Mug shot 92? (L. with Pot) 8x6 in oil on panel

Buonasera --

I'm working in Italy in not optimal conditions, but who cares, que sera, sera...
My real camera is not working so I have to make do with the iPhone camera.
I have been looking a lot at Maria Lassnig's work, she has many portraits with pots on the head, and so just for fun ---- my sainted relatives agreed to pose. Fun to do something that is not heavy.
Now off for apperitivi.

Little Lamb Chop

5 inches square oil on panel

I am working on a larger painting and I'm scared. It's going pretty well, actually, but I get nervous.
If I have a smaller painting to work on with fewer issues and some opportunity to make things work quickly, and then possibly post it at the end of the painting day, I'm less nervous about the big painting. And if I do the little painting first and fast and the big painting doesn't work, I don't immediately conclude that I should have gone to secretarial school. This could be neurotic or smart.

This is one of the remaining lamb chops on aluminum foil.

Lamb Chops

6x8 oil on panel


Some fun must be had between the slogging bits. Meat is as much fun to paint as pastry and less dangerous.  With meat though, if you are going to eat it, you have to race - I figure it's ok to be under the lights for 1 hour, more than that and they are sacrificed to art.  The lamp causes them to constantly change, slumping down and beginning the colorful disintegration. This can't be thought about too much or you can't eat them. And it's very hard to throw out lamb chops. I found a pack of 5 at Trader Joe's at a very good price, so I can have a couple of more goes.

The second is a little color swatch of Veronese green. I didn't have any thalo green to compare -- V. green is much less agressive. But not shy, either.

Mug Shot 91, Tessa

8x6 inches, oil on panel

This is an important thing I have learned during this stint with the Russian painters:  get a base layer of paint down first and paint everything else into it. I have been fitting the pieces, the many thousands of pieces of tone and half tone, into the whole, like a puzzle. At the moment my opinion is that flesh is painted best (in oils) with this approach, because the nature of the oily fat paint is already so close to the look of skin. Not that you can't get some chop to it...some blocky bits which lay on top of each other and are not blended. I am anti-blend, don't know how this is going to work out.

I have been looking at Frank Duveneck's work this week, just below mine -- such confident brushwork. Just enough, almost underdone. You can see that every thing is worked into an average skin color, the brushwork is economical and direct.  This photo of course doesn't do it justice, the paint is sumptuous.

Mugshot 90, Student

This is a fellow painter in my class. I took photos of anybody who would let me do it, everybody wincing. Harsh light from the top is the painter's friend, if not theirs.
Thank you all for those encouraging comments on my last post, I appreciate it!

Mug Shot 88,

8x10 inches oil on panel


I have been painting like mad but not posting because I have been taking painting classes and doing exercises on all the off days. As usual, I find when I take a workshop I can do nothing, can't control anything, can't get any effect, and  finally cannot find any joy in painting at all. This time though, because the classes have lasted about 6 months, I calmed down enough to stop expecting any results and learned how to put the paint down differently, which is what I was after. My instructor painted in  an academic manner and was articulate about the processes, also was a really nice guy and let me pick his brain. I took in lots of little paintings and he pointed out the problems and we talked about how to solve them. When you boil it all down, it always  is the same, you have to see differently, but once you do....Yes!  I think I have turned a corner at last. One of the many corners.
Because I have been having trouble getting a good solid sense of form, I shot some photos with an overhead LED reading light shining down on me, so I could get a distinct light/dark pattern and painted from it. That move is a big help before you even get going.

Mugshot 87, H. C.

8x6 inches, oil on panel

This is a commission executed during my Russian Period, under the influence of the Russian instructors  in the classes I am taking presently, who put the flesh down in gradations rather than slabs, as I do when left to my own devices. It's very pleasant and meditative to work this way, although I can't easily get into that frame of mind. I'm hoping to habituate myself to this method through repetition. My instinctive way is more of a chain saw approach, to whack it together rapidly --not that there's no subtlety, but more of a discovery process, more muscular. I always laugh when I see that word used to describe painting, but how to get at these issues with words? The cess pool of words --- that's some  French painter's phrases, can't remember who, but yes.

Self Portrait in Black Hat 1

9x12 oil on canvas

Because I am taking a class from a figure drawing association where they teach you how to draw and paint like Rembrandt, and all their work looks like a Rembrandt, and who doesn't like Rembrandt?, and even if you don't want to paint like Rembrandt, you want to know the method so you can do your own thing hopefully at that level ... anyway, all this pressure is making me want to paint like anybody but Rembrandt and to use any palette but his. So I whipped out my splurge tube of Old Holland Veronese green and built myself a palette of this with Winsor red,  Raw Sienna,  Alizarine, Cad yellow, also Ultramarine, and yes even some sap green so I could get a good black. Here's the thing: I'm just going to have to figure out how to do it with color. I can't be making brown paintings. It was exciting to use this fabulous green -- and because I was semi-hysterical overreacting while I was painting I figured out just from vigorous blundering how to tame the green, how to mix it into everything so there was some harmony, but the painting, whatever the quality of the image is, has color that (in my opinion)works, and does not read as brown. Bwa-ha-ha!

Pomeranian Twins

14 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

Here they are, the Pomeranian Twins.  This is the latest addition to the crew of dogs rescued by
the Dallas couple.  A few years ago I copied some paintings of Queen Marianna by Velasquez because I fell in love with (among other things) the steady gaze of the young queen, so grave and patient. The gaze is the same here. And both Queen M. and the Pomeranians had good bling to paint, always fun.

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.

Daisy

oil on canvas, 10 inches square

I have painted 13 or 14 dogs belonging to a couple in Dallas, and this is a new one in the gang. They collect sick animals that have no hope, pay for their outrageously expensive surgeries, and then give them a new life in their home. At Halloween they dress everybody up and take pictures. This is Daisy, new to the family but I think elderly. Two more are coming, twin Pomeranians wearing crowns. Really fun to paint - I love doing them.

Jean on the Pillow 1

20x16 inches, charcoal on paper

This is the first of my efforts with the Natrim charcoal, expensive Italian charcoal in long squared off bars. They come in different hardnesses and you have to sharpen them to a 3 inch gradually tapering point. They are temperamental, in that sometimes the density of the charcoal is too high and you can't get a mark out of them. The desired effect as I understand it, is to get a very even patch of mark making, a perfectly flat area. So you have to learn what the charcoal will do, how it can be built up in flat tone. Then the gradual darkening occurs over this tone, by gently adding more charcoal, because if you did the first layers correctly you will have a smooth surface which will hold more and more... This is almost more painting than drawing. Mark making is not the first priority, although there is a bit. I got way too dark here too fast.

My most favorite and entirely delicious movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel, just got 9 Oscar nominations, which makes me so happy!

Mugshot 86: Aubrey

8x6" oil on panel

OK, back in the saddle after the Christmas frenzy. I am involved now in two outside activities, a drop in life drawing group and an actual class at Los Angeles Association of Figurative art, Exploring Portraiture. I'm doing lots of drawing, so pleased about this because it is the most obvious way to improve. In the portrait class, the method of drawing requires attention to the masses and the forsaking of line, the line, the beautiful line, which I love but might be the enemy of painting. Maybe it's just MY enemy because I have relied overmuch on it. Anyway, the important part of this is to see the masses and how they connect. Now I'm practicing mass-seeing at the bank, the grocery store,  the conversation where I'm trapped.

Value Study 7 (Cancun)

5x7 oil on panel
Black and white

I  do love a good nose shot. I just can't resist it. Noses are so complicated and interesting, so much light and dark, such drama.  And so THERE, right in the middle. I hope to get better at them.

Value Study 6 (Anxious Baby)

5x7 inches oil on panel
Black and white

This one sort of ran to the grotesque as I was painting, and it was interesting to me, so I just went with it. Using the black and white simplifies lots of things, lots fewer decisions to be made,
 especially when working with only 5 values. It's a bit of a rest. I have fallen from the discipline of 5
and will get back on the horse. (The values are pure black for darkest dark, pure white for lightest light, medium gray made from half black and half white, and one dark between darkest dark and med. gray, and one light between medium gray and lightest light. Then you try not to mix further from these paint mixtures so that you are reducing large areas of the subject matter to one value that matches best to your mixed values. This reads back to me as insane, however this explanation is for those who asked WTF I have been doing.)

Value Study 5 (D. and S.)

5x7 inches oil on panel

black and white

Now I'm looking for photos that have a strong light and dark pattern, so at least I am not struggling with a predominantly middle value scenario.  But I'm thinking, aren't most painting predominantly middle values? Will have to research.

Value Study 4 (D.)

4x5 inches oil on panel,
black and white

I might be in trouble when I have to turn all these in and submit to the scrutiny of The Russian, because they are getting away from me in that they are not as simple as I think they are supposed to be. I never knew it was so easy to get stuff down so fast...well, values stated, is a better phrase.  And I'm supposed to be sticking to 5 values. And I do in the beginning and then begin to wander off.  Am thinking now that color is an impediment to seeing value. OY!

Value Study 3 (I. W.)

5x7 inches, oil on panel
black and white

Yikes! On this one I kept at too long and lost my planes - Will try for deftness and brevity on the next one.

Value Study 2: Baby with Three Fingers

5 inches square
oil on panel, black and white

This baby I have painted so many times I have stopped counting them because it is so depressing that I'm not getting it. Best to have a Zen approach and think he will always be with me and will be a vehicle of some kind.  Problem is, the baby is completely backlit, so the flat front of his face is all in shadow and the only light  is leaking in from behind him. It was helpful to do a value study, to see how single valued his entire face is. It is single valued with major temperature shifts. Maybe I will be smart enough in future not to choose the shot with everything important drowned in shadow. What attracted me to it in the first place was the intense but grayed color of the skin in this photo, but I can't yet translate this into paint. And speaking of paint...
I have just used Gamblin's Flake White Replacement and I love it. It is sort of phosphorescent and beautiful on skin. Luminous!

Value Study No. 1 (N.)

6 inches square, oil on panel

So --- I'm taking a class, a tonal painting class, taught by a robust and opinionated Russian (who will not be reading this blog) and he is beating his ideas into me. I'm so happy.  This is a small tonal study for a larger painting. I did it all with a weeny brush and just moving back and forth between light and dark sculpting the shapes. I was surprised at how easy it was, and how thoughtful a process. There was a lot more play in the paint than the way I usually work.  The Russian says, hide 70 % of detail   and show 30%. (I'm not there yet.)  And also, make yourself do small studies because is easier to see the patterns of light and dark. So I am, and it's true, and pleasant and quick.

Mug Shot (One Eyed Baby)

8x8 inches oil on linen panel

This one very fun to do and it went quickly. I am not lingering, just trying to get it done, and then another one done, etc. I need some experience with noses. I can eventually get it, but it takes me lots of fussing and I think a good run of noses will help me understand the actual structure of it AND how the paint has to go down as I build the nose itself. I will build some noses.

Mugshot (Worried Baby), California House (No.1)

8x8 inches, oil on panel

Back in the USA, have gathered wits,  set up a new studio, made a dress out of a bean bag, etc.,
and here I am again at the starting gate. So to speak. I am fortunate that I have a whole long string of paintings that must be done - I love this - but I have to enter slowly and work up to my maniac speed. So these first ones are re-entry paintings.  One of the great aspects of warm ups is: (they don't really count), therefore there is no reason to be afraid.

8x8 inches oil on panel

This is also a beginner painting, my first landscape. It was interesting do it...not scary, sort of meditative, thinking about what was happening with the spaces, paying attention to the shifts that happen as the values go down. I want to learn this so that next year, in Italy, I can feel comfortable outside painting. This is from a photograph, but I want to be outside then, in the future, in my Italian life.

Italian Paintings/ Frida #1(G.)

I have stolen/appropriated/lifted this idea from Ellen Heck and her Forty Fridas (please Google, they are so lovely). This is how it came about: When I first arrived in Italy in June I was invited by a group of Italian women to go with them to Rome to see a Frida Kahlo show. I had two words of Italian under my belt at the time so I was reluctant to go out and about much, but they shepherded me around the show and the city, and it was a great day. I told them that if they would dress up as Frida, I would paint them, and so they did. Here is the first of them.

Italian Paintings/ Nectarines

I been painting hard and happily, very proud of myself. Two weeks and my time in Italy is over.
I've  been having to wipe lots of things but am not too distressed about this for some reason. So good to be painting. This fruit painting is a warm up for the second half of a portrait, the first half of which went swimmingly and then made me afraid I would lose it in the second session. I thought the warm up would get me past this and it did! And then I lost the portrait anyway. I always try to get everything done in one session for this reason, but maybe I am at a crossroad now, maybe I have to learn how roll over into that next session with some - aplomb. Because everything  can't reasonably be finished in one or two sessions, too fatiguing, then bad decisions.
These nectarines were enormous and perfectly ripe and sweet the day I bought them from my fruit guy, whose shop is right outside my door. All the fruit is perfect.

Italian Paintings/ Italian Baby

This is sort of the same stricken expression as the dog in the previous painting. I once had a student (You know who you are!) who made a fabulous baby painting, and the baby was really mad. I coveted it! She wouldn't let me have it though. The parents got it, and they didn't appreciate it adequately, so sad.

I did quick drawings in oil for this several times and made an effort to dismiss my usual accumulating tension. I tried to draw for the pleasure of it, and wiped each one. Then I began painting with the same goal, to enjoy it passage by passage and not worry (about the one million things going wonky or wrong or muddy, I should have gone to secretarial school, etc.) I also tried to think about the structure of the head only and not require a likeness. I  began with the nose first, the relationship of the nose to the eye sockets. I'm hoping this will help me be in charge of the size of my images, in this case the head in relations to my canvas. My default mode is to make it life sized, so the longer I work the bigger the entire thing becomes. This time I was able to keep it all within my boundaries. I worked this too long but I did get the whole head in and 8x6 canvas without too much suffering. I read somewhere that the first relationship to establish is the nose to the eyes, then everything else can fall into its relative place, and it works!

Italian Paintings/ Ludovica's Dog

This sweet dog was afraid of me and the camera. She is a timid dog anyway, so there wasn't going to be a happy pose...but this one was so nice to paint. She has the best possible life, out in the country among the olive groves and meadows filled with wild flowers. Also 4 other dogs, a goat and 2 ponies for friends. And rabbits, geese, ducks, doves, and chickens and cats.  The Italian country life.

Italian Paintings/ Two Plums

These  two plums are from a little tree very near to the exact coordinates of the spot my father landed in Italy when he parachuted out of a plane just prior to its crashing into a lake in 1943.

I painted this on card stock. I was in a hurry to get it down and didn't have a smaller sheet, and I didn't have a natural boundary to relate to as I worked -- very uncomfortable! I should have drawn myself a square to work within, will know for next time. Here I have just cropped it with the camera.
Am still sneaking up on the landscape as subject, taking walks in the early morning and evening, trying to find the light conditions that are most compelling. You could die of beauty here in Italy.

Italian Painting/ Italian plums

Actually, it's not quite this red.... and the red is not uniform. Again, the camera.

I am out of reading material (AAAUGH!) so I am all over the internet reading people's essays and looking at painting, good, bad, student, pro -- tutto. I should have done this earlier....
Fascinating! some say, I hate line! I do everything to avoid it...Painting is not drawing. And then, I love line, it is another element to use in painting, part of the rich vocabulary. And so on, very entertaining. But what Sargent says has been tremendously helpful to me in the last few days: Painting is the arrangement of tones, he says.  That is a big statement and a clear one - In observational painting, color cannot be the king. It has to be value.

Tomorrow the first of a long line of visitors arrives and I must dismantle the studio and go outside to the landscape.....(so scary!) but I want to learn it, therefore, into the breach!

Italian Paintings/ Five Apricots

I had only an 8x6 panel to work on and wanted to do a string of the apricots, those that were not too badly decomposed. I like that format, the length twice the height. Although I tried not to get the forms half exactly in the middle, somehow they ended up there. I have cropped the second one here to be what I was wanting --  but I sort of like the big slab of yellow on the top one, and more air.
These apricots look all bloody because of camera  color distortion, no clue how to fix this.

Italian Paintings / Apricots

The apricots are in season here so there are mountains of them in the green grocers. My Italian family is making jam  from the trees on their farm, and they say there is a jar with my name on it.  The afternoons are hot now and the twilights very long, perfect for eating outside and just sitting still to watch the light.