Finished Paintings

You know, I can't remember when I started these pictures. It was so long ago that I found them under a pile of papers, having forgotten about them. As I set them out on a work table, I thought "Geeze, why was I so timid about this?"

The limited palette I'd chosen (good thing I wrote it down in a project notebook I found with the preliminary paintings) was Titanium White, Cadmium Orange Medium, Naples Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, and Burnt Sienna.

The inspiration for them was a piece of seashell that I carried with me for a while, calling it a "worry-stone" -- I could find it in a pocket or on my desk and fiddle with it. Turning the shell-shard, I found the lines making strange scenes.

In the third one (on the right) imagine the lines to be stars. I'm pleased with the resulting images, and we're already trying to figure out where to hang them once they are dry.

A Completed Oil Painting!

This sucker is finally done, after ... whaaaat? Nearly 20 years? Oh, surely it couldn't be that long.

But wait, the reference photo for it was on 35mm film. Well, maybe it was only 17 years ago.

I did a couple faint-hearted attempts at it; I knew the basic structure was the road and the palmettos. But every time I started working on it, I began to hate it. Recently I had an urge to smell solvents and linseed oil, so I pulled it down off the wall (dust-covered) and cleaned it up, and decided to mess with it as an abstract.

I kept the palmetto silhouettes, and began with a sky of ultramarine blue. Loved it. When I got to the road and the cadmium red light and cadmium red medium, I felt like I had hit one out of the park, or flung a perfect spiral football pass for a touchdown.

Yeah, that was ME shining through, maybe finding my oil painting 'voice' at last.

15-Minute Art Challenge

A grand idea. Take 15 minutes and do something creative. Just 15, that's all. And not counting prep time, either, which was a good rule because I spent nearly half an hour getting tape residue off my watercolor board, the result of my being too lazy to untape the last watercolor I did.

Goo Gone works well for that.

And then, while I was waiting for the Goo Gone to work, I noticed that the pantry shelves (my studio is right beside the pantry) were untidy, so I scuffled through them for a while. And started some laundry.

Eventually the goo was gone, and my implements prepared. (Incidentally, if you use cheap tube watercolors, use them up, otherwise they clog like my little tube of Lamp Black there in the pic.)

I soaked the paper on both sides, wanting a really juicy variegated wash. I mixed some of the Chinese White with the Lamp Black to make a gray, and slopped those pigments onto the paper. Black first, then gray, then white. I had to re-wet the paper several times, in spite of the damp from today's rain.

Once it's dry, I'll take a better picture.

When the paper is soaked on both sides, it lies flat on the board, which is nice.

And possibly the best result of this exercise was that I woke up thinking about what I wanted to do -- and while I was doing it, suddenly knew what I want to do on the next 15-minute stint.

The original plan was to spend part of Sunday afternoon doing the cover illustration for the Piker Press, but once I got out to the studio, I was too content with the idea of not working on a Sunday, and so opted to play with my watercolors again.

The online watercolor class had a bit in it about using wax paper to produce texture. It didn't do much for my cheapie kids' washes in blue and green, so I crumpled the wax paper, dripped some purple, blue and green onto it, and applied it to the paper, which was Bienfang cold press 140 lb, not that I know what that means. It looks much more interesting close up, so feel free to click on the image and examine it more closely.

While I was waiting for the two sloppy pieces of quasi-art to dry, I indulged my nastiest current habit: reading NFL articles and their attendant message boards. Today's treat was a story announcing that the Broncos had signed Caleb Hanie as Peyton Manning's backup. 28 pages of comments ranged from applauding Hanie's skills and the wisdom of Broncos' management to bitter predictions of a Broncos losing season after Manning gets wrecked again and Hanie can't figure out whether to throw with his hands or with his feet. From "Elway was a moron to get rid of Tim Tebow!" to "Tim Tebow was a hack who has no place in the NFL!" the commentary ran on and on like a vicious-tearful-accusatory-flirtatious soap opera, and as I was all alone in the studio, I was free to read it all without having any other member of the family cast a disgusted eye upon me.

Well, except Howie, but he didn't know what I was reading, he was just disgusted because I wasn't taking him for a walk.

Using tube paints (equally cheap, I might add) I put some swaths of color on a piece of dry Strathmore cold press 140 lb paper, and did the wax paper experiment again. Much more interesting result.

I can see images in the latter piece that make me want to try to draw a picture out of the mess. Is that valid art, or is that just a senior citizen kid in an unformed art exercise?



Yet why should I worry if it is? Haven't I been yapping for years about always feeling compelled to have my art be marketable or representational or "proper?"

How many years do I have left? Wow, probably not as many as I have toes and fingers. I think I have to take the opportunity to play with art a little before I run out of time, and stop listening to my mother's voice in the back of my head, the voice that abhors abstract or unpretty art.

Watercolors rock!