"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

"Waiting" - paintings and music by William Hoshal

Well, all I can say is that it's time for me to get off my you know what and start posting in here again ...to that end.....

"Waiting" 

(plein air landscape studies and music)

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!!!!

...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

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....

Still wishing for fall....

"Last Days of Summer #5: Schnebly Afternoon" 8x10, oil on panel
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It seems summer just wants to hang on....

Every morning Kim and I wake up to a cool breeze from Oak Creek Canyon and say to each other, "this is really it....."

(For those of you wondering, I don't pay any attention to The Weather Channel. They seem to be far more preoccupied with inventing plausible-sounding scenarios that are designed to scare the hell out of everyone in different parts of the country, and then investing in some serious production effects to make it that much more real-looking, rather than just telling us what the weather is doing. For that matter, even when there is a significant weather story -- i.e. Irene -- it's not enough for them. They insist on saturating the five days preceding and following with hysterical reports of what could happen. It reminds me of when I was a little kid and we used to have to go through the nuclear bomb drills -- as if a forty year old school desk at St.Mary's Academy was going to shield any of us from a thermonuclear explosion. As you get older, you start to wonder just how much of all of that was propaganda masquerading as vigilance. We have to have something to be afraid of....always.....if not an evil empire, then terrorists.....if not terrorists, then a recession or mortgage collapse....if not economic strife, well then how about the most unpredictable of all events -- the weather. Certainly the most frightening of all the evils that could befall us because, let's face it, does anybody really know how the damn thing works? The more money they spend on doppler radar and computer modelings, the fewer times they get it right. And then comes the fall-back position -- my personal favorite. The "30% percent chance of rain" prediction....that lasts for three weeks.....And when the heck did a stock market update become a relevant weather story......)

....okay...that was a bit of a tangent -- but it's been bugging me now for a few months. Sorry about that.

Let's just say that every morning Kim and I hope that the Weather Channel is just as wrong about the predicted high for the day as they are about Kansas being taken out by a volcanic eruption.

Until then....

"Last Days of Summer #5: Schnebly Afternoon"; oil on panel; 8x10
"Across the Strait"; oil on panel, 8x10 -- leftover from the Northwest trip

Last of the Summer Heat...(hopefully)

"Last Days of Summer: Sunrise Junipers"; 8x10; oil on panel
click her to view this auction

The heat is definitely on....

And not just the ambient air temperature in Northern Arizona. Even though we're officially into the fall season now, the temperature today was close to 90. I don't know if it's actually considered an Indian Summer, but whatever it is, most of us are ready for the cooler temperatures. Our corgi puppy Lucas, always a nudgy bundle of energy is even feeling it. After heading out to hike the trail at 6am, he was ready for a serious nap in the air conditioning -- he usually needs another two or three hours of heavy play-time, even after a four mile hike, before "nap" enters his mind.

For me, the word "heat" carries additional meaning. I've committed to entering my first-ever plein air festival. Right in the middle of a major slump...paint-wise (see previous post). Bear in mind, I'm not counting any chickens or such before they whatever, I just want to get some experience and be part of an event right now.....but I don't want to make an a** of myself either. Nevertheless, the registration fee is paid, panels are ordered....I'm doing this thing.....and I've got about ten days to get my head together.

"Last Days of Summer: Sunrise Junipers"; 8x10; oil on panel