"Winter Display"

Always amazes me how many colors are still on display in nature during the winter....

"Winter Display"

8x10; oil on panel

"Following Along" - a few recent pieces

 "Following Along"

8x10; oil on panel

 "Orchard"

10x8; oil on panel

"Juicy"

8x8; oil on panel

"Winter Grouping"

The other day, my wife and I were out chasing snowballs with our Welsh Corgi, Lucas, in the greenway behind the house....well, Lucas was chasing snowballs, I was trying to make them as quickly as possible even though Lucas was running in circles around me, informing me that I wasn't doing it fast enough...or correctly...or aesthetically proper -- Corgis are quite bossy about these things -- and Kim was trying to film the whole process....

Anyway, after losing the feeling in my hands for about forty-five minutes, I noticed a group of willows that is usually unremarkable during the warmer months (I think....now, we'll have to see....). You can guess what happened....

"Winter Grouping"

 8x10; oil on panel

Inscape III - Morning sequence....

Surprisingly, I've had a few people ask me about my painting process -- which actually cracks me up, because I rarely feel like I've got a handle on what I'm doing day to day, let alone describing it to others ---

Anyhoo...here we go...

This is the initial sketch I worked from; 8x10.....

First off I tone a 16x20 panel with a light wash of burnt sienna color; then a loose sketch to draw in the major elements; at this point I also a looking at spatial relationships in the drawing...often drawing lines around elements to see if I'm happy with the negative spaces as well.

Initially, I lay in the darks first as I have a tendency to lose my darks quite quickly. I work from a three-color palette -- Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Crimson or Cad Red Medium, Cad Yellow Lemon, and Titanium White. Also at this point in my development it helps me think about working with the shadows. Working loose and thinly with a mixture of Ultramarine, Alizarin Crimson (my chosen red for this painting), and Cad Yellow Lemon.

Still looking at spatial relationships, I decide that another grove of trees helps balance the composition a bit and helps establish more of a feeling of distance by creating what I think of as a secondary middle ground.

Once I feel pretty good about the drawing and my placement of darks, I move to the sky and block in the color from a mixture of Ultramarine, Alizarin, White and portions of my left over dark mixture -- the foreground and water will also be derived from these colors in one proportion or another. I also go back to my trees and horizon lines to adjust edges, blend, and re-establish some darker shadows.

Completing the initial color pass, I lay in the middle value colors of the trees, foreground and reflections. Up to this point, everything has been done in one sitting, working wet-into-wet. I'm trying to pay particular attention to color harmony and edge relationships before letting the painting "set-up" for a bit.

After letting the piece sit overnight (if longer than overnight, I will often give the piece a very light coat of Liquin or Neo-Megilp to unify the colors and create a wet-into-wet feeling), I start to work in more local color on the trees and foreground, tighten up any details that I want to add in the center of interest, and generally make sure my value relationships are where I want them.

After this stage, I will set the painting aside and place it in a frame before going back over it for any final adjustments -- for me, this is now the hardest stage....

Inscape III - Morning; 16x20; oil on panel

Inscapes......cont...

"Inscape II - Sunset"; 8x10; oil on linen panel

Flirting with winter.....

"Early Snow"; 6x6; oil on board

Felt a bit more like winter today....

Playing with Alizarin some more....

painting tally: 29...28 days

Alpine Spring....

"Sunlight"; 8x10; oil on panel

Eating out today for my wife's birthday, I asked about the seasonal ale selection. Shay (!) informed me that it was a Spring ale.........???? It is still January.....isn't it?

Sam Adams Alpine Spring Ale -- pretty darn good any time of the year......oh.....and the glass the company advertises with the little laser-etched thingamabob on the bottom of the glass.....it actually works.......try it

Holidays over....

"Three Over"; 6x12; oil on board

Okay....festivities over; national ho-hum championship over.....time to get back to work

50x50 painting count update tomorrow

The Blind Side.....

"The Blind Side"; 6x6; oil on board

Okay gang, I went two days without trumpeting this repeatedly....but I couldn't hold out any longer.......

The Oregon Ducks are Rose Bowl Champions for the first time in 95 years!!!!

"Highway Meadow"; 6x6; oil on board

Today, I debated for awhile on what to write about....it was a toss-up between a conversation I had with my wife concerning "common-sense" and an incident I observed while standing in line at Starbucks for what will likely be my last Gingerbread Latte of the year (I have a problem and need to police myself).

In the end, the two actually went together in a weird way....but I chose the latte....er, latter.

First off, you should know that I don't generally spend an inordinate amount of time "checking out" members of the opposite sex. For one thing, I'm happily married to my beautiful wife Kim for 17 years and secondly, I tend to be somewhat absorbed in my own little world as I move around the planet with most of my energies being focused on not being a nudge to everyone else. This is just as true in art as it was in music....

Anyway, back to the story here....I was standing at the barista counter waiting for my latte to be completed and happened to glance over at the order counter. In a rare moment of awareness, I noticed what was undeniably a very attractive young woman ordering -- what else -- a soy latte, sans Ginger-anything. Taller than average, very shapely, and wearing the tightest of skin-tight tights. Ironically, this Venus only held my attention for minute -- it was the yutz behind her, thoroughly engrossed in the text message he was reading/writing that demanded my notice. So immersed was he that this post-pubescent hormone factory didn't even notice the scantily clad girl eighteen inches in front of him.

REALLY?!? Even I saw her.The female barista saw her. Half a dozen guys walking through the store saw her. The soccer mom behind the yutz saw her -- and stared daggers into her back.

But not this guy. Why? Because he was texting...TEXTING.....

Is it possible that the combined cabal of Apple, Verizon, and Facebook/Twitter has figured out how to undo half a million years of reproductive instinct with the wave of an emoticon?

Or is it just the death of common sense?

painting count: 15

...only in my dreams....

"If Only In My Dreams"; 6x12; oil on board

Okay....so I really feel like I missed the mark yesterday. Trying to redeem myself somewhat today.

-- painting count: still 11

The Alizarin Chronicles...

"Winter In The High Desert"; 6x6; oil on board

As I mentioned before, a friend recently got me thinking about substituting Alizarin Crimson for Cad Red on my palette....something I do occasionally....but haven't for awhile...

Anyhoo....

Painting count: 10

50x50

"Checking The Fences"; 8x6; oil on panel

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming....

A recent acquaintance asked me about a particular color I had used in the background of one of my still-lifes. I had to apologize for telling her that I had no real idea what the color was or even how I got to the color in the course of mixing it. Using a three color palette, it's pretty common (even desirable) that you're going to arrive at similar colors differently each time you mix. Even having done extensive color charts, often you're still winging it...especially in the heat of the moment.

Regarding that specific painting, all I could really ell her was that instead of Cadmium Red, I had probably used Alizarin Crimson.

Which of course, got me thinking........

painting count: 9

Bob Brookmeyer...

"For Bob"; 6x8; oil on panel

Two posts today, gang.

The first is a tough one. I learned that this past weekend, the great jazz composer and musician Bob Brookmeyer passed away. Bob was an enormous inspiration to me in my musical life. His approach to composition and orchestration directly influenced my initial interest in those disciplines and eventually left it's indelible mark on my pursuit of them. Only Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington and John Williams were in my mind as much as Bob whenever I sat down to write.

Moreover, he was the consummate artist. His music spoke to his vision of what it meant to be a composer and like Duke, used the orchestra as an instrument to convey his intent. Never one to bow to idiomatic conventions, his music could be enormously challenging and technically taxing without ever being pretentious. But he was also capable of producing achingly sparse and subtle passages that took me months to dissect and understand.

In parallel to the visual world, Bob got the music down with a brush or knife, stick or trowel....whatever worked the best to convey his vision.

"The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such moments activity is inevitable, and whether this activity is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state." - Robert Henri

RIP, Mr. Brookmeyer

Fifty by Fifty.....

"The Other Side of the Parkway"; 8x6; oil on panel

So...as you might have suspected from the previous post, the plan is to complete fifty small paintings in fifty days....each painting taking no longer than fifty minutes. Of course, the trick is to try and have the paintings not look like they were done in fifty minutes each.

Most of the paintings will be available on DailyPaintworks

-- painting count: 8

Fifty paintings.....

"Don't Fall In"; 6x8; oil on panel

Another quick winter sketch.....

Included....

"Included" ; 8x10; oil on board

Perception....

Things that make me close and lock my studio door:
-Rude tourists

-Smokers

-Terrorist Attack

-Petty, condescending, self-important "arteests" (sp.)

Morning.....

"Morning"; 6x6; oil on board
click here to bid on this painting

Can't talk right now...having too much fun painting....

It's about the work....

"Last Days of Summer:West Fork"; 8x10; oil on panel
click here to view auction on this painting

"The Park House"; 8x10; oil on panel

A friend watching me finish a study the other day commented "I don't know how you do it....amazing..." To my amusement, they were referring to the fact that I try to finish at least a small study every day (I don't always post them because...well, frankly...some just aren't any good, and therefore are only for me as information about what didn't work).

In all honesty, I feel like a slouch many days. One of my favorite "big-name" painters, when he started out, did five studies a day -- small, 6x8, etc -- but still, five?! Another fellow painter that I greatly admire averages a 16x20 a day. And yet another one that I follow did 21 paintings (medium size), plein air, in seven days....while fighting the elements at the Grand Canyon....and 20 of them made it into a show with the likes of Curt Walters, P.A. Nisbet, and Scott Jennings (for those of you who don't carry those names around in your head everyday....these guys have about fifteen Prix de West awards between them).

What I'm getting at is, for most of the painters out there, this is not an idle pursuit. Not a relaxing distraction to wile away the hours. It's work, pure and simple. And like anything else, those who want to do it well work....very, very hard. That isn't to say that they don't enjoy every moment at some level while they're doing it -- only a masochist would pummel away at something eight or ten hours a day, if they didn't. But there are days when you realize that things aren't going the best they can. The pain isn't moving, your brushwork looks like a highway map of Los Angeles, the drawing is off....whatever. That's when you pick up the brush and say, "It's about the work. Let's try and get one thing to work today and I can sleep tonight."

Incidentally, music is exactly the same. The number of days in my previous life (and still current), I would shake my head and tell myself, "today, it's just about putting in the work..."

This is the answer that so many people look for when they take a class of a workshop in anything; they just don't know it. They think there is some little secret that will be imparted them in the class, and "poof" they'll be brilliant at whatever they're dabbling with. The vast majority of them (those that profess to be VERY serious about painting or flute playing or whatever) don't want to hear that the reality is....it's work and lots of it. Some days it's going to be bad.....heroically, tragically bad. Most days it will be okay. And some days, that moment will happen, the heavens open up, the adrenaline rushes, and you realize that something worked that didn't work before......and nothing is the same after that. Those are the days you work for.....

"West Fork"; 8x10; oil on panel
"The Park House"; 8x10; oil on panel