More apples

I wanted to do something a little different tonight and this is what I came up with. I know, I know. "But Dave, your last three paintings have been of apples." Yes they have. Now make that four. What I did differently was to do this one from my imagination. No photo reference, no still life setup. And I can honestly say I'm quite pleased with the way this one came out.

I do have to confess though that I didn't get the entire painting done without some sort of reference. The apple on the right was done that way and I like the way it came out. However, the apple on the left gave me a little trouble, mostly in the top of the apple around the stem. I just couldn't get it right, so I let it sit for a couple of days and then pulled out an apple and reworked that part of the painting. Now I'm pleased with it. So, let's just say I did about 97% of this painting without reference.

5x7" oil on canvas panel. 

The New Series - Part III

My latest "masterpiece" is finished. I can see some improvement and love the direction this is going. All three paintings done so far have been from life, setups right on my desk and my small works easel right next to it. I'm still struggling with lighting, but that will come with time.

6x6 oil on gessobord. 

The new series - Part II

The other day Leslie Saeta, who is doing a marketing challenge for artists, told her "students" to post some pictures of a painting in progress. Now, I've done this before, but it has been awhile, so I thought I would do another one.

Here is the set up.  Paints?  Check.  Solvent to breathe during painting session?  Check.  Brushes?  Check.  Background for still life?  Check.  Still life object?  Check.

Alrightee then.  Time to get at it.  Since I was doing this one right next to a window, with no other lighting to work with, I had to get started.  It was 6:00pm when my first stroke went down and I knew I had an hour at best to get this one finished.

First things first, get the major portion of the background and still life surface in.  Then I wiped away the spot where the apple was going to be placed.  Gotta learn to watch the amount of thinner on the napkin when wiping like this.  It can get out of control real fast.

Then I slapped some paint into the apple spot, trying to get some of the shaded portions worked out in the process.  I think one of the problems I have is I tend to slather on the way too much paint in this step and end up having to scrape some away later.  For some reason, when trying to work in the final layers of paint, they don't seem to want to stick when there is a ton of paint already there.  Or the paint already in place asserts its presence and comes right on through.  Nothing a couple of swipes with a palette knife can't handle.

Then I had to stop worrying about taking photos so I could beat the darkness.  The photo above is a really bad cell phone photo of the finished painting.  I like to take photos of finished paintings outside in the sunlight, but that wasn't possible this evening.   So I'll try to get it done tomorrow and replace that photo.

Obviously, trying to beat the light just doesn't work sometimes.  I've been wanting to get a shadow box to use for still lifes, but haven't gotten around to it.  That changed late last week.  I found a real treasure at the thrift store the other day and I am going to have exactly what I wanted.  But, you'll have to wait until I get the studio cleaned up and rearranged a little before I let you in on the find.  It's going to be AWESOME and you will be so jealous.

Anyway, enough of this silliness.

6x6" oil on gessobord.

New painting series started

I actually had the time and energy to sit down last night and do some painting. It felt good to hold the brushes in my fingers again. This painting is going to be the first of at least four similar paintings. I may do four, I may do nine. Not sure yet. Whichever way I go it will be so that these can be hung in a square on the wall. 

This was a very limited palette as one can imagine just looking at the painting.  Lots of red.  Red with some aliz crimson, cad yellow and ultramarine thrown in.

One of the challenges I can see I need to work on is lighting.  I have daylight bulbs in the studio, but this morning the painting looked a lot redder than I remember.  I'm going to have to play around with my lights and their placement.

6x6 inch oil on Gessobord.

Mystery painting by COLE?

Sometimes I feel like pulling my hair out and today would be a good example. I was browsing through my favorite thrift store, looking for small treasures for still life paintings and some used frames that would have some good life left in them. And I ran across this ... 

I loved it as soon as I saw it and had to have it.  Where does the hair pulling part come in?  It comes from wondering who painted it.  It is signed "COLE" in the bottom right of the painting.  That's all.  Nothing on the back.  Nothing on the edges of the canvas.  Nothing.

 So, you would think in this day and time that finding out about this artist with Google would work.  Not a chance.  Do you know how many artists there are with the name Cole on the internet?  Could it be a Thomas Cole?  That would be nice, but no, this isn't the way he signed his paintings. 

I searched through about one hundred different artist websites and pages looking for this Cole and didn't find anything that would say I had found my artist.

So, I have a really nice landscape painting by Cole.  That's all I know.  If you happen to know any more than this I would love to hear from you. 

Not much happening right now.

So, what have I been doing this last month and a half without a single post? Not as much art as I would have liked. I've been doing some sketching and a couple of minor watercolor sketches. I've started an oil painting that I had envisioned putting into the Celebrate Life! show here in Las Vegas, but I'm not sure I'll be able to finish it before the entry deadline.

So, to answer the question posed above, I've been doing a little bit of work on the garden. Well, my sweetie has done most of the work, but I have been supervising. She just doesn't understand the importance of a supervisor on a job of this magnitude. It's been a classic battle between management and labor. It's mostly just clean up and some spring flowers being added.  We've begun to construct a place that will house a new fountain that we purchased at Lowes.  Anyway, here is a sample of what we've been doing. 

 

The inspector arrived to check out the progress on the job.

The diners arrived to sample the fare at the eatery.

There was some minor bickering between customers.

And one feller didn't know what to make of the whole affair.

However, I did do one thing art related that can be blogged about.  I put together a package of four paintings and sent them to the Rochester Contemporary Arts Center for their annual fundraiser.  Should be interesting to see how they are received by the art buying public.

Other than that, not much to report artwise.  I need to get back to work on that painting for the show here in Vegas and see if I can beat the deadline.

Days of Wine and Grapes 01

Yes, I was in kind of a wine mood this evening. Which is kind of funny seeing as how I don't drink. But, I love to paint wine bottles, glasses and grapes. And one of these days I'll even figure out what the heck I'm doing and get it right!

This is a quick study for a larger piece. I'm going to do four of these wine setups as a series and see where my journey takes me. Thank goodness I won't be under the influence or my journey could come grinding to a halt before it even gets started.

6x6" oil on Gessobord. 

Watts what?

Here is another attempt at a gesture painting along the lines of the Jeff Watts DVD I got last week. I tried to pick a reference photo that would be simple and allow for quick, gestural strokes. I think I overworked the hair a bit, but the rest of the painting came together the way I wanted it to. Again this was the Zorn palette of titanium white, ivory black, yellow ochre and cad red light. Actually, I lied right there. I don't have any cad red light so this is cad red, which I assume is the medium version. Winsor & Newton doesn't have a "light" version of this red.

10x8" oil on linen panel.

Watts up!

I just got a new DVD yesterday and I've been watching it and figured I'd give it a shot this evening. I received the Jeffrey Watts DVD of Gesture Painting in Oils. I haven't done any figure paintings ever. Well, except for a really bad self-portrait that I did in a class a few months ago that shall never see the light of day. By the way, that reminds me, where is that painting and a can of gesso?

Now Jeff's DVD dealt with doing portraits in the gesture style, but I wanted to experiment with a little bigger subject matter. So I decided to do a landscape painting, a painting of one my favorite types of landscape, that of the female body. As Renoir was want to say, "I don't know if I would have become an artist if God hadn't created the female breast."

I also decided to experiment with one of the palettes that Jeff goes over on the DVD, that of the Zorn palette. This painting was done with that palette and nothing else. It consists of titanium white, ivory black, yellow ochre and cad red light. That's all.

Using this limited palette does one thing for me, it speeds up the painting time. Without a pizza pan full of colors to choose from it is pretty easy to look and see what is needed and mix it quickly on the palette. This painting took me one hour, start to finish. I'm sure to some it looks like it took an hour, but I am quite happy with it. I still fussed with some of the strokes more than I should have, but not as much as I usually do.

So, this is my first foray into figurative painting and it won't be my last. There is one other item that Jeff brought up in his video and I will save that for the next post if I decide to go with it.

10x8" oil on linen panel. 

Commission or no?

So what have I been doing lately? Doing a sort of commission painting. Is it really a commission if it's because your girlfriend asked for it and it is to replace a LARGE painting hanging over the front door? I think the large painting over the door is my masterpiece. She doesn't see it that way. She has no taste.

Actually, if I were to tell the truth, this painting, the one over the front door was an experiment. It is the largest painting I've ever done, at three feet by four feet, and it was done as an experiment. It was done with palette knife and it was done in about six hours. I found this old canvas WITH frame at Goodwill, that had a cheap print adhered right to the canvas. The print itself looked like it was painted on vinyl. So I gessoed over the print, squeezed out a ton of paint and went to work. I did the whole thing while she had gone home to the Philippines for the funeral of her father, knowing she would squeal about me painting in the living room. It's the only place in the house big enough to paint something that large.

When she came home she was mildly impressed with it, even if it was sitting on an easel in the living room. She even helped me hang it over the front door.

Now, here's the complete truth. I know it's not my masterpiece. There is plenty that I would want to change about it and I would never consider selling it because I wouldn't want this hanging on someone's wall with my signature on it. It was painted as an experiment in painting something that large and to give me a reason to painting something else to replace it. 

So, for the past couple of days I've been working on my studies for what I intend to replace this painting.  I am preparing to do a triptych that will be about six feet wide and three feet high.  And this study below is a beginning to get an idea of what I am looking for.

I will probably go with a bit less color in the background and a lot fewer black marks on the trees.  As I've reviewed some of my reference photos I've noticed that most aspen trees don't have this much scarring.

16x20" mixed media (oil over acrylic) on canvas panel.