In With The Neu

Well, I’m taking advantage of every opportunity for creating new work in the New Year, and as our winter weather has improved from pretty messy to awesome, I took a break from the large oil I’ve started  (and which I haven’t discussed yet, it’s too iffy right now) and spent Friday morning at Kailua Beach with my partner-in-watercolor-crime Roger Whitlock to see what  trouble we might do with the raw material of sand, sun, and wind.

I managed a couple of little paintings out of that session (and another session yesterday evening)  but this is the only one worth having a look at.  I might be able tweak some of the others into Salvation, or just re-attack them on another nice evening.

 

Kailua Beach, Friday, 1/11 11 x15″ Watercolor

We joked around and had a darned good time while working. Roger has great prowess with “the dampened sheet”, and  I value our far-too-rare outings together.

As for me, the watercolor work under such circumstances seems akin to jumping around in a swimming pool, especially working in-the-moment and with the drying times of the washes being so absolutely critical. It’s somewhat like a controlled disaster, I really don’t know how anything good can come of it, but sometimes it does, and it’s nice.

 

Nice to be back!

It’s been seriously busy over the last month. Here’s a resurrected piece from at least three  years ago that was begun outdoors in a rather unplanned moment of enthusiasm,  and set aside as unworkable until a friend dropped by and commented that she thought it had more potential than I was allowing it.  That was about a year ago.

Finally over the last few days I’ve given it some attention and it’s looking better. I love working in close values and  color temperature shifts, and so this little canvas has become a pleasure to work on rather than the struggle it originally was.

 

Kawainui at Sunset  oil, 12 x 16″

 

 

Portrait Head-Marty part 2

Still at it, we had another session with the model for 3 hours, where I immediately went after a shape that was wrong on the forehead, corrected the lay in of the ear, and spent the remainder of our time working on half tones and some drawing.  Began to add some indications of the features, delaying that as long as possible to prepare the underlying work.

The images are a bit overexposed here, washed out, something happens in the translation from Iphoto that I’ve yet to figure out.

Never underestimate the power of fatigue on one’s judgement at the end of a session, everything can look wrong at 9:30 PM.  So far, I’m feeling confident about this one, now that it’s a day behind me.

Lay-in for portrait head

Quick post from my portrait class. The lay-in is going well, edges deliberately soft at this point, and any problems with the painting are already most likely present. The only trick is to see them now, before the acorn becomes a tree.

 

12 x 16″ linen on board. Straight oil paint, no medium except a small amount of liquin mixed into the flake white #1 to make it short enough to manipulate. Big brushes, step back for each stroke. lay it on with intention in color and value and placement. Scrape down anything that’s not working.

Always be preparing for the next sitting.

Diminuendo II

More work on my indoor painting…with much adjusting of values and shapes, trying to build a beautiful surface all the while.  It’s an oil -primed linen mounted on panel that I primed myself, and the linen has a fairly coarse, handmade thing to it.  I think it suits what I’m attempting perfectly.  If I can do more priming like this I will, definitely.

For the duration of the work on this painting it’s:  simplification of masses, values, adjustments of color, maybe a glaze to warm things here and cool things there.

untitled 18 x 24″

It’s also great to be making use of so many of the loose reference sketches scattered about my studio.  They are so much more useful to me  than I could ever imagine photographs being.

Diminuendo

I began to lay-in something new in the studio over the weekend, a painting constructed from painted studies and my own imagination/recollections. Very liberating and fun after my last outdoor piece, which required a lot of physical effort and direct response to natures’ quirky comings and goings, what I call “chasing the light”  for lack of a better description.

Most every plein-air sketch painted after the sun begins to wane will suffer from an under-exposed look. The darks, when later viewed in normal light, will appear weaker than you painted them and there can be a bit of a washed out, timid look to the color, which is simple to understand because in those circumstances the artist is making decisions while painting in what amounts to a darkening studio.

If you want to understand this better, go into a dining room with one of those dimmer switches on the overhead light.  Look at a white object, say a dinner plate, in full light on the table and then gradually begin to turn the light down 30%.  The white object is still a white object, but it’s not white anymore, it’s a gray of some sort, and 30% darker from where you started. So are all the other tones.  This is going in the direction of low-key painting, where the lightest lights and subsequent supporting tones are all subdued, the edges soften, and the darks cluster into shapes and  silhouettes.

For that reason, it’s important for me to study the effects of early evening light with the idea that I’ll be replicating them mostly from memory later.

 

untitled, 18 x 24″, hand-primed linen mounted on panel

I have a number of small early-evening sketches that are adequate to remind me of the effect I want in this painting, but I know I can’t rely on them completely.  So, for this piece I get to dream and recall those precious times alone after I finish working outdoors on a late afternoon piece, when my light effect is gone and energy spent, and I’m just in that envelope of late-dayness, where you finally put everything aside and you are simply glad to be there.

The composition itself is a collection various experiences cobbled together, a tree or two from one place, a cliff from another.  Let’s just keep that between ourselves, though.

I foresee thin and thick paint built up in quiet shape-touches of broken color for this. A rich surface.  I hope I can do it, and I hope it will be beautiful.

 

 

Update: on the easel

Just a quick update, I got another couple hours developing the current painting.  It’s coming along well, and I’m refining some areas while getting more adjustments in the values and shapes.  Great fun to work this large, and the old easel holds up like a champ, in spite of some wind gusts that would send this canvas sailing otherwise.

A skewed but representative image at the end of this morning’s flogging.

 

            A slightly better studio shot…

My friend Geoff Stone was able to come by and work on his painting as well.

                                                               Geoff at work.

Lay-in at Sun-up

Very excited to begin this 30 x 40″ field painting this morning.  Conditions were quite good, and I was able to get the design in place and lay-in the first skin of paint in about 3!/2 hours without rushing.

              Untitled, 30 x 40″, oil on linen

I have a really good feeling for this one. The shapes are interesting, colors have a good warm and cool mix, the working spot is ideal.  Wind was completely a non-issue, which is a potential hazard with a canvas this large. I’m hoping for good even weather so that I can build the painting up, I want to develop this slowly and richly.

Sorry about the not-so- great photo, I was jamming!