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.

Farm Girl Jam Label Olallieberries

Farm Girl Jam:  Olallieberries!  I'm not certain how this differs in taste from the boysenberry and the blackberry as I didn't get a jar of this one in my care package from the Farm Girl.  They are longer and more narrow though. I hope I get a jar of this to try.

Farm Girl Jam Label

Farm Girl Jam label, boysenberries.

Farm Girl Jam Label, Pomegranate Jalapeño

Another Farm Girl jam label, Pomegranate Jalapeño.

Jam Jar Label, Strawberries

Oy vey, it photographed a bit dark.  This is for Farmgirl or Farm Girl, I will have to check.  I think this product is coming out in the gourmet food market in October.  Thanks everyone for your kind comments.

Jam Jar Label/ Fig Jam

This is the label for fig jam.  The brand is Farmgirl, coming soon out of California.

Jam Jar Label: Cranberry Jalapeño

This painting is for a jam jar label.  There are I think 8 jams, each one better than the next, as I was sent a box of them to try.  This is Cranberry Jalapeño and I was forced to eat the first half of the jar with a spoon. The rest I used with some cream on a grilled pork loin.

Mug shot 57, Blue Parrot Waiter

This is one of those no neck guys, and he was actually quite trim.
Last night in my painting group one of the really good painters let me sit behind her and watch while she worked, providing I did not speak.  I learned a lot about moving the paint around.  She used big bristle brushes for large areas of skin, I don't know what that seemed so revolutionary to me, but has been difficult for me to do. Seeing her do it helped. Also, once she put the paint down, she sort of moved it around over areas (in the beginning stages) and in her  finished painting there was the look of wet fluid paint which is what you need for skin, and maybe everything - because oh the beauty of the paint itself alone! Aside from all the other  thousand skills you need for painting, I guess paint handling is right up at the top.  Another issue I had with this, is that the photograph did not have many areas of strong darks, because the light was coming from the front toward his face and it was pretty evenly lit.  That studio lighting with a strong spotlight coming from one direction makes things much easier.  Anyway, I sort of got him.

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.

Nose Kiss

Happy belated birthday to Jill W. with love.

Maggie

Um...been a while since I posted, but I have been painting and reading and organizing my wits.  Nothing much seemed post-able, so I stepped out from under that pressure for a bit and just kept plodding along.  This is a commission for the family in Dallas who rescues sick dogs and gives them the Mayo Clinic level of care.  They then live in a dog paradise of fun, food, clothes, jewels and  extravagant  canine experiences.  I think the pack is now up to about 8.  In spite of their advantages, none of the dogs is spoiled.  Elizabeth Quintero, I salute you.

Peach Study #8, Free Peaches on Green Paper

These are not glam super market peaches, but free peaches from a neighbor's tree. Problems are the same though, and they are, as my friend and painter Lorraine Shirkus says:  the values are difficult to see because the dark coloring of the peaches can occur in the light and the light coloring in the shadow side.  You have to hold that in your head and also keep the understanding of where the light is hitting and then I think, not care and see how it ends up.

Cherries in a Gold Box

Peach interregnum.  These cherries are in an origami box made from gold cardboard.

Peach Studies 6 & 7, White and Black

I guess ----- the top one is under exposed, because the peaches are really on a white cloth, and yet, against the second one, on black, they don't seem so far apart. That bright spotlight does burn out the color though (on the black) where the light most directly strikes the surface.  Today on my early morning bike ride I came across a table in a drive way with plastic bags full of tiny peaches -- with leaves! - and a sign that said, Free.  So now I have plenty, with stems AND leaves. So exciting.

I am trying to find  a new way, a different way to put the paint down.  I don't know what way this is, I just need a form I am familiar with that doesn't present any new learning curve, if only that could be true, so that I can practice with the paint itself.  Almost to the end of these  peaches though, their little leaves are wet and soggy from refrigerator condensation and the peaches themselves are spongey.

Peach Study 4 on Green

Something cooler.

Peach Study 3, On Red

I set this up on purpose with everything darkish and hot, just to explore.

Study2 of Peaches on a Wrinkled Napkin

I swear the  darks on these peaches are so deep a red/brown that they are almost black.
And here is a link to a story about Robert Rauschenberg and his famous erased De Kooning drawing: click here.

Peach Study 1

I have a slew of these peach studies coming.  They are not very thrilling, just some of the requisite slogging necessary for progress. To compensate I will offer this interesting anecdote: Renoir once had a side job painting religious scenes on Venetian blinds for Christian missionaries to use in the tropics in their conversion of natives.  That is a pretty good story (true), I may have made a mistake and started at the top.

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.

Gomez

This is a little worried Chihuahua sitting on a wildly patterned couch. And -- he is sort of smiling.
Impossible to resist painting it, I practically tore the photo out of a student's hand.  She did a very nice painting herself of  another shot of Gomez, which I will post when I get her permission.

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 57: The Lessards

OOOOH, I have been computerless for some time, odd how everything becomes so quiet when your computer isn't working, like the world has stopped and I guess, really that world HAS stopped.  All systems go for now though, I'm ecstatic!  This is a painting done from an old black and white photo, and I think it dates from the 20's, I forget exactly.  The groom looks like a biker to me, a Jimmy Dean, and I happen to know the bride possessed a bit of wickedness herself. All those value exercises paid off here. I just treated that suit like it was a jar of jam, laying in the darks and lights, squinting and shifting my eyes around, and voila -- clothing!

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.

Value Study 12

4 values and the dark light ratio: 2/3 dark and 1/3 light. So interesting that you can get a metallic feel (the prongs on the plug) with just four values and no color, I wouldn't have thought it.  Clearly, it's getting the values in the correct place. Those sneaky tricky values.

Value Study 11

A cautionary tale, this little one.  THEY say, you should have a ratio of 1/3 : 2/3, light to dark or however you want to divide it, but not equal parts of everything, and why is this? because for one thing, it is much easier to read, or to quickly grasp the forms and their relationships to each other.  In this, I have 1/3 black, 1/3 dark, 1/3 light and a few highlights (white).  When you look at it,  you have to stick with it for a white to figure out what is happening.  I am usually one for chafing under the rules, but in this case it is easy to see why the light to dark ratio is useful.  Also, it is another element that needs thinking about before you start painting, even before you set up the still life.

Value Study 10

I gave some thought to  the traveling rhythm of an elongated horizontal composition, how the forms would touch and separate - it's a whole universe! just that, the touching and not touching, the syncopation of it, and then the forming of a whole as well.  This was fun and illuminating.  I spent more time on the thinking planning part than the painting, maybe 40 minutes for the painting.  And the early morning just waking up time and the standing in line at the post office time, etc. for the planning. I also darkened my  light/medium value, so I was using the requisite 4 values, black, white, dark gray and light gray, but a darker light gray than previously.  I am becoming more aware of what would be the better workable values for the desired end.

Value Study 9

I went back to look at Liz Wiltzen's explanation of these exercises and just as I suspected, I was missing an important element, the part about finding ways to link the darks so a rhythm of forms appear.  Those are my words, the rhythm part, but I think that is what would happen...so I set up my still life more carefully and painted it more slowly, thinking about what I wanted to happen.  I might not make the 50 in 30 (days), but it's worth it to take it to the 50.