save for charcoal or pastel, but this paper is terrific for pencil drawing. This photo shows two recent pencil drawings on Fabriano bristol. This morning, I finished a…
I got Along 4th Street on the easel yesterday and had some good sessions. I used walnut oil instead of linseed. I find myself reaching for the walnut oil instead of the linseed more often. I picked up several drawing pads. I have a pile of good, loose paper but ran out of pads. Strathmore…
The Woman in Red Pants is not over-large so I finished the underpainting, shown here, in 2 sessions. The Woman in Red Pants is 36″ x 48.” We live in a great time when information about nearly every subject is at-hand, right? Create a battery? Create an electric motor? Build a house? There is also…
The morning session with Agamemnon and Orestes was slow and easy. With a large painting like this (44″ x 60″), I use hog bristle brushes for most of the work. Today I used 5s and 6s. You can see some of them on the easel table. I always dip my brushes in oil when I…
The Cleveland Museums of Art’s Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe is the best show I’ve seen at the museum since I started my near-weekly visits six years ago. As good as the show is, however, the theme–artists as eyewitnesses to history–is a stretch. The paintings are souvenirs of public events in (equally important)…
This photo shows Crossing after my 4th session. Nothing is close to being finished except the blue of the sky, ultramarine blue + cobalt blue + flake white. The broad range of scale among the figures is fun to paint. As an exercise, try changing-up the scale in your paintings.
I thought it would be fun to compare Agamemnon and Orestes after the second day to the first day–bottom photo. After the second day, the underpainting is finished. The underpainting is about getting paint on the canvas and not worrying overmuch about details. At 44″ x 60,” the painting’s large size (for me) dictates the…
This photo shows my first painting session with Agamemnon and Orestes. I know, I know, a bit high falutin but I am reading Aeschylus’s Eumenides. Agamemnon and Orestes is 44″ x 60.” I mentioned that I prefer white grounds these days, but I am always preparing canvases, which means I have some prepared months ago,…