Greetings!
My demonic children have insisted that my loyal fans need to see more of a blow-by-blow of my painting process. I have an updated image of the painting I am currently focusing on and some additional notes. I shall try to remember to do a step-by-step photo shoot the next time I paint. In the meantime, note that most of the shells are now in a semi-finished state - yeah team! (A team of one is still a team in my book). There is one really dorky shell, bottom center, that needs re-painting badly - mishandled striations, live and learn, I say. The interiors of the shells have good depth, but need to be more than shades of gray. They need the pearly-escent luminosity of . . .pearls (!), gosh, because . . .these are. . . yeah. . .oysters! , and because the inside of a shell, even in shadow is not gray at all, but shades of shades of many colors. I also added some background, that needs more colors worked into it, but the values and the basic hues are working nicely. I have been told by a critic (read family member) that some of the blues are too bright. Realists . . .go home and leave me alone! However, I will take all constructive criticism and consider it. The brighter blues make for more design interest, but are a tad distracting and fake looking in places, so they may get adjusted some. On the bright side, my uber-critical family members did stop and gasp audibly when they were allowed a peak at it and said it was certainly striking. So I'm pleased.  In case you haven't noticed, this is a big picture! It is 36" x 52". Just right for a bank lobby on Cape Cod or a really swank beach house with a modern decor and high ceilings. Just a little thought, if you know of one. We'll talk.

Greetings to all,
I have been hard at work again. This time I've dug into a painting I started a while ago and let sit for months, not moving. I find I get discouraged with a work and have to give it a break. Or I feel overwhelmed sometimes, especially with larger pieces. This time I returned to this picture and started again and I think the parts are finally beginning to fall together. This has multiple shells in it, so I've been focusing on one shell at a time and  trying to bring each one to a more final state. Originally, I had them blocked in so that the general hue and value relationships were there. That's when I clammed up (what a pun!). The blocking in stage always looks so dreadful, I lose heart. Then I get encouraged by something somewhere and start in again.

So  here it is in its original blocked in state. (The room is sideways, the picture is not):

Here is the next state, where I started "finishing" some of the shells:

And again, today's improvements! Not finished, but more shells have been worked on.

The shells are beginning to pop and its nearer to my original vision. There's supposed to be dynamic that revolves around movement and edges and relationships: how things jostle together, separate, touch almost. Like people.

Recent Progress

I have been working hard trying to finish some pieces and have made progress. Some of it is developing an awareness or atunement to the work itself, actually being able to see and put your finger on what is not working. The other part is having the courage to forge ahead and take a risk. And still another part is to just stop dickering with it. And then, finally, you have to let it go. You have to able to say to yourself that this is as good as it gets at this point in time and be okay with it.

My latest struggles are with a picture I think I have been progressively making worse! But I will have faith and keep at it. I may need to use up an entire tube of Crimnitz white in the process, but so be it. I have found that with this series of pictures, that I do not give up on a piece, that there is an educational value in continuing on.

So here it is in its various stages, my barnacle picture. My family has begun giving me shells as gifts. If I had any thought of ending my series of shell paintings, it is quickly evaporating, because more shells and ways to stage them, seem to be coming into my life. It must be Karma.

The above picture is its initial stage, roughed in, with an unpainted background.

Here, I got brave, took a risk, and ended up in the 1960's. Cool man. Psychodellic. The concept was to have an under-painting that would serve as a basis for a more naturalistic approach.

Here I worked quite a bit on making the background look more like the depths of the ocean. It has a richness to it, but there continue to be problems. The shell "pops" from the background and isn't integrated into it. It sits in front of the "water". One solution would be to soften all the edges and make the shell look like it is underwater, something I hadn't thought through when I made the background so blue. It is not the extra work this will entail that is problematic, it is the risk of losing what I have created so far in the shell itself. Another solution, would be to paint out the background, hense that old tube of cremnitz white to the rescue, and return to a "forensic" approach of a shell that is sitting out of the water on a shelf somewhere. But then it would be a specimen and not truly a living shell (which it isn't anyway). Sounds like a good excuse for a tropical vaca and some scuba gear!

-Vicky

Backgrounds

I’ve been working on backgrounds and the relationship between the subject and the background. Some of my pictures have started out with just a plain shade of white/cream, kind of a scientific approach, like a technical diagram, a forensic study of a particular specimen. The earlier shells had backgrounds of sand or water, more like the subject in its natural surroundings. Lately I’ve been going more for a “portrait” approach, the subject is posed like a human and the background is part of the picture but not dominant or competing for attention. Sometimes it’s hard to find just the right shade or combination of shadows that sets up the portrait of the shell in just the right way. Sometimes I try several different approaches. Sometimes the background is smoothed out, sometimes the brush marks show. I’m not a smooth person, I lean towards the painterly. I like it when the shell has a “monumental” look, like more than a shell, like “2001 Space Odyssey”, floating there in time. I have not yet tried black or deep siennas, but they are on my list. It seems like the shells are a brightly lit seaside thing not a dark thing, so that is another concept to think through and decide.

 These three have realistic backgrounds.

 These three I recently reworked the backgrounds in various shades of beige, blue, sand, greys. I'm still making up my mind about some.

 The razor clam has some wet sand beneath it, but it's not textured like sand. I originally wanted it to just float in space like a specimen or a shell on a page in a notebook, but it didn't quite make it.






This one I just repainted the background a lighter shade of grey, but now the whole painting is too grey. I need to shift the color scheme for the background some, but haven't decided what to do. I'm thinking of adding a shadow to the right, like there would be in a portrait.

Shell Games Boxed In – Technical Details

I have been told by my children who are omniscient that a blog must have blow-by-blow detail oriented descriptions of works in progress. As I said earlier, as I have invented this blog, I get to make the rules. I do, however, have some technical details that may be of interest to people who also paint.

Drawing the Image

Since starting my sea shell series I have been working from life. No digital cameras, laptops or projection devices. Working from life is sometimes a problem on a cloudy day, or when the angle of the sun changes, but it was a goal of mine when I started and I think that it works well for this type of subject matter.

I usually draw an image on canvas directly with turpenoid thinned paint in monochrome, typically burnt umber or occasionally cobalt blue. The burnt umber seems to be a unifying element for me, creating some level of cohesion within the picture. I always start with a white canvas; underpainting tends to throw me off a little when it comes to color choices and seems to “deaden” the colors. I prefer the bright white of the canvas, especially with aquatic subjects which need some brightness to them anyway.

In this case I deviated from my usual methods. Given the complexity of the image, I knew it could take several sessions to draw and that I wanted to use a medium I could make corrections to days later. An oil sketch wasn’t going to allow that easily. So I drew the image using a graphite pencil. I also gridded off the subject into four pie shaped quadrants using toothpicks and string wedged into the edges of the box so that I would have some reference points when drawing and wouldn’t get too far off base. Remember, I’m not using a projector, but in retrospect it may have been a wise and labor saving choice to use one. But, too late now! Something to think about next time I do a subject like this.

As soon as I started to paint with oils I noticed that the pencil dissolved, muddying the paint layers. I was perplexed at first as to how to avoid this, but took a can of charcoal/mixed media fixative and sprayed down the entire painting. It worked wonderfully and no more bleeding of the graphite. I was a little worried about permanence, but I had read elsewhere that this was an acceptable method and it does work well. However, I think that in the future, I will stick to drawing with paint. I really didn’t like working with the pencil on the bumpy canvas surface anyway.

Sunshine and Shadow

Some of the shadows have layers of glaze on them that gives additional depth and resonance to those areas that recede. Sometimes I use a homemade formula, other times I use Liquin. I love the slippery flow of Liquin and its smell. It is delicious. However, it does dry relatively fast, so it is not workable forever.

For highlights I used some Titanium white mixed with a tiny bit of pigment on areas where there were little glimmers of light. I ended up adding, deleting and softening several times before I came up with something that looked just right, adding a little pop of realism without taking over.

Shell Games Boxed In

This picture has to be one of my favorites. The outside circular perimeter is an antique green shaker box that has been in my grandmother’s house forever. Every summer when I was a child when we were visiting her we would open the box and feel the softness of the tiny shells (they are all about 3/8 of an inch long, max) against our skin. The potent aroma of cloves would rise up out of the box (those brown things amongst the shells in the painting are cloves), with a slight musty something else mixed in. When I smell that aroma I am six again and sitting on the front staircase in the unlighted hallway feeling the cool shells against my arms, before I return to the open attic to find more precious treasures to play with.

This painting has taken a while. It borders on the tedious to paint and takes a fair amount of tenacity to work on. The original shells were mostly very white, my interpretation of them is more varied. I hope I have stayed away from making them look too much like jelly beans. Ugh! I think the painting has presence, whatever that means. Magnetism? At any rate, I like it. I should probably turn it to the wall for a month or two and see if I still like it. I have been picking at it, tweaking the details and fine tuning it to death in between working on other paintings as well. I am uncertain whether the details (see close up) are clean enough, or whether I need to go more photorealistic, though I think it is too late for that. All paintings have some evolution in them; otherwise give up painting, use crayolas and color inside the lines instead. That may be a little harsh. Sometimes it is restful to just color, but even then there are unavoidable micro-decisions that filter through all that we do.

Close Up of Shell Games Boxed In

So my questions for ya’ll are these:

Is it done?

More “finish” or leave it as it is? The shells are still a little rough when viewed up close. I purposely left out the patterning on most shells, it seemed too busy and distracting. The finished look is cleaner without.

The long curved inside edge shadow has been re-worked multiple times, as has the background and all those tiny points of shadow and reflections on the shells. Question: Leave it or tweak it some more?

I am tired, but I’m thinking it needs just a tiny bit more before I can let go of it completely. Maybe I’ll be one of those artists who keeps adding details to pictures years after they’ve been hung. I can see myself at a party some day saying, “Oh that’s one of my pictures, wait just a second, Luv, I’ve got some paint in my car, let me touch up that highlight a bit, add some more seaweed.” Now that is something I hadn’t considered, seaweed.

-Vicky