Ahhh... That's Much Better

The bad news is, I've been terrible about keeping up a respectable pace of posting here.  The good news is, it is not for lack of making art - I've actually been working on a couple of cool projects lately that I'd love to share.  But the bad news is, I did them under other nomenclature, and so will not be writing about them in this forum.

But the good news is, I recently undertook this 'weekend project' of painting my dresser, got a bit more carried away with it than expected, and now it is more painting than dresser:

Hey Beautiful

I've just about finished my smiling people painting, which I've taken to calling Hey Beautiful.  I may go back and do a few touch ups here and there, but for the most part, I feel done with it.  Here are some process shots as well as the final one, the lowest on the page being the most recent:

Time Lapse: Step-By-Step Painting Construction

I've been meaning to post process shots of a few of my older paintings that I thoroughly documented while in progress, and since this last week has mostly been activity not worth reporting, it seems as good a time as any.  I always find it interesting to see how paintings actually develop - the way that color, layering and composition change over time.  Here is how I constructed my painting, The Party-goers:

Since my paintings are often inspired by a narative situation or moment, I almost always have all composition and imagery in mind when I start a piece. Colors, textures, and details may vary, but the arrangement of shapes stays the same throughout. Because of this, I basically end up making huge coloring books for myself - a process which is, as far as I can tell, somewhat unusual, and perhaps more constricting than it ought to be, but it is what feels natural to me.

Grrrrrr

Jessica's big head is giving me problems.  After many hours of work on it this weekend, and several attempts at retouching, I finally went back in and scrubbed it out to start anew.  I think that the biggest issue is, well, how big it is.  Because Jessica sits a couple feet in front of the other people in my source photos, she is by far the largest figure.  But as true as the perspective may be, it looks strange when painted.  This is partly because I chose to paint the people on the couch, where most of the sitters are located, approximately life size.  Jessica, in the foreground, needs therefore to be larger than life size, and so ends up looking like a stray figure from a mural or billboard instead of a cohesive part of the composition.  On my next attempt, I'll have to figure out a better balance between the suggestion of perspective and what fits in with the rest of the painting.

Here are a couple of process shots to give you an idea of how things were going before I got entangled in scale issues.  My first layer of color:

And the first few flesh tones applied:

Why Hello There, Gorgeous

I've just finished the under-painting for my next large oil on paper painting.  I've generated this composition differently than most.  Instead of starting, as I usually do, by thinking of what image I would most want to paint, I began by thinking about what image I would most want to have on my wall.  I decided that if I were being honest, the image that I would most want to encounter everyday would be one of a bunch of people looking at me as though they love me and are joyous to see me.  So this is the feeling that I'm setting out to evoke with this group of smilers.  I want the painting to gaze with love upon it's viewer.

Do you think I can manage to complete a painting that smiles affectionately at it's viewer without its veering too deeply into the creepy?

Done with Grandma

Well, I'm not really done with Grandma, of course.  She seems, in fact, to be a surprisingly persistent muse, and I am even currently working on one other Grandma-related piece: the serial post-it note story of grandma/granddaughter road-trip that I've been inserting into library books...

But I'm done with Grandma in Brush.  Here's one last process shot:

I was pretty nervous after adding that bright minty green to the foreground.  But now that the painting is complete, I think I'm happy with the final product:

This is the first painting in a long time on which I've used more brush than palette knife, and I was evidently having fun with the brush strokes.  I was thinking about David Hockney's recent work a bit, and also a little about Laura Owens, although the end result is pretty dissimilar.  Here are a few detail shots:

Grandma is Getting There

I've picked up some steam on the painting that I've taken to calling Grandma in Brush.  Here are the next batch of process shots:

Sadly, because I'd been doing so little painting recently, "picking up steam" really just means working on the piece for about three hours a day, every other day.  Between the first image above, and the second one, I spent about five hours painting.  The difference between the second image and the third one represents about six hours of painting.

Detail Shots

Given popular demand - one comment - here are some close-up images of these paintings I did a little while back:

Bonus points if you can name the poem that was used for those text fragments.

Detour Posted: A Foray Into Public Art

I've spent the past week or so on a bit of a painting detour - making a couple of pieces to illustrate a proposal I submitted in response for a call for works designed to be installed on a construction fence.  The paintings are on wood panels, and draw heavily upon the materials endemic to plywood construction fences: pasted, torn and stapled posters and notices:

The bird silhouettes, for example, are made of little stapled fragments of torn magazine and newsprint.

This one used a lot of razorblading and sanding, as well as tearing and painting over the collaged elements:

 

The paintings were fun to make, although the submission itself called for such low quality photos, that I am concerned they won't come accross properly.  But on the plus side, I've become adept at making wheat paste.

Painting Progress

I've done some more work on this painting.  It didn't feel like it had been that long since I'd worked on it, but it is a bad sign when you need to dust your pallete off before use.

Here's the current status:

I have always loved cropped details of my paintings. The way that the colors and textures interact always feels surprising to me - like something I didn't intend, but just happened upon when I wasn't paying attention. Here's a detail from my recent efforts:

I tend to feel like details like this make really nice abstract compositions, and yet I very rarely paint abstractly, and when I do, the results lack interest for me.  Abstract painting in general lacks interest for me.  As with poetry, where I love a good turn of phrase or pairing of words, but cannot get into work that is all about the aesthetics of words without any larger story or image involved, I love the abstract details of interacting paint, but need it to be couched in a discernible narrative, image, or idea.

For a as long as I've been painting, that larger image has almost always involved the human figure, but in this painting so far, and in my last one, I actually ended up paying much more attention to the background. As if the figure was an excuse for painting bushes and wallpaper.  It makes me wonder if I should try doing some work that is not abstract, but not figurative.  Work where I abandon the figure altogether, and focus on what I've been putting behind them.

Plaid Gap Skirt

The Gap just got this skirt back: 

 

With this slide:

Of this painting that I did when I was going through a non-objective phase:

Sewn into the underskirt:

 

Over a little window that I had cut into the fabric:

Which means that it's one of my rare clothing intrusions that can't be reversed. The slide is pretty subtle, visually, but I imagine it may be odd on a tactile level.  Here's one with the skirt turned inside out. The slide is at the lower left corner of the underskirt:

  

I like it.  Now I need to find more of my old slides.

Grandma in Brush

Although it is not a crowd scene in the way I'd earlier envisioned, I finally started painting the long-prepped canvas I'd been neglecting since, what, September?

Christmas with the family got me thinking about my grandma, a subject I've painted on multiple previous occasions. In this 48" x 60" painting she will be enveloped in a crowding riot of flowers. Below are a few process shots.




I started the painting last night, largely as a way of entering the new year on a productive note. I'm surprisingly happy with what I've done so far - all work that I had intended to be under-painting, but to which I am now growing attached. It has me thinking that I should temper my use of palette knife with more brushwork this time around, and not just for the sake of puns.

Muses Wanted

Now that I've finished the eavesdropping painting, I've got a blank canvas staring at me, and need to figure out what to paint next.

I'm sort of in the mood to do a crowd scene, but no particular scene is calling to me. I've done a couple of crowd paintings in the past. Both deal with an individual who is in a crowd, but for some reason separate.

There was The Party Goers:


And, the rather uninspiredly titled, Crowd:

So, anyone got any ideas for the next one? (I'm unlikely to ever use them, but you never know what will lead somewhere.)

At Last!

I've finally finished this painting:


Of which I still can't seem to get a very good picture. (The dark line at the left edge of the photo is just the camera freaking out, and it's a little darker, and well, blurier, than the painting is)

The painting is about 48" x 60", oil on paper. Here are some detail shots, though, which should give you a slightly better idea of what's going on, at least as far as texture and palette goes.



I always find myself very attracted to detail shots of my paintings. So much so that sometimes I want to make a much larger painting just based on the detail shot. But I know that I would end up finding that painting rather boring, as I end up finding many purely abstract paintings boring. It has to be part of the larger whole for me, even if, in the end, it is the details that I find most satisfying.

Some Progress

A few more progress shots of the figurative painting I'm working on:

More Fun With Sticky

I decided to make a larger version of the little canvasless paintings that I had been making and occasionally sewing into clothing recently.

To do this, I spread a large layer of acrylic gel medium over a glass table top, placed colorful scrapings of old paint from my palette (also, a little confetti here and there) in the wet gel medium and let it dry, then put down another layer of gel medium on top.


The medium is white to start with, but turns clear and glossy as it dries. Once it's fully dried it can be peeled off the the glass.





I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I've considered stretching it over stretcher bars, cutting it up to make jewelry or other crafts, or using pieces of it for more clothing insertions, covering an older unloved painting with this painting like a shroud, or tacking it to the wall as is. This is one of those times when I make something just to make it, and whether any art that I am particularly happy with will ever come out of it is entirely unknown.

One fun property of these all-medium paintings is that when dry they still adhere to glass, like a giant color-form. I tried mine out on the window, but feel like it would need to fill the whole frame to really look right there.