Day Four or Five, I’m Losing Track..

I thought I wasn’t going to do full color, but it seems to be headed that way.  Or maybe 80% full color.  I plan to do the meat in hyper-color to really make it grab you. 

Today I worked the area around the pitcher.

At a certain point I am going to stop sharing the progress in order to make the unveiling party more exciting.  You will all get an invite. 

Day 4

Day 3

I’m still feeling out the composition – it’s tricky because the main focus – the raw meat – will actually come later – I”m leaving space for the hunks of meat to be displayed because I can’t really put them in until I’m ready to spend a good amount of time with them since they are so perishable.  So I’m forced to just hold them in my mind and paint in the back ground.

I haven’t established the whole value story of the back ground either yet.  It’s still in a drawing stage now.  I need to get a more complete value picture before committing to the composition.  I plan to use very, very minimal amounts of color in the back ground – like almost gray scale, but with a tiny bit of hue included – and this sounds fun -  so I allowed my self to jump into that stage a little bit today.  I did go into the fuller value story as well, but ran out of time.

The days are so stinking short right now that I feel like I just barely get started and then my light is gone.  Grr.  So much work to do and I’m so eager to do it, I had hoped to get like four of these done by February, but I can tell right now that idea was beyond delusional.  For one thing thing, there isn’t that much day light between now and then – even if  I were able to use every minute of it.

End of day 2

And while I work I can’t stop listening to this catchy tune – and the video is artsy too…

Finally at Work

The beginning and the ending of a painting are the most challenging.  In the beginning, there is planning, prepping canvas, lots of measuring, setting chunks of drawing and value up.  Then it starts being fun, exploration of stuff, then as it ticks on to the end, I start feeling insecure.  Am I over working? Should I have worked more on proportion earlier?  Is is fresh still?  …. That will come, but for now, I’m a just few hours in to the first piece in my Smithfields series. 

Smithfields Project Inspirations

So, I have been doing construction on my studio for the past several months, we put in a wall and window in place of one garage door, (better insulated and better light), we put in the best light set up ever – I can see what I’m doing when I want to and can totally control it.  Yay!  Anyway, I haven’t been painting since September – except for a couple small landscapes.  Anyway – I have my studio in near-working order and I have a job and my batch of canvases have been stretched.  My brother in law owns a great restaurant in Ashland, OR called Smithfields.  He’s a Brit and Smithfields was an ancient meat-market in the London, making it a great name for his meat-centric menu.  He uses local produce and meats – utilizing as much of the animal as possible.  Pig Cheeks were actually a popular and tasty (if somewhat fatty) item for a while.  Anyway.  so I’m painting a group of canvases for the restaurant – subject matter is big raw hunks of meat.   The themes will be the reality of meat – which means something dies for us to eat is, which reminds us that we also die.  I’m going to include traditional Vanitas items like clocks, flowers, skulls, snuffed candles to parallel that theme.  The back ground elements will be very tonal – kind of black, grey, umber, little bits of other smokey hues and the meat will be spotlit in full fleshy gut wrenching color.  If I can pull this off, people will take notice, but won’t lose their appetites.  Kind of a delicate balance.  Below are some of the artists and pieces I will be inspired by/ripping off…

Francis Bacon John Deakin Vogue 1962 - Isn't this a fun one? Obviously the famous painting is the story here, but we've all seen it and it's burned into our memories.

Pieter Claesz - Vanitas - Dutch Still Life Paintings are awesome - I caught a great show last summer in SF, mucho inspirations.

 

Skinned Rabbit by Michael Grimaldi - This man is a contemporary rock star painter - my favorite teacher ever.

 

Edwin Dickinson - Cello Player - This piece is exactly the kind of cluttered tonal feel I want for the background elements.

 

La Hollandaise - Walter Sickert -Stunning values allow for stunning colors here, painted in a raw, honest, painful, sad way. This guy has been accused of being Jack the Ripper recently. Probably not true, but wow. The color and light KILLS me though, so maybe it's true...

 

Antonio Lopez Garcia - My favorite painter alive today. I can't even put into words the things I love about this piece.

 

New Refridgerator by Anonio Lopez Garcia - Modern and Timeless.

 

So, we shall see, I’ll keep you posted…

Electrician Puts New Lights In Studio!

So my studio remodel is moving ahead in a major way today!  I’m getting lights and outlets where I need them and this weekend my husband swears he will put in a new wall and window where the old garage door is now.  Eventually we will replace the other garage four with wall and French doors.  That decision may come back to bite us if we ever want to sell, but as of now, I want to stay here indefinitely. 

And I can’t wait to get to more painting, I have some exciting projects in the wings…

Just a Nice Piece That I Like

Rachel - a Value Study

 

From the PAPO Paint Out

I’ve been active in the Plein Air Painters of Oregon for a couple of years and they decided to do a Southern Oregon Trip, and being one of the only members living in Southern Oregon I was nominated to organize  the event.   Anyway, I set up painting in Hanley Farm, Central Point, downtown Jacksonville – a pretty corny old west themed little place with a pioneer cemetery, and then winery and finally paint out in and around Ashland, including Lithia Park and North Mountain Nature Park.

Anyway, the members are very lovely folks and I like meeting people who paint, but in the course of organizing this event, I have grown more and more aware of how I don’t like these kinds of events.  Mainly it’s because I hate painting at farms, wineries, wilderness areas.  They’re already beautiful – what do I have to add? I’m afraid this post is turning negative, but what is really important to me is that I’m actually finding a consistent theme that I like to paint – and am finding what about it turns me on.

You might think it would come naturally to an artist to know what they want to paint, but when you’re a student with an open mind you wind up absorbing a lot of stuff that helps, along with stuff that hinders.  When you’re a student in a classical tradition you don’t always get to choose your subject, you’re working a lot on technical issues and you can lose your way.  Eventually the creative liver has to send the good stuff to the blood stream the bad stuff to the colon.  So I’m at a point where I’m separating what I want from what I don’t want right now.

Anyway, let me show you what I painted during the PAPO paintout:

Hanley Farm's Garden

What I like about this piece is the pattern and the feeling of light.  I like that you lose the specific items too.  However, I don’t like the crop.  I may saw this strategically.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I will. Or maybe not.

Roxy Ann from Hanley Farm

Okay – I like how easily this one fell into place.  It was painting number two of the day and I usually find that the second painting of the day is easier, that I’m more in the flow, that colors are mixed on the palette and so it’s almost effortless.  I like painting things in the distance – when they’re in the distance they can be read better.

Jacksonville Pioneer Cemetary

For the afternoon we moved to Jacksonville Cemetary and it was brutally hot, dry and I was tired. There was so much to see, everywhere you turned were shadow and light, blocks of graves and dappled bits from the madrone trees.  I did this very quickly, getting pretty lazy by then and not really inspired by the setting.

Sign and Street

The next morning we painted in a winery, and I did a painting that is so awful I won’t show it, and by that time I was TRULY over all the places we were painting, so instead of heading to Lithia Park for the scheduled afternoon paint out I went to Phoenix, my beautiful town of suburban decay and started work in a spot that’s been calling my name – and lo an behold – I’m happy with the painting.

So, live and learn.