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

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