The Holidays are behind me and I am re-dedicating myself to painting projects. Whoo-hooo! The above photos are before and after of work I have done. It may be hard to tell exactly. So if you can't tell, I've been punching up the shadows and the cracks between the pebble, adding glazes and trying to give a greater sense of volume and roundness to each pebble. The upper picture is before - you can tell it is greyer and the shadows on some rocks are not as well blended or worked. The feather is greyer also. In the most recent version (bottom photo) you can tell that the feather is white now and the pebbles have more shape to them. It is good to look at this in this small scale because I can see better where the areas are that need more work. For example, the round grey rock on the bottom left beneath the feather looks like a flat disk, which it kind of is, but not quite that much. For the time being I have to let it all dry some - don't like sticky paint!

I've been really BAD (like those shouty capitals) about posting blog entries. It seems I have the most energy at the start of the day, but the lease amount of time. I have more time at the end of the day, but I'm too tired. I really must figure this out!

I have been painting shells again (among other things, see other blogs). Below is a piece I've been working on off and on. The photo posted is none too good - dark morning, but you get the drift. I am drawn to "rondo's" lately, the containment appeals to me and the way the eye moves around. You are forced to focus and examine the items in the circle, find the connection, and move around some more. In a rectangular painting the items have to have their own pull, either through color or shape. In a rondo, the edge of the circle does the job for you. Cool! I can be as bad a designer as I want to be and the edge still moves you around the picture. The circle also acts as its own center of interest, another plus. You don't have to pick and choose and find a focal point if you're not sure of the concept, the circle does it for you.

So, now all I need are more round containers. Must have interesting edges, but not too difficult.

Shell Games: The Exhibit

I'm so excited! A show of many of my paintins all together. And they look awesome!

You may not be able to tell, but I have reworked this. I added a darker shadow around the shell and at the outside corners. I am trying to make the shell "pop" more and catch your attention. I was also thinking about depth. I wanted the shell to be sunken into the sand a more and there to be a little ridge of sand around it. I also lightened the middle of the shell to give the shell itself more depth, so the center will come towards you. I also added some more darkness right at the edge of the shell. I tried to avoid making look like it was outlined, so I made it intermittent. Usually the place where an object sits on a surface has a thin dark area right at the edge between the object and the surface.

When a painting gets down to the finer details, the changes aren't all that dramatic, but the tweaking ultimately affects the whole quite a bit. It is at this point that I use some glazing medium, usually Liquin or Medium No. 2 (8 parts odorless thinner, 1 part damar varnish, 1 part stand oil). This extra transparent glazed layer is crucial to how the light refracts and resonates. However, once it is used, any brush strokes added later without medium, will look dull and chalky and need some additional glazing on top. So essentially, if your pretty certain of the painting, go ahead and add some glazing to give it some more depth or to shift a color hue in another direction.

It is now time to let the picture sit and "percolate",  and me regain a fresher eye, before I work on it again. It is by no means done. There is a shell at the bottom right that looks like a wad of kleenex tissue!

I've returned to painting shells recently and started a piece with a sand dollar in the center. See below. It is unfinished, but I'm liking it. The colors aren't quite as yellow as in the snapshot and there is more contrast.  It's a little on the "pretty" side. Hmmmmm. Maybe I have a pretty side, lurking.

It's been ages. I was very discouraged this fall and put my creative energy into other areas, but am returning to work now. I am planning a new painting of a sand dollar, partially submerged in sand. I'm a little concerned about the sand color on top of the sand color of the shell and getting bored, after all it is beige on beige, but it's worth a try. I find that going deeply into detail can supersede any tendency towards boredom. Either that or infuse the picture with unnatural colors, and then you might as well just photoshop it.

No Rope

I am thinking about two disparate things in regards to my work which are actually connected in an odd way, the movie “Dark Knight Rising” and the Olympic games. So how is that? It's about effort and trying, support and no supports, and the subtle ways they can play out in the mind. In Dark Knight, the hero of the story (spoiler alert!) is trying to escape a particular prison by climbing up the insides of a well. He has a safety rope tethered around his waist and when he falls, the rope catches him, keeping him from crashing into the ground. He and the only other person who previously escaped also had support people on the ground, people who care, counsel, feed and encourage him. But the key to escaping is, “No rope.” You must climb up without the tether and really feel the need to make that last final leap or face death. In the Olympic games, our athletes, during the competition are like the hero of Dark Knight; they are alone and they must succeed or fail based on their training, strength, concentration and will power. But they, like our Dark Knight hero, also have support people around them, who helped with the training and and a million other things and that made the trip to the games possible. 

There are decision points in all lives where we have a choice to make about the direction we are going in and an acknowledgment of the sacrifices and work that go into that choice. Often I feel like I am at that point. My gut tells to me to cut back on the hours at my day job and go “No Rope,” a motivator for actually making it in the art world. With “No Rope” we do a lot of things that perhaps we wouldn't have done, make contacts, write letters, get out there more, promote ourselves; whereas if we have a day job, or a significant other to support us, what's the point? But another part of me says that I must be free to do what I love doing and that a market mentality makes it un-fun. I would prefer to make my pictures with an “in the moment” state of mind, not a feverish state of work ethic stress. Maybe that's really the way we should be approaching art and life, in a Zen-like balance with the Universe, letting go of the rope entirely, and just walking forward, unattached to our ambition and egos. So, for now, I am walking a line of compromise, with a question rattling around in my head, “Rope? No rope?”