Mugshot 100, Tessa in the Bath

This was a quick sketch at the end of the day.  I used big brushes and lots of paint and medium and worked like a house afire and did not let myself put the  details or highlights in until the very end, also tried to get the big spaces covered right away, including the background. Now I know to get my background color in early, otherwise I have color troubles, things don't relate. In this one I wanted the stark white of the bathroom behind her so that overall the painting is quiet, bathroomish. She was crying hard because her sister was taking up too much room in the tub, so her eyes are red and she is aggrieved. It was really fun to paint...I'm getting faster, finally!

Wait a minute.....

 I just realized I have hit the 100 mark so I went back to find my first mugshot, and here he is, done July 2011. It is a complete mystery to me how I assimilated whatever was necessary for me to be able to paint the one above.... It isn't that I didn't try hard for this one below - in fact at every step along the way I concentrated and gnashed my teeth and thrashed about, tried to ask the right questions so I could get the answers I needed, took classes, looked at painting, stretched as much as I could, painted as much as possible,etc, and did not feel much better about the results. Apparently if you stick at it though, the information enters you. I can think of no other explanation. I regret that I feel it necessary to say that I know I am not  now arrived at any high place, but even I can see the difference between these two, and I'm encouraged!

Mugshot 78 - Cowgirl

I have been so impressed with the paintings of bloggers who did the 30 paintings in 30 days challenge. The paintings are very  interesting and there is the sense even for the viewer, me, of the momentum building, and then it looks like more risks are being taken and fun is being had!  Something light hearted enters the experience and also the finished painting. Cobwebs gone.  Besides, it's more better to see a group of paintings from one person than one good painting from same, in my opinion.

Mugshot 76

Ok, ok, it's NOT primitive. I used the term incorrectly.  I have long lamented that I CAN'T make a real primitive painting because my brain is already too trained.  But in this painting, I did it in a very short time, two sessions of about 40 minutes each, and I didn't worry about stuff, just worked fast and put the paint on thick and sort of mushed it around where I needed it to be.  I'm looking for a different way to work, to put the paint on the surface and I don't know what that way is.  I think I did this guy so often my head already knew where things went and I could concentrate on other stuff.  All in all, the process of this one was the most satisfying.

Mugshot 75 for John M.

I have been wrestling with this one for a while. The first one, smaller, I think 8 inches square, was a sort of quick practice to see what I was up against. I got, as usual, the face too short, primarily in the nose to eye section. (My own face is short there and this poisons my eye.) But I just forged ahead anyway, playing a bit with the color. This is an actual mugshot of an alleged criminal and the photos are usually very bad, but this one did have a violent blue background that was interesting. I also was reading a borrowed book on Marsden Hartley at this time and fell hard for him  and his painting. Do not want to give up this book! One of the many interesting things discussed was the way he related everything to the color black.  And also, there was the idea of the elegy.  Many of the strongest paintings of his seem elegiac. I LOVE NOIR! So - between the blue one and the one above, I tried to figure how I would deal with the element of sorrow that I find in almost all real mugshots. They are either mournful or mournfully funny.  Actually mournfully funny is of the first order.
On to the second one, above the blue one. I tried to keep it mournful. Meh. Not so interesting.  In the third one, the top,  I lightened the background some so his hair would come forward and gave myself over to the color in skin. Lots of yellow and yellow green, although I tried to keep it to a purple/yellow range mostly. So now I'm sick of the whole thing. However, today I decided I would try ONE LAST TIME and paint a primitive painting (a la Marsden, my man) in which I did not worry about likeness or anything else but just whacked it in for the pure fun of it.  I am halfway done with it, will finish up tomorrow.  The thing is, this guy has such a beautiful mouth, it is so exciting to paint it. Maybe in the last painting I can do it justice.

Mugshot 75, Scott with Clown nose

This one was fun to do, the straight gaze.   I photographed the live Scott in my studio with lights so I could control the amount of shadow on his face. Control is good, I want more of it. Still, I spent a long time messing with the drawing, the part of it that I always think I will speed through and then get to the painting part, the fun part.  Also regarding background, I  started with a viridian/winsor red base from which I mixed all the skin tones, then used a grey with predominantly viridian in it - trying for some overall color integrity.  I mean, I don't know how you get there....I'm just taking a whack at different ways to do it.

I uncrossed his left eye and re-shot this so am re-posting.

Mugshot 72: Baby 3

Same deal with this one, fast and as direct as I could make it.  I was more aware in this one of the vast and subtle range of half tones -- that if I could identify the tone that ties the dark and light together and then get that patch of paint in the right place, the form will bend. Just that there are so many half tones. And half/half tones. These last two babies were less than 10 minutes old.

Mugshot 70 : Baby 1

I have recently acquired new progeny.
It's fun to paint these mashed heads. I was allowed to be in the delivery room so I could get shots immediately at birth.  It was so exciting though, that I was just wildly shooting everything hoping I got something good. This is my first go at it and it's largish, 10x16 inches. For the next one I'm scaling down because I want to work toward getting it down really fast, by which I mean getting the planes of the head and large masses established with a big brush before I get any detail in there.  Maybe I can get everything with the big brush and won't have to stoop to the little one at all.  Also, I want to get strong values stated immediately, so if I do smaller size and greater number I might practice my way into doing it habitually. Hoping for this.

Mugshot 65, Self Portrait in Dewrag

I am holding the camera out in front of myself, thinking and figuring in my head what the light will do, etc.  Not being cynical.  I used big and little bristle brushes, none of my flats or brights which give me more control, so everything is rougher.  Which maybe I like.  But maybe not. Also working to get more pigment into the skin, not necessarily more colorful, although this shot had some amazing pale lavender lights around the eyes.  I just want to get the skin darker and it seems that the longer I work the paint, meaning more than one or two brush strokes, the lighter and more amalgamated the whole thing becomes, which I do NOT like.

Mugshot 64, Monkey

I have been working and reworking the same painting for the last three days and just cannot get it, so I have wiped it one last time and put it away for awhile. A girl just needs to have some fun.

Mugshot 63, Cigar

Again, the big brush for as much as I could do.  Also, I tried to get as much pigment into the skin as possible. I notice that when I am doing a timed painting with my painting group (bad light, glare, etc.) I can't see very well, and since the timer is going I just have to make approximate decisions and get on with it. The skin always looks better than when I am working on my own, and from photographs.  WEll, now that I write that, it could be one of the differences between having the live model and having an already interpreted image in a photo.  Whatever.  I think the time pressure forces an economical reduction of detail.  I wonder if you can learn to do that.

Mugshot 62, T.P.

In this painting I used the big bristle brush for the first 3/4 of it.  It won't let me get specific and forces me to address the masses, which is not my inclination.  I remember once looking at a painting of Freud's and there was this febrile pink line under the eyeball, which was the top plane of the lower eyelid. It was so beautiful, so unexpected and true.  Instantly brought me to my knees - how to paint that, how to get it down.   I'm in love with those details of the face, the portrait, and I always want to get right to those parts of the painting.  However, now I know this must not be done until the end, so the big brush is a help.  Just in the last few months I have been able to  use an array of brushes depending on what was being painted, saving the brush with 3 hairs in it for the pink lid, should I have one.

Mugshot 61: President Obama

This is a painting I did to enter a show in Charlotte, N. C. that will be up during the  Democratic Convention. I think it is to be held in a very large space like a warehouse.  The title of the show is, All Things Obama.  I am so sorry I won't be able to see it, can you even imagine the wild variety? It should be hilarious fun.

Mugshot 60

This is the head of one of my favorite models, a boxer. She is overwhelmingly majestic.  I did this in a class with Jennifer Balkan, another timed painting, and I had a couple of bad starts so had to wipe and then very little time left to get it down, hence the thin paint. I wonder if there is a moral to this story.  Occasionally a very restricted situation forces me to use some hidden resource.  Certainly I am in a panic state when that happens and I won't be choosing to be there if I can help it.  If only I could get there without suffering for it. I'm against suffering.

This is a real mugshot from a Florida jail.  I thought this boy was so beautiful. I have painted him before, but still....I always think, now I might know a little more and be able to paint him better.

Mugshot 56 Zombie.

I just felt like a Zombie.

Mugshot 55

In this one I used a purple/yellow palette as opposed to yesterday's red/green.  By this I mean, I mixed a large amount of winsor red and ultramarine blue to make a dark purple, then combined it with yellow ochre to give me a good gray. I worked from this base, combining other colors as needed, particularly viridian to give me some cooler grays and some violet blues where ever I could arrange that.  This is the second go at this possible family member who happily eschews the computer, and therefore won't be upset.  She has  always had the most fabulous skin, luminous in fact, so it is a challenge to paint it.  I tried again to have the background be made from the color of the turning edge of the shadow, but it has photographed bluer that it really is.  I was going for atmospheric grey/blue/purple, the color of air.  Sort of.

Mugshot 54

I am in another short Jennifer Balkan class and we are working mighty hard on those values again. This time I blocked in all the dark areas, then the light area, then I painted everything into those.
Also, I gave some thought to background rather than whacking it in (aaaugh!) and used the color of the turning edge, or the mid tone that lies between shadow and light.  In this case it was viridian. That is a reflected light in the nostril...lots of glare on this.