Mugshot 79 and Student Mugshot: 2Pak

I currently have a student who is interested in painting African American celebrities, so we are working our way down a long list of them. Hence, 2Pak.  We have been looking at Marsden Hartley and other more primitive painters to look at some of the ways a painting can be made and accepted as successful art. Also Bill Traylor and Mose Tolliver for ideas about paint handling, mark making and general fun with color and image.
The photo of 2Pak has been up on my wall for weeks and finally I had to paint him. He's so beautiful.

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 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.

Farm Girl Jam Label, Blackberry, and Portrait of Gir

Top painting is the last of the Farm Girl Jam Labels, Blackberry Jam.
Below is the amazing painting of a current student.  This noble Chihuahua is named Gir.
As in GRRRRR. So fine!

Mugshot 51, and Value Study 1

The top painting is a mugshot that I set up myself with strong lighting so I didn't have that police glare flattening out all the forms and making hell of my painting life, much much easier to see stuff. And the second little painting, (these always photograph so much better for some reason) is the first of the value studies for the Liz Wiltzen challenge (50 in 30 days). It requires black and white and 2 other values only, so these are quick to do, but I have to say it was really exciting! I felt like I was painting a Philip Guston, so direct, and oh, the heaven of using black from the tube! The most notable issue was this: I had to decide where to shave the value down or up so I could include everything in 4, therefore, I was NOT painting what I saw, but what I decided to see. Verrrrry interrrestinK. And so strong, this little one.

Mugshot 50, Possible Family Member

This is the second go at this portrait - thinking Queen Mariana the whole time I was painting.

Cruiser in Shades

This is a commissioned painting for a wedding gift.

Also finished The Forgery of Venus, a real painter's novel, I don't come across many of those.

Lots of info about Velazquez, too, such as: he was a social climber who was very interested in getting ahead at court; he only did 150 painting in his lifetime; his understanding of drawing was so thorough that often he began painting without preliminary drawings; and most interesting to me, his paint was very thin, even runny and lots of the linen showed through. This must be why you can't see brush strokes much. I looked at his dogs this weeks, there are many of them, and they are all done very simply without much detail and with very soft edges. And so I took what I could from that, it was helpful.

Mugshot 46: Halloweener 2

Here is another sort of head dress. This is one of the boys in my neighborhood on Halloween, at twilight. I gave out candy for photos on the street. I would like to figure a way to have the portrait more formal and yet not.... Maybe what I mean is, I want to paint like Velazquez, which I do, I do.

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.

Mugshot 34: Possible Family Member

This person might really be a musician even though he looks like a serial killer in this painting.

I have discovered how to use a small bristle brush for getting in all those little places, like between brow furrows, etc..

Mugshot 33: Possible Family Member

I am practicing painting flesh in deep shadow, those elusive values. Tormenting.

Larry in a Groucho Marx Mask

This must speak for itself.

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.

Little Camille

Little Camille is a rescue animal for a family in Dallas. They find animals who have terrible health problems and give them first class medical care, operations, everything to fix them up, and then the animals live the most blissful life imaginable. It makes a girl feel better about the world. Camille's back legs are paralyzed, I think this has been from birth, but of course since she doesn't know anything else, she manages to do everything and be very cheerful about it.

Head, Study

It's twue, it's twue! I didn't believe it when I was told....

A cool color in the light comes forward and a warm color in shadow recedes. (The rule is, warm comes forward, cool recedes.) I used ultramarine in the lights on the left side of the head and forehead, not that you can see them with the camera I am using, but they are there and they make a difference. This is an exercise for the Jennifer Balkan class, to use warm next to cool next to warm, traveling across the topography of the head.

Wildflowers

I made a last attempt to find some bluebonnets today and rode my bike out to some fields near my house. Nothing. These are the wildflowers I gathered from the snake filled ditches.

Sheba

Come back, Little Sheba.

Brianna, study

This is my neighbor's grandchild. I have a shot of her in a - yes - plaid dress. I thought I'd better do some exploratory stuff before I tackle the big one.

Still Life with Macho Chayote

Another grocery store adventure: there are two kinds of chayote squash apparently, the smooth green one and then the other one, just the same except for the millions of yellowish spines that grow out of the skin, making a sort of halo around it so it looks velvety from 10 feet away. And it is called, no kidding, macho chayote.