SP, Blow 12 x 16 inches oil on panel

My intentions were to go for color, and worse still, pattern in the background. As I got going it seemed that the folds of my nightgown, which I had tied around my head, made a busy enough area, so I let it go.  Maybe you have to hold the intention of pattern in your head in a strong way and not let the painting take you where you are not wanting to go, maybe even do the pattern first and outsmart yourself.

For years I have been trying to figure how to do Van Gogh, how to have the color and the form too.There is a majesty  about  just the skin itself  that might supersede color, maybe you have to give first importance to the skin until you get weary of it, and then you can go for the color. Might be a good problem for exercises.  I have a little postcard of a baby's head by V.G. in my studio, the whole thing is mint green, the baby AND the background, and it is just jaw dropping good.  There are not that many paintings of babies that I remember as good, or remarkable,  but his are always positively gripping.

Jean on the Pillow, 2

16 x20 inches,
charcoal on butcher paper

This is another go with the Natrim charcoal. It did not stay up on the surface on this paper as it did on the Mi-tientes so it was hard to manage. With drawing, the paper becomes a concern, how to keep it intact, keep its surface receptive, get the charcoal to come off, not too much, not too little. (Unlike painting, where you can happily work the surface to death, scrape it down, still viable.) This is a different method of drawing than I have used before, because only the big shapes are established in the beginning, so there is a lot of adjusting and fitting pieces together while the charcoal is still light. Maybe everyone draws this way, I don't know.  It's certainly an easier way to quickly get the whole figure in proportion. But there's a guy in my drop in life drawing class who starts with the tip of the model's thumb and moves the entire figure out from that point, everything in its perfect place ---aaaugh! Well --
crawl, walk, run, I say.

Self Portrait 1, Italy

ok well....Some how I wiped 15 years off my age. Possibly more.
Also, I am wrestling with lighting issues in my Italian bathroom studio. I finally decided I had to have a light ON the canvas so I could see what I was doing, so I got the light, got the bulb, got the extension cord after I found the word for it (la prolunga) hooked all up and feeling triumphant -- still the light available on the subject was minimal and everything was gray gray gray, so I just went with it, and now my camera has made it all colorful.
Reality is more plastic in Italy, maybe.
Whatever, it can be a baseline.

Mugshot 68: Double Portrait, Queen Marianna and Jean

I went to the Meadows Museum in Dallas to see the Velazquez show. There were only a few paintings,  I think the show specified they were early court paintings.  The jewel of the show was the Phillip IV, I'm not certain of his number, and he was painted when Velazquez was 24 years old.  When I compared those early paintings with what I know of V.'s later ones, I could see and understand the difference.  The early paintings, although beautiful and ambitious, were without the poetry and breath of the later ones. I did turn a corner though and stumble on my friend, Queen Marianna, and so I got a little shot of the two of us.

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 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.

The Wall Sconce

This was painted from a photo I took from an iPhone, I think the first picture I ever took from one. I was sitting on the bed in a hotel room and the wall sconce was just behind me.
That camera is a wonder, I was stunned, as can be seen.  This is what I learned from this painting: paint the entire eye socket flat in the darkest body tone and lay the shapes of the lids, iris, whites,etc. into the dark shadow paint.  Because I had to contend with those damn glasses, and because the glasses come last, by the time I got to painting them I could see I had misplaced one or the other eye slightly and so I had to wipe and repaint.  I painted lots of eyes...and the best ones were laid in over the dark tone.  The ones I painted piece by piece were not as integrated into the paint.  I have known this about painting over the dark for the eye socket, but I was not completely sold on it.  Now I'm a believer and will never never backslide.

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.

Purifying Mask, Value Study

One last one with strong value shift on the face. And as ears are a favorite thing of mine to paint, it was fun to have a shell pink baby one and a brown boxer's ear on the same head.

Value Study:Purifying Mask

More grappling with values. I am following an exercise from Catherine Kehoe's student painting collection posted on her teaching website, Powersofobservation.com. Although the directions were not stated, I could see one group of portraits done with very close dark values and one group done with lighter values. I went back through my photos to find something dark, and it would have been better without all the white, but as it was I found it challenging. The lower portrait is done by a student, I think Jamie Baldwin is the correct name. Those student paintings are wonderful.

Purifying Mask/Banner

This painting is for a banner project for the city of Georgetown, Texas. For the last couple of years they have invited artists to design banners, then they are printed and hung through out the town. They hang em high, as I remember, maybe from lamp posts, and the finished piece is 2 feet by 4 feet.

Purifying Mask on Blue

OK, now I'm sick of the whole thing, but before I left this subject I wanted to use the wrought iron work that was in the background of one of the photos. I wanted to tie something into the painting that came out to the edge. I'd really like to tie something completely arbitrary from the figure to the edge, but I thought I should start with something real to get used to this idea.

Purifying Mask

And it does, too.

Jean, Small

Another head study, this time on a small board, 8 inches square. I have a terrifically hard time doing anything that is not life size, it is a terrible brain glitch. But with more drawing, which is the cure for perceptual problems (art only), I am getting better at it. This again was with minimal light -- the only way I can get a good light from the side so that some part of form is in shadow is to turn off the overheads and then I am plunged into darkness. This is why I look like I am twenty in this painting. Whatever....I like working from life so much more than using the photograph, maybe everybody feels this way. Things are so much clearer. Another class tonight with Jennifer Balkan, so looking forward to it.

Head Study, 2

Another exercise. I worked from a mirror practically in the dark, no studio lights just natural lights from the window, which of course is not facing north. I used a big brush and I didn't pre-mix skin colors, just used what was already available on the palette. That made for a great painting experience though.

I'm Too Sexy for My Hat

OK, well when you take a picture of yourself by holding the camera in your extended hand, you never know what expression you will have, all that juggling with things and concentrating. Part of that sneer is the dark lipstick, which I really do love because it makes the mouth cruel, and that is about as close as I'll ever get to looking like Tina Turner (a devout Buddhist) in the rock opera, Tommy, one of my favorite movies of all time.