In the studio 5/1/16
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
In the studio 4/26/16
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
In the studio 4/24/16
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
In the studio 4/3/16
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
In the studio 3/20/16
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
In the studio 3/13/16
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
In the studio 3/6/16
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
In the studio 2/28/16
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