Watching Paint Dry

Update

2008-12-27T07:53:00.001-08:00

I'm back, safe and sound! Thanks to everybody who dropped in to have a look. I've been very attentive to my other blog, and haven't posted here at all; I've found that it's hard enough to keep 1 blog going, let alone 2. I don't quite feel ready to pull the plug here, but I don't believe I'll be posting here in the near future. Instead, I'll be regularly updating State of the Art.

Thanks!

From one hiatus to the next

2008-11-12T12:39:00.001-08:00

And now for a long, long overdue update.

It’s been rough going lately. A family member became ill and died this fall. That was of course bad enough, but it happened outside of the country, which became a logistical nightmare. Things have somewhat returned to normal, but this entire year has been tough, with several major disruptions to our lives. I’ve been simply exhausted, and getting back into the flow of regular painting and blogging has been surprisingly difficult.

A number of people have written to me asking where I’ve been. Thank you: This has meant a lot to me. I believe I’ve now responded to everybody; if you did write me and didn’t hear back, I sincerely ask forgiveness.

So… I’m going to end the year with one more disruption, but a good one this time. As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to go to India, but the planets never properly aligned. Last week they did. An opportunity has come up for me to go and see the ordination ceremony for a friend of mine who is a Buddhist monk. I hesitated since it was such a last-minute thing, but my partner Sean has practically pushed me out the door (apparently I haven't beeen much fun to be around lately).

My flight's tomorrow evening, and I'll be there for a month. I’ll be spending 10 days at a monastery outside Bangalore, and after that I’ll be playing it by ear. Tentatively, I’m thinking of a short trip to Mumbai, then longer stays in Jaipur and Varanasi.

I should be in places with decent internet connectivity, so in theory (and I can’t stress the theory part of it enough), I should be able to do a few posts while I’m there… IF I can get my act together and keep it together. I’ll also be bringing paint (watercolors!) .

Do I plan to get back to regular painting and blogging? Absolutely. Assuming I can still lift a paintbrush in a month, I’ll be throwing myself into work; hopefully refreshed and newly-inspired.

Thanks to everyone for keeping links here and checking in on me!

Best wishes,

Finished

2008-08-28T21:37:00.001-07:00

Porcelain and Copper

When I left off work yesterday, I naively assumed that I'd be able to finish the copper piece and the slate tiles in a few hours, and then move on to the next painting.

Wrong.

The porcelain, which at first glance has a lot more detail, was actually the easiest part to paint (excluding the black background, obviously). The copper has so many fine gradations, and the highlights were so complicated, that it was simply much more work than I anticipated. It was a very long day.

The most fun turned out to be the slate tiles the objects are resting on. I included these in another recent painting, and found the time spent delving into some of the textural details almost self-indulgent.

I'll take a final photo and offer it on eBay probably over the weekend.

In Progress

2008-08-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

Today's in-progress piece. I did the underpainting about 2 months ago, and it was done in full-color (colorwash; there's a recent post here about the comparison between that technique and grisaille).

As I was getting ready to start on this, I was struck by the charm of the transparent washes of color. They seemed to have a light and warmth that is hard to capture with opaque applications of paint.

I'm going forward with a full, opaque layer of paint with this one, but in the future, I'd like to experiment with allowing some of the underpainting to show through... if even on the edges.

Website upgrade

2008-08-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

After painting pretty much non-stop all weekend, I wasn't in too much of a mood to hold a brush. So, to clear my head of turpentine fumes, I spent the last 2 days updating my website (and some other business-related drudgeries).

I'd let the site virtually stagnate for the better part of a year, and hadn't even checked up on it all that often. When I did, the design just struck me as kind of tired. It also didn't really put my best foot forward, since the painting I do now is quite a bit different (mostly better, I prefer to think) than what I did a year ago.

That's hopefully all fixed now. It's got a totally new design that I'm pretty happy with, and showcases all my latest pieces: www.JeffHayes.com

Back to painting tomorrow.

Racing... very carefully...

2008-08-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

In progress: Chocolate and Foil

I've been really negligent about sending my "monthly" newsletter, and this month I've vowed that wouldn't be the case. Yes, it's already the 24th. Anyway, I've decided it's GOING to get sent tonight, no matter what the hour. I did want to have a couple of larger pieces available, hence the effort to get this one and the previous sushi painting completed. It will be tight, but it should be possible to finish this by the end of the day. I'm rushing... as cautiously and deliberately as I can.

When working in the studio, I usually listen to podcasts or to audiobooks from Librivox. I love the Librivox concept, and can't say enough good things about it. Yesterday and today I've been listening to Ben Franklin's Autobiography. He's sort of a patron saint to me; I read the text version years ago, but it's great to hear the audio version again.

If nothing else, his encouragement of constant industry makes me feel better about working all weekend :)

In Progress

2008-08-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

In Progress: Chocolate and Foil

The painting in the previous two posts is complete. I plan to take good photos of it, probably tomorrow, and post it on my other blog.

I decided to continue with the larger pieces that were left unfinished a few months ago. This painting of a chocolate bar and it's foil wrapper is 10 x 10 inches. I have to say that the foil is one of the toughest textures I've attempted. The variety of curves and creases form an enormous range of edges to paint.

It was fun though.

In Progress

2008-08-22T21:38:00.001-07:00

In Progress: Two Ikura

I've been down with a cold the last few days, so not working as fast as I might like. Still, I have managed to make some headway with this one. Not entirely sure that things are sitting quite right on the surfaces; the board might not be forming a flat surface for the objects to rest on. I'll probably finish the unpainted areas before making any judgements about the defects...

Almost like painting murals

2008-08-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

In progress: Two Ikura

About 6 months ago I started a series of "bigger" paintings which I didn't finish. I decided to have another go at them this week just to see what would happen. This particular giant is 10 x 8 inches. Outlandish :)

No mas...

2008-08-18T19:06:00.001-07:00

That's it. That's the last of the underpaintings for a while. Gotta be; I'm starting to feel like I'm channelling Mark Tansey. That's all well and good, but... well... I miss yellow... and blue... and green... and...

In all seriousness, doing this many intricate grisailles in a row has got me thinking about a series of true monochromatic still lifes. That's for another time, though.

Studio Tours

2008-08-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

I thought this was pretty cool. John Annesley, who owns an art supply company in California, has a gallery at his site dedicated to artists who use his products. He's also visited the studios of quite a few of these artists and taken lots of pictures. Click the studio tours link under those artists' images. Always fun to see other artists' workspaces.

Under the Underpainting

2008-08-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

Thought it would be nice to give a flavor of the grisaille while in progress. The first step of course is the drawing. Depending on the complexity of the composition, it can be simple, or highly detailed. Since this particular painting is not overly complicated (at least by my recent standards), the drawing did not need to be very involved.

You'll notice the hatched areas of the drawing indicating dark masses and shadows. I only recently started doing this. Especially with complicated compositions, I found it incredibly difficult to look at 10 roughly parallel lines, count in from the edge, and try to remember the pattern of shadows, highlights, and middle tones I needed to capture. I don't need to make things any harder than they already are...

Anyway, after finishing the drawing, I apply a damar retouch. When working on the grisaille, the paints are heavily thinned with turpentine. This dissolves some of the damar layer, and the entire surface dries to a beautiful, almost enamel-like finish.

Julia the Spy

2008-08-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

Documents released today reveal that Julia Child worked for the predecessor of the CIA during WWII.

Like most people who have lived in Cambridge over the last 50 years, I have a Julia story. I'd just moved into the area for grad school and needed something from the hardware store for my new apartment. Ahead of me in the checkout line was a tall elderly woman... it was her. She turned around and smiled very sweetly at me. I only smiled back and said nothing, thinking she probably heard enough from gushing fans while running errands (someone later told me that she actually enjoyed that aspect of celebrity).

Anyway, the most interesting part of it all was what she was buying. Three claw hammers. Three.

Always thought that was a bit strange...

Lettering

2008-08-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

In Progress: Camembert

Today's effort is the underpainting for a piece I've looked forward to for a long time. There's just something about these small wooden cheese containers that begs to be painted. Throw in the brightly lit tin foil (that flourish on the left), and I have no control.

Painting lettering has always seemed one of the trickiest things. The moment I start to read what I'm painting, it's doomed. The only way is to put out of my mind what I'm working on, and simply paint the shapes.

In a nutshell, I think that's how anything is successfully painted, but with lettering, it just seems more acute.

Also, last week I was contacted by a grad student at RISD asking permission to use my images for a project. The result was terrific; I blogged about it here.

Loose values

2008-08-12T16:07:00.001-07:00

In progress: soda bottle and chinese plate

Today's effort was doing the underpainting for another one of those ridiculously complex paintings I mentioned yesterday. This one is an antique soda bottle in front of a highly detailed chinese plate, both resting on a floral print cloth.

While working, I did find myself thinking about the nature of underpaintings. I do find them necessary for the way I work, but I'm also wondering how good they have to be. Being sort of a perfectionist (at least in the studio), my first impulse is to do an absolutely flawless underpainting that reflects the gradations in value 100%, etc, etc, etc.

Not so fast.

The underpaintings exist to give body to areas painted with transparent pigments, and also to provide a map, a guide for the final painting. From this perspective, grisailles do have to capture shape and probably volume with high accuracy. It's likely, however, that a rough approximation of value will suffice.

So with this underpainting, I was a lot looser with value while staying true to design. It certainly made the work go faster; I'll be curious to see what happens when I get to the final painting stage.

Spam... the other white meat...

2008-08-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

I've had my email addresses out there for a long time, so on a typical day I get between 300 and 500 messages. Almost all spam, of course. The filters take care of the vast majority, but a couple slip through. Every now and then I read one, just for fun. This gem today was trying to get me to shell out $300 a month for SEO services:

I am trying to contact the owner of jeffhayes.com.

Anyway I specialize in getting sites listed at the top of Google in organic listings. Since you already do some type of advertising in AltaVista, I know you need to get more placement in Google. I was wondering if you could get back with me as soon as possible. I look forward to working with jeffhayes.com.

In today's Internet Economy everything is about performance. I know I can help drive traffic to jeffhayes.com and lots of it.

After the first month, it is only $300 month. That's all there is to it. I hope that sounds good to you. I look forward to hearing some kind of response.

Yup... Nothing inspires confidence like choppy grammar. Always get a 4th grader to write your advertising copy...

Well...

2008-08-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

In progress: Imari, Sugarbowl, Antique Jar

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

A couple of weeks ago I did up initial drawings for some really complicated paintings, for which I'm now doing the underpaintings...

Like this one: A small Imari bowl, and a highly patterned sugarbowl... AND an antique glass jar, unevenly refracting and distorting both of them. All in 6x6 inches.

forcryingoutloud...

I'm sure they'll end up being perfectly nice paintings that I'll like just fine, but they're going to be a lot of work. What was I thinking???

Next I should just paint a simple apple, or something...

More underpaintings...

2008-08-07T21:56:00.001-07:00

In progress: waterglass, blue plate, red peppers

I realized yesterday I was running out of completed underpaintings. That isn't good planning, so I'm spending the rest of the week working on new ones - hopefully they'll be ready to work on starting next week.

I've been vacillating between using full-color underpaintings (color wash), and the monochromatic flavor (grisaille). I honestly haven't made my mind up which is better, or easier. Having been working mostly with color washes for the last month, I will say that I've been disappointed: it has been difficult to get the body I've wanted in the areas of transparent pigment. So this week, I'm back to using grisaille.

Flexibility is good.

Oh - I'm also keeping a photographic record of the progress of these paintings, so I'll be able to make more videos. I'm not going to make separate vids of just the underpainting; I'll wait until the whole thing is done and then compile them into the short movies.

In Progress

2008-08-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

In Progress: Brass Creamer and Blue Plate

Current work for today. There's something really lovely about the blue/yellow color harmony. Vermeer used it a lot, and I can see why; rich and inherently satisfying. Hmm... come to think of it, I guess maybe because they're the predominant colors in the sky.

Anyway, this one's been fun. For some reason I often find cloth patterns less than pleasant, but with this painting, I've been enjoying the challenge a lot.

Painting Highlights

2008-08-02T11:07:00.001-07:00

Hake Brush on Wineglass
Oil, 5 x 6 inches

I finished this one yesterday, but had problems getting into Blogger last night. It's not the greatest image; I'll take it's "Official Portrait" when I get ready to list it on eBay, which by the way, will be next week (both this and the Teacup/Teapot painting will be going up).

To me, one of the things that contributes most to the realism of a painted object is the quality of it's highlights. These are very rarely simple accents of pure white. Instead, they're complex collections of warm and cool tones, and often not just reflections either. Particularly where glass is concerned, a highlight consists of reflected light and also a refraction of that light, yeilding portions of the spectrum around the edges. Someone once told me about seeing one of Anthony Ryder's paintings in person, saying "you just wouldn't believe" how many colors there were in the highlights.

This is one part of my act that I'm very intentionally trying to clean up, with mixed feelings about the results so far (but's good motivation). I am making certain to spend some good time studying the highlights before I try painting them. It's a little bit of a "down the rabbit hole" experience; they invariable become more complicated the more I look at them.

It's also the prime reason I've become so obsessed with having good small brushes lately. There are times when even the smallest brush I have seems like an impossibly clumsy shovel...

Buried Treasure

2008-08-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

Martin Johnson Heade
"Haying on the Marsh"

This week an "unnoticed" Martin Johnson Heade painting sold for $1 million. Seems it had been in the family for generations, and nobody gave it much thought.

I'm a big fan of Heade's, and am always interested in seeing another work of his. But it was this line in the article that really caught my eye:

Heade painted in the 19th century, but wasn't popular then. Because his paintings were purchased by middle-class families, not collectors, many of his landscapes and still lifes have recently turned up in homes and at yard sales.

I have no way of knowing for sure, but I suspect that would describe most of the population that is purchasing art online. It could make for an interesting marketing line: "Buy this painting. Your descendents will rejoice."

Still in progress

2008-07-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

I got bogged down in administrivia today, but still managed some quality easel time, in particular working on the brush. One of my greatest satisfactions as a painter is being able to watch objects emerge from indistinct sketchy masses to almost take on an individual life and breath of their own.

In Progress

2008-07-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

In Progress: Hake Brush on Wineglass

This painting has more of a monochromatic color scheme than I'm been working with lately. I find that a more subdued palette leads me to rely more heavily on other things, such as the dramatic lighting and a more intentional approach to juxtaposing warm and cool tones.

Of course, with the poor quality of this image, you'd never know that; you'll just have to trust me.

More tomorrow.

Special Effects

2008-07-28T21:41:00.000-07:00

In Progress: Teacup and Teapot

There's a whole lot more to making a good painting than trying to capture dramatic visual effects. Concentrating on just those can even cheapen the artwork.

Right. That's what I should say. Blah Blah Blah.

What-Ever, though, cause DAMN I love it when I try an effect and it comes off. I couldn't name it if my life depended on it, but years ago I saw a 19th century still-life where the objects were emerging from soft-edged shadows and in turn casting very hard shadows. I think it was a Fantin-Latour piece.

It was a gorgeous effect that I've often thought about, so I wanted to have a go at it myself; in this case the right edge of the small teapot.

Not perfect, but I really like this one. Sometimes it is all about the effects.

Voila.

Miniature: Marble Trio

2008-07-24T17:16:00.001-07:00

Marble Trio
Oil, 2 x 2.5 inches

I have nothing particularly clever to say about this painting, so I'll just leave it as is.

Working with magnification

2008-07-23T18:56:00.000-07:00

Since I work small in general, and this week have been doing true miniatures, I thought I'd post about the magnification I use. A few months ago when I started considering magnifying the work, I wound up looking at the high-end products intended for specialized manufacturing.

This was overkill.

Fortunately, I decided to try a low-end approach first, and then lay out the big bucks if really necessary. So far, it's worked very well. I purchased 2 clamp-on flexible magnifiers, one of 2x magnification and the other of 3x. Between them, they provide me with the range of views I seem to need. They are easily moved out of the way, and I don't feel undue eye strain for the most part. I don't remember the details offhand, and don't feel like looking for the invoice, but I think the total cost was less than $20.

The effect on the painting was immediate. It sharpened and cleaned up the detail like I'd almost never been able to do before. For reference, the painting in progress above is 2x2 inches.

Miniature: Red Coffee Mug

2008-07-22T20:37:00.001-07:00

Red Coffee Mug
Oil, 2 x 2 Inches

It would seem I'm doing a painting a day this week...

Making movies

2008-07-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago I made a slew of painting movies; basically time-lapsed photos of the work in progress, stitched together with some music. I got a lot of positive feedback, and lots of views on YouTube.

They were fun to make too, but they took a long time. Basically the process was to shoot a whole bunch of stills while painting, using my all-purpose digital cam. At the end, download them, crop and resize ALL so the sequence wouldn't look too choppy, add them into my video software, adjust as much as possible for lighting etc, add music, and compile.

Could mean hours of editing for each one.

I think it is actually important to be able to show this kind of process, and I'm eager to do more. Just not eager to spend as much time on it.

I've been looking for ways to speed things up. I dug up an extra webcam we had, and experimented with it while working today. Unfortunately, it's not the answer; the image quality sucks, as you can plainly see above.

Back to the drawing board.

Bits & Pieces

2008-07-20T20:15:00.001-07:00

Stepping Up

Lately I've caught a few cooking shows, and it's inspired me to think some about presentation. Average food gains appeal when it's artfully arranged on a plate, and even great food loses a little something when it's just slopped on.

Likewise, I'm trying to be a little more careful with some of the appearances around my paintings. Until recently, I've just been hand-writing the painting's information on a label pre-printed with my name and contact info. From now on, though, I'll be printing out the labels. Just a small professional touch, but I've got to think that these little details add up.

On the Wall

It's nice to see a finished painting, well-framed, up on the wall.

Chris Howard

My friend Chris Howard's novel Seaborn is officially published this weekend.

Chris and I started working together 7 years ago when the company I was at purchased the company he had co-founded. In the interval between the deal and Chris moving his family from Silicon Valley to the Boston area, there was some impressive buzz about him floating around the office: dot-com entrepeneur, rockstar software engineer, expert on Aristotle, speaks Greek and Japanese, etc.

It was all pretty accurate, but he still turned out to be a really nice, down-to-earth guy. We soon got to be friends (and I'm forever grateful that he and Alice were among the very first to buy a painting from me!).

One thing I learned early on was that he aspired to be a writer. He actually had written in the past, but put it aside for years while he was starting software companies, and was only then picking it up again. It was fascinating to watch him start from square one; write, submit, collect a pile of rejection letters, write more, submit more, get a few short stories in print, get an agent, get a publisher, publish the first novel, and have 2 more in the pipeline while you're at it. All this while raising a family and having a responsible grown-up's job.

The dedication and perseverance was amazing... and inspiring to me as I was trying to get my own artistic career off the tarmac.

Anyway - it's a well-deserved success, and the first of many I'm sure - Congrats Chris!

I almost forgot - on top of all that, he's an accomplished artist as well, doing among other things some really great illustrations based on his current writing projects. Some people just do it all...

Grim news

2008-07-18T08:53:00.001-07:00

Lascaux may be doomed. An apparently bungled air conditioning installation has given rise to the second outbreak of fungi on the cave walls in 8 years. Current abatement efforts have failed, and the damage continues unchecked. Having survived for 17,000 years, some of the paintings may now be lost in as little as 6 months.

Unless the responsible authorities can get their act together, Unesco is threatening to place the caves on its list of endangered world heritage sites.

Ongoing studio rehab

2008-07-17T21:21:00.001-07:00

A couple years ago I decided my studio should have really dark walls; deep chocolate brown, matte. The thinking was that this would make it a lot easier to control light by minimizing unwanted reflections. It had the intended effect, but it was also like being in a cave. I actually do like small intimate spaces, but this just ended up feeling claustrophobic and depressing.

It finally got to me.

So I spent a few hours today starting the job. Since the current paint is so dark, I'm putting up primer, just to be sure. I haven't yet decided on the final color I'll use; something lighter (of course) and neutral.

I'm not doing it all at once, either... just a few hours at a time, here and there. I've done a couple of these kinds of big studio jobs straight through in the past, and the result was I went as much as a week without producing any new pieces. I'll be looking at tacky priming for a while, but at least I'll be painting... the real painting, that is.

Red Coffee Cup

2008-07-16T19:27:00.001-07:00

Red Coffee Cup
2 x 2 inches

I mentioned last week that I was thinking about doing some very small pieces. With my regular-sized paintings taking 2 or more days to complete, a change of pace seemed like a really good idea. So it was. I really liked being finished with this by the end of the day.

I'm not sure what to do with this yet. My regular paintings sell pretty well, but I've had mixed results with these miniatures. Maybe I'll do several and offer them as a set. Or something else. We'll see...

HDR Photography, Part 1

2008-07-15T17:19:00.001-07:00

No painting today; I was working on a number of other studio tasks instead. One of them was preparing a few still-life compositions for future paintings. Since this involves taking digital images, I thought it would be a good time to start a series about my use of photography in the studio. Rather than one really long article, I'm going to break this topic up into a series of small posts, sequentially covering the process.

Photography has become a fixed part of my process, but not just any photography. The limitations of standard photographs in capturing "true" color and value range are well known. A technique known as HDR (High Dynamic Range) Imaging goes a long way to addressing those shortcomings.

In a nutshell, the process starts with at least 3 bracketed versions of an image; one at standard exposure, another under-exposed to capture details in highly-lit areas, and another over-exposed to capture detail in the shadow areas.

Here is the series from a recent still-life setup:

Once a satisfactory set of bracketed images has been taken, the software processing can begin. With the next post on this topic (probably next week), I'll start to look at that phase.

Finally

2008-07-14T20:43:00.001-07:00

Finally got to the end of this painting, and that makes me very happy. Some pieces are easy, and some tough... this was definitely the latter.

Will do a final photograph and posting to eBay tomorrow morning.

Bits & Pieces

2008-07-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

In Progress

Despite being Sunday, I carved out a few hours to continue working on this piece, and made some headway. It is going to be finished tomorrow... it is.

Sackler Museum
A friend and I decided to go to the Sackler Museum at Harvard yesterday afternoon. Years ago I lived around the corner from it, and went almost every month; really nice collection of Eastern art & artifacts; Byzantium to Japan.

We got there and the sign on the door said it was closed until August. Real let-down. Of course I'd glanced at the website before leaving. When I got home and checked again, I found this information was in fact there, buried several clicks down. Seems like the kinda thing you'd put right on the home page.

Anyway, it was a good excuse to wonder around Cambridge for the afternoon instead; maybe we'll try the museum again next month.

It's all relative

2008-07-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

This type of brush is one of my real workhorses - the Cotman 111 series 0000 synthetic round. Primarily a watercolor brush, but I don't let that stop me. Every time I buy them from my local supply store, the old guy behind the counter tells me I must have the patience of a surgeon. Every time.

Yet sometimes it actually is too big, and I keep looking for smaller brushes I might like. I've heard that Willard Wigan paints his miraculous little sculptures with brushes he makes himself, using the leg hairs from dead houseflies (they have to be previously deceased from natural causes; he doesn't wish to kill anything for the purpose of making the art. It's admirable).

I probably don't have to go quite that far yet, I'll just keep shopping around. If anybody has a favorite small brush, I'm all ears - leave a comment on this post.

Slow going

2008-07-10T23:50:00.001-07:00

In progress: Olive Oil and Red Apple

After a couple days working on other paintings, I got back to this one today. I'm having trouble with it, and it's really slow going. It probably doesn't help that I'm not even sure if I like it yet.

I don't have any doubts about whether this is the right style of painting for me; it is the direction I should be following at this point. If I do worry about anything, though, it's the time it takes me to complete paintings now. I used to work fast - really fast - cranking out paintings in a few hours - sometimes even big ones. There are artists who do marvelous work at that speed, but I realized I'm cut from a different cloth. I'm much more satisfied with my artwork now, but the output has slowed dramatically.

And so, with good discipline, I can produce an average of 2 of these paintings every week. Lately I've thought it might be nice to do a series of tiny pieces, just to have the satisfaction of completing one in a single day. I'm thinking like in the 2x2 inch range - same style, same standards, just really, really small. Yes, back to a painting a day... It could be a healthy change of pace.

Meanwhile, the Marmalade Jar painting I posted in-progress images of last week is up on eBay. For information, click here.

From the ground up

2008-07-09T22:30:00.001-07:00

In Progress: Teacup and Teapot on Green Slate

Being mostly self-taught has downsides, but big advantages, too. Developing my own solutions to problems gave me an experimental approach to painting. I've held on to that mindset even after I got a little bit of formal training, and learned one of the "right ways" of doing things. I'm sort of a garage inventor in my studio, and it serves me well.

My very basic approach to making paintings and many of the general techniques I follow change frequently as I try out new things. I recently made one such tweak concerning the order in which the final paint layer is applied. Previously I would first paint the objects and then work outwards into the background and foreground, or else begin at the top and more-or-less work downward into the painting. Lately, though, I've begun painting the entire ground - both the background and the surface the objects rest on, letting it dry, and then painting the actual objects... last. In the above in-progress piece, I've just completed the entire ground, next week I'll paint in the teacup and teapot (what you see right now for those objects is just the color-wash underpainting).

This new approach means I don't have to worry about exact color matching, which used to be a little tricky if 2 adjacent areas of the background were done on different days. I also don't have to deal with the "drying lines" between these two areas, which can create an unwanted boundary. Another benefit I've found is that it's a lot easier now to paint the really delicate and subtle light effects that occur around the edges of the objects - half of the area I'm working on is already dry and won't muddy the paint I'm applying.

That's how I do it today, it'll probably be different next year...

Bits & Pieces

2008-07-08T17:03:00.000-07:00

A couple of shorter items:

Self-portrait blog
I got an email yesterday about submitting a self-portrait to a blog devoted to that genre. I did send an image of a SP I did in late 2006 (above), but found later that in order to be included, the actual physical artwork must be donated to the blog owner's collection. This made me raise an eyebrow for about 30 seconds, then I realized that it's in fact a perfectly ethical proposition. There is afterall nothing wrong with simply asking for the art, and in return providing a coherent, respectful forum for displaying the work.

I declined to make the donation since I'm attached to that particular painting. But, a blog devoted specifically to the self-portrait genre is a neat concept, and I did offer to do a similar smaller piece for him at some point in the future.

It's one hell of a brilliant way to build a collection, and a worthy blog, to boot: http://selfportraitgallery.blogspot.com/

Herndon VA Plein Air Competition.
I was recently contacted about a weekend-long plein air contest in Virginia. It's considerably out of my neighborhood, and I'm concentrating on still-life these days, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be able to get involved. Info is here.

Opening the eyes, opening the mind
Over the last 8 months or so, my life has been a little tumultuous, and I haven't made a regular effort to be a good art-blog consumer. There were the dozen or so regular reads, and sadly, that was about it. Yesterday I decided to change that, and spent from late afternoon until nearly dawn visiting blogs I knew from before, and discovering a whole lot of new ones. It was really refreshing, and I'm glad I did it.

I also added a whole bunch of links to the already-mondo blogroll on State of the Art. Links seem to mean different things to different bloggers; recognizing friends, making statements and boundaries about style and quality, and also mutual link-swapping (sounds durty, I know). I don't have much of an agenda with the links I keep. There's a really wide range of style, quality, and blogging aptitude, but in general there was something about each one that caught my eye. It's basically just a set of bookmarks for blogs I'd like to see again at some point in the future.

Other people's blogrolls are probably the best way of finding good new sites... and let's face it, who doesn't like to see their name on somebody else's list? If you're looking here for your blog, though, forget it. I am not gonna manage 2 separate link lists. Look here instead.

Roasting alive
It's been miserable in my studio the last couple of days. Really awful. The upstairs AC units (mid-century house, no central air) usually do a decent job keeping the ground floor comfortable too, and that's where the studio is. This winter, however, I reconfigured the lighting and added more halogens. They were desperately needed, but they really pump out the heat. With temps outside floating in the 80s/90s, it's been an oven in here, and I've been very cranky. Good thing I don't have to play well with others during my workday.

Fortunately, Sean picked up a new AC tonight, so hopefully tomorrow I should be working in serene coolness.

Restaurant Porn
I've never seen American Idol or most other reality shows and I'm ok with that. Somehow though, I got sucked into Hell's Kitchen last year and haven't been able to shake the habit. Tonight was the current season finale. It was down to a pair of total rockstar competitors. I was rooting for Petrozza, but Christina won, and she was eminently deserving too. Man... working in a professional kitchen seems like a rough way to earn a living.

Almost everybody hates Gordon Ramsay, but I've warmed up to him. It's like he's Mussolini with better hair and hidden charm. I suspect that away from a TV camera, he's actually a decent guy.

Ron English Mural Brouhaha

2008-07-08T01:35:00.000-07:00

This is the building in Boston where I had my previous studio. I find it amusing that it was actually another gallery that got pissed off and called the police.

William Wray

2008-07-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

Guess it's safe to plug other artists here in addition to my own shameless self-promotion...

I just got an email about a show in California by William Wray. Bill's an absolute master of painting urban blight, and often transforming it into something serene and beautiful. I used to paint a lot of urban landscapes - factories, abandoned warehouses, etc., and Bill was one artist I really looked up to... a lot. Obviously, my painting has changed a little (I think we all have to pick something, give it a good run, and make it our own), but I still love looking at his pieces, and wish I had painted most of them.

Almost makes me want to spend the afternoon out in the great industrial wasteland, brush in hand...

Oh - I should add I was enjoying his work on Ren & Stimpy long before I was looking at fine art on a regular basis...

Favicons

2008-07-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

What I don't know about marketing, including internet marketing, would fill a pretty large textbook on the subject. There's also the question of time to devote to the task; it could pretty much be a full-time job in itself, even for very small businesses like mine. Nevertheless, I do keep stabbing in the dark, hoping to move 3 steps forward for every 2 back. It's naive to think I can just sit in front of my easel and paint.

Ideally, I'd love to spend some quality time getting a good, cohesive graphic design going across my blogs and static website, as well as a great logo and header graphic to use on my other sites, like my eBay store and my squidoo page. Again, the time thing, and I'm no graphic design guru either.

I have, however, been playing around with producing a favicon (it's the tiny icon that most professional websites have - it sits in the address bar of the browser directly to the left of the URL), and get some consistent branding going. The first pass at it is above - large, and then actual size (the standard is 16x16 pixels!). For now I'm just going with my last initial, which is... guess? It's not quite ready to put out on my sites, and it will probably be re-done when I have something like a consistent design, but it's a step in the right direction.

I posted this new painting up to my store as well today; click on the image for more info. There's also a brief discussion about it here.

Linen vs. Panel

2008-07-06T11:40:00.001-07:00

The majority of my paintings are done on gessoed masonite panel, with a perfectly smooth finish ideally suited to the highly detailed work I've been doing lately. About 1 in 4 of the paintings, though, are done on linen mounted on panel.

There isn't any particular rationale for choosing linen, nor do I decided based on the painting I'm about to do. Linen certainly lasts longer than cotton canvas, but compared to panel, I'm not aware of any superiority as far as longevity. When linen is mounted on a panel, it will not be subject to as much of the expansions and contractions that can cause paintings done on stretched fabrics (pulled around traditional stretcher bars) to crack. The one possible archival advantage of linen on panel vs. straight-up panel is that the linen (with painting on top) could be removed from a damaged panel. I imagine, though, that most things that would damage the panel would probably also do a number on the painting itself.

Basically, the real reason I use linen sometimes is that I just have a lot of it. Back when I did larger paintings (16x20 up to 24x30 or so), I bought several big rolls of oil-primed linen (Claessens - decent product; I've been pretty happy with it), as well as many yards of unprimed linen... buying in bulk is economical, right? All in all, there's probably enough linen to fully cover the dining room floor of an average-sized restaurant. Now that I work so small (average painting is roughly the size of a paper-back novel), it's tough to imagine I'll use half of that material during the course of my entire hopefully long and fruitful career.

There is one potential disadvantage to linen. A gessoed panel presents a perfectly smooth surface, allowing the paint to be sculpted in great detail, limited only by the range of the artist's vision and the size of the brush. The pattern of the linen's weave, on the other hand, limits this ability somewhat, and can produce a little bit of a pixelated appearance - click the above image for a detailed view. I do use portrait-grade linen, with a dense weave and high threadcount, so the effect is reduced. Standing two feet away, I simply can't notice it. Getting in close, however, and working under magnification as I often do, I am aware that the surface is not as perfectly responsive as a gessoed panel would be.

It's the kind of thing that probably only the artist notices and frets about, but on the wrong day, that can be very important, if only psychologically. In general, materials should work with you, not against you.

Nevertheless, there's a LOT of great, highly detailed photorealist painting done on linen, and I will continue to use it as a support for some of my own pieces.

I hate to waste good art material.

Happy Fourth!

2008-07-03T16:48:00.001-07:00

Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson working on the Declaration of Independence
J.L.G. Ferris

To all my friends here in the U.S., have a GREAT holiday.

Ben Franklin (see above) is one of my very favorite Dead White Males. By happy accident, I even live on a Franklin Street. Jefferson is pretty high up on my list, too.

John Adams... I'm not so sure. I don't know much about him at all, so I was really looking forward to the recent HBO miniseries, and TIVO'd the whole lot.

It was a beautiful, well-made disappointment.

At least as he was portrayed in the series, he came off as pretty unappealing - something of a vain and petty manipulator (Paul Giamatti's a great actor, I just didn't like the character). It didn't do such a hot job either of showing what Adams' accomplishments were (I assume they were plentiful), so I ended up not really knowing why I should care about him.

In all fairness, I only got through 5 of the 7 episodes. For the sake of completeness, I probably will watch the remaining 2; hopefully there's some grand personality transformation in the end. One of these days I should also get down to Quincy to visit his museum.

In any case, I've always liked Gilbert Stuart's brilliant portrait of Adams as an old man:

Oh... and I think it's one of the all-time amazing coincidences that Adams and Jefferson - founding fathers and 2nd & 3rd presidents respectively - both died on July 4th, 1826, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence.

Spooky...

Photographing Paintings

2008-07-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

I just spent the last few hours photographing the current batch of finished paintings, cropping and editing the images, and preparing them for posting and sale.

This is probably one of my least-favorite studio chores. There's a lot of trial-and-error to get a decent image, and then a lot of busy-work for the editing. None of it is exactly stimulating either, more like drudgery. But... it's kindof important if I care about anybody else seeing the paintings, which I absolutely do.

Taking photos of paintings isn't just point-n-shoot, and there is a specific process I go through. This is the kind of thing that would probably interest some people, so the next time I photograph a batch of finished pieces, I'll plan to post on the process as well. That should be in about 2 weeks.

The above painting is from the newly-finished batch. Click on the image to see the eBay listing.

Done!

2008-07-02T18:18:00.001-07:00

I'm really happy with the final result.

I'm also glad it's done.

Not that I get bored working on specific pieces, but once a painting's been in front of me for more than 2 days, I'm ready for the next thing. It wasn't several solid days working on this, I just had a lot of other projects and interruptions going on as well. Actual working time was probably between 10 and 12 hours. I'll put it up for auction later next week.

Next up is probably finishing this piece, which I might even get going on tonight:

Enough already...

2008-07-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

Can't get this damned painting off my easel. I got off to a late start today and had a whole bunch of other delays. It didn't help that I also stopped to watch Hell's Kitchen... kinda hooked on that show, which makes me feel kinda dirty.

All I got done was the label. Lettering used to drive me insane, but I've come to enjoy it. Like most other kinds of detailed, intricate work, it has a certain meditative quality to it.

Anyway, I'm exhausted (bad night's sleep last night), so I'm gonna pack it in for the evening. I'll have to finish slaying this beast tomorrow.

Laying out the palette

2008-07-01T15:40:00.000-07:00

The last day and a half have been given over to business-related drudgery. A couple important things I was really glad to finish, and a huge blind alley task that seems like a complete waste of time at the moment, though I'll probably revisit it later. Effective time management is one of the trickiest things about running a small business, and I've still got lots to learn about that.

So... I'm gonna spend the rest of the day painting, and step one is setting up the palette. I've written a lengthy post about the paints I use here, but the pic above shows how I keep the tubes laid out. My work area is very much an ongoing project, and one thing I have yet to do is build a movable shelfing unit to hold the tubes, and free up some space on the table (this table sits immediately to the left of my easel, by the way).

I've tried a lot of different ways to store paint tubes, and this seems to work best; not least of all because it allows me to turn the tube over with each use. I've had significant problems in the past with oil separation (squeeze on a tube and twice as much oil as pigment comes running out... annoying), and rotating the tubes regularly seems to fix the problem. Presumably it keeps any unbound oil constantly on the move inside the tube, and less likely to gather at the opening.

I always set up my palette with a small bead from each and every tube; 72 paints currently. Accurately rendering color is tough and often very surprising, so no matter what I'm painting, it's extremely important to have the entire range of pigments available. Laying out all the paints usually takes about 30 minutes. You'd think this would be mind-numbing, but I actually kinda like it... something gentle and medatitative about the process.

I generally go through this routine this every working day. Sometimes I will get lazy and place the whole palette in my deepfreezer overnight, which drastically slows the oxidization (drying) of the paints. In the morning, when it warms up to room temp, the paints are in basically the same condition as at the end of the previous working day. I do this with some hesitation, though. Some people say this might adversely affect the chemical properties of the oil; if anybody knows any technical evidence or studies about this, please let me know, I'd be curious to learn more.

In any case, fresh paint is always better, hands down. After a full working day, even some of the very slow-drying pigments can start to get a little tacky, and I hate working with gummy paint. Some days, small things like the working quality of the paint make all the difference, psychologically, at least.

OK - time to get squeezing.

new on the block

2008-06-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

I put this one up on ebay today. Click the image for more info.

YouTube videos

2008-06-29T22:02:00.001-07:00

A reader commenting on State of the Art reminded me that I hadn't made any YouTube videos lately.

Quite true.

Since they actually require a little time and planning, and I'm not at a stage with any of my paintings that it makes sense to do it, I'm thinking about doing a sort of montage-of-recent-paintings video. Hopefully I can get to it sometime this week.

Meanwhile, click on the above image to see those videos I do currently have.

Musty basement smell

2008-06-28T23:10:00.001-07:00

Nope, no painting today. On the road until late afternoon, then spent most of the evening cleaning / reorganizing my basement workshop.

Way to spend a saturday night, huh?

Slacker

2008-06-27T21:47:00.001-07:00

I just couldn't pull it together and get a lot of work done today... too many distractions, and I was frankly kinda lazy too. All I managed to get done was the top portion of the marmalade in the jar. There are a lot of air bubbles in the mixture, which I thought would be annoying to paint - turns out they're kinda fun... almost meditative.

One drawback of working with underpaintings is that the surface occassionally dries to a nearly enamal-like finish. This makes it very difficult to apply the next layer of paint - it can bead up almost like rain on a windshield. The answer is to apply retouch varnish, preferably before starting on the final layer. Otherwise, I have to stop midstream, apply retouch, and wait for it to dry before proceeding. Like today, for instance...

My Nemesis

2008-06-27T13:14:00.001-07:00

So this is The Mutt, who keeps us up nights and sees to it I don't get enough work done. 11 years old today, amazing for a Great Dane, more so since he's had some pretty rough close calls this past year.

Happy birthday Puppling.

And because I'm already not productive, I spent the first few hours today tricking out my easel with speakers and a subwoofer, 'cause who doesn't wanna listen to podcasts in surround sound?

Now where'd I put all my Chili Peppers CDs...?

new on the block

2008-06-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

I put this one up on ebay today. Click the image for more info.

I blame the dog

2008-06-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

After spending the first part of the week doing drawings and underpaintings, I thought I'd better spend some time working on the final painting stage for one or two pieces.

I did, sort of...

We have a very old Great Dane, who coincidentally turns 11 today (average G.D. lifespan is 6 years). He's been pretty sick lately, and today he interrupted me every 10 minutes or so with a barking fit. Mostly just bitching and moaning, I think, but I had to go check up on him anyway. I have a moderate case of ADD, and whenever there's an interruption, it takes 15 minutes to re-establish my focus. You can see the problem.

I'm not really sure how I go about setting a day's goal, as it usually never works out that way. I had thought I'd like to complete this painting today. I was at least able to complete the paper wrapper on the lid.

Small victories... small victories...

2 object composition

2008-06-26T00:09:00.000-07:00

I actually did manage to finish off that second underpainting for the day - see above.

For a long while, I've been primarily doing grisaille underpaintings; all gray. Lately I've been returning to color washes; underpaintings in very thin layers of full color. I originally learned this when I studied with Dennis Cheaney. At first, it seemed like a waste of time, and I only used it in class. Recently, though, I'm seeing it as almost a rehersal to the final painting. Interestingly, I also find it doesn't take any more time than a completely gray scale version would.

Looking at my current works in progress, I just realized I have a number of paintings that have 2 objects in them. Ironically, it seems more difficult to make a satisfying composition with 2 objects than with 3 or even more. Not entirely sure why, probably easier to create balance and counterpoint with more objects. Anyway, of these, I'm thinking this one seems to have the best composition.

DaVinci Lapis Lazuli

2008-06-25T19:29:00.000-07:00

This week I picked up a tube of DaVinci's Lapis Lazuli Genuine. Lapis has traditionally been just about the most expensive pigment because it's, well, ground-up semi-precious gemstone. To boot, 400 years ago it had to be imported to Europe from what is now Afghanistan. It was eventually more or less entirely replaced by a synthetic ultramarine pigment.

Anyway, I noticed that DaVinci was offering a tube of the real thing, and for only about $15. At that price, I suspected it would not be a particularly brilliant or pure color, and that turns out to be the case; it is a little on the muddy side as you can see in the above tint mixture. In all fairness, it's not quite as dirty as the picture would suggest.

That said, I will be keeping it on my palette. It's fairly weak in mixtures compared to all the other blues I use, and this is actually a good thing. Most modern pigments are strong stainers - the phthalos, for instance, are basically nuclear-powered juggernauts, easily overwhelming just about any paint they're combined with. Therefore I'm always happy to find pigments which only impart the suggestion of their hue in mixtures. Rembrandt's ultramarine green is also very useful from that perspective. Oddly, they seem to be the only manufacturer that offers that particular pigment, at least in oil.

I got the tube from Cheap Joes.

Blue Plate Special

2008-06-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

Making a painting is NOT a linear process for me. Rather it's a set of stages, and there are frequently up to 10 paintings going through any given stage at once. This week I'm in the process of doing a batch of underpaintings, which lately I've been doing in full color, as opposed to grisaille.

Above is today's efforts so far... about 1/2 a working day to finish this underpainting. The plan has been to do 2 a day for the entire week, and thus get through all 10 underpaintings in the current batch.

Riiiiight.

Really? Another blog?

2008-06-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this, you probably got here from my other painting blog, State of the Art. Why then start another blog on the same subject?

For some time, I've wanted to blog a little more regularly, delving into issues of painting, and also just day to day updates of what is (or isn't) happening in my studio. I've come to view my State of the Art as more of a show-room, where I can display my newest paintings. Rather than muddying the waters and putting my nuts-n-bolts posts there, it seemed better to just start a new blog altogether.

So there you have it...