This painting, Two Women at Playhouse Square is 30″ x 36.” As the name implies, it’s part of my Playhouse Square series. I did the smaller study in neutral grays earlier this year. The painting is still rough, but you can see its bones. Sculpture and other architectural touches fill the area around Cleveland’s Playhouse Square,…
I have a lot of small canvases ready to go. By small I mean in the 24′ x 30′ range. Recently, I started painting landscapes on three of them. You can see the beginning of one in the background sitting on the wastepaper basket. Yesterday I worked on the landscape seen out the window in Grandfather and had…
It’s raw and cold for a May day in NE Ohio. It feels more like March than May–rainy, gray, and windy. A woman asked me why I don’t spend more time teaching art on my website. Seeing my puzzlement, she added, “You write about technical subjects related to painting, but you don’t provide instruction on…
After a long hiatus, I worked on Washington Square Park again. How many times have I reworked the background? Well, are you going to tell me or not? OK, it’s been A LOT. That didn’t stop me from working on it again. Most things are done or really, really close. I’ve done this–obsessively reworking–before, many…
My work today on Spring was all blues: ultramarine blue-violet on the blouses of the outer-most figures; cerulean blue and black on the pants of the middle woman. Magnesium blue and Veronese green on the Bug. All cut with cool grays, of course. I love Old Holland paint; they’re my favorite, but they’ve priced themselves out of my…
After working on paintings with a lot of figures in them, working on The Photographer’s single figure is refreshing. I don’t actually know the woman in this painting, which is based on one of many photos I took at a local fair. Anyway, she struck me as a tough customer; all business, if you know…
I was busy today. I got into a groove and worked on several paintings. These two are the last ones that I worked on. When I finally put the brush down, I was mentally exhausted. Victory Park I is cobbled together from several photographs. I’m having fun painting the dog and painting GREEN. I worked…
Aboard the Betty Jane is another of the 48″ x 60″ canvases I recently wrote about. This painting is based on some photos taken during a fishing trip abroad my boat. The Betty Jane is still in dry dock; next week we start preparing her for the season. We have to scrape the bottom and apply…
I use several products manufactured by James Groves. Jim specializes in historical painting mediums and ingredients. I’ve tried almost all of his products and they are unfailingly excellent–world class. I use his 19th Century Copal Oil varnish and Siccatif Courtrai every day. Both ingredients are staples in my practice. By itself, the copal varnish is too…
I made progress on Euclid Avenue I this morning. Progress on the 48″ x 60″ painting has been slow at times. This canvas is from a stock of ‘professional grade’ canvases I bought some time back. The surfaces on these ‘professional grade’ canvases are very poor–execrable. I’ve had to spend a lot of time correcting them and still the…
Not so much flavored as customized. My medium is very drying, which I like immensely. I use it everyday but it has one minor flaw. When I’m painting a large area, my medium is sometimes too drying. One method I use to address this is to add some balsam, like Venice turpentine or Canadian balsam,…
I’ve been working on paintings that take a lot of time recently, such as the lower one in this photo. The drawing in the bottom painting was done with pencil and then fixed with ink. Everything was drawn several times. The drawing in the top painting was done directly with OMS-thinned paint over a neutral…
The Break is 40″ x 50″. I stretched a lot of 40″ x 50″ canvases last year and The Break is one of them. Some of the background is done, but the painting still has a long way to go. My medium dries very quickly, as I’ve written before. Its only limitation is that its fast…
With over 30 figures in its 44″ x 60″ space, Picnic wants to careen into confusion. Which I do not want, so we argue. The central figure, by turning her back to us, adds her voice to the argument. That’s alright. I’m not off-put by rambunctious offspring and I am patient. I’ve always been suspicious of accidents, accidents of light…
Several busy days in the studio. I worked on 10-12 paintings over the past few days, including Sunday Parade. Sunday Parade is finally locked into a good place (even though I still haven’t settled on its name). It felt like I was pushing it uphill for a long time. I’m on the downward side now. Artists…