Mugshot Twenty Eight, Possible Family memeber

This one was really hard. I tried it twice, this is the better of the two. The majority of the face was in shadow, but the skin was all pink and green, and the pinks were green and the greens were pink! I did the underpainting as I learned but it was more difficult to get the values down simply. I was seduced by those shimmering half tones.

Mugshot 27: Possible Family Member

OK, back in the saddle. Returned from frolicking and resettled into the routine. While I was away I terrorized my family members, pleading for photos. Most relented but said they never want to see the paintings. (!!!!!!) Thank you everyone for your forbearance, and I won't identify anybody.

Last night was the final episode of Jennifer Balkan's second figure painting class. In this second part I learned the importance of doing a loose underpainting for the values. What a difference it makes - ain't no words! This single thing allows you to keep your values in a family, which helps the image to have weight and coherence. This is the piece of information I have been looking for but I didn't know how to ask for it or even what it was. It was a very exciting class, only 4 of us , so lots of one on one help. Jennifer is funny and generous and pounded everything into our heads, reinforced with demos and our own hands on experience. A great class, great people...I should have tried to get their photos as I will shortly run out of possible family members soon.

Reclining Nude Study

Still more wiping...full moon I hear.

This is the last of 4- 30 minute paintings from the painting group, first 3 really unspeakably bad and I could feel myself sliding into the abyss, and then I got one! I am quite proud of myself when I do an acceptable one because working with this time limit and all the discomfort of bad light, French easel, forgot the necessary color (cad yellow), etc., requires such absolute concentration that I lose all self consciousness. Then I am exhausted and have to have a beer.

I will be in North Carolina for a few days helping my father celebrate his 90th birthday. Maybe when I take up the brush again the wiping phase will be done.

Fernando/Study

I have had a whole week of wiping paintings! Not too upsetting though -- I am trying to do something new, a new way of using color, so this just has to be worked through. This painting is a quick study I did with cad red light and black. I got a good likeness without much suffering, which is always encouraging.

Nude Study/Back

I have been working hard on another project this week and there's nothing much to post.... but here is a study from my painting session with a model. This was a 30 minute study and a huge improvement over the last back I painted a couple of weeks ago. At the beginning of the first back I mumbled some remark(out loud even, such hubris) about how easy a back was going to be after doing a complicated and difficult front (limbs, stomach, breasts, facial features, hair, all!) and then produced a painting of a flat porcine slab.... frightening. But this one is much better because I am improving in my understanding of value and temperature. Backs can be hard! I love this model though.... something about her wants to be painted.

AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROUS SUPPORTIVE COMMENTS!

Mugshot 26: Sylvester S.

I am now in the second half of Jennifer Balkan's class and we are doing color mixing, then doing a painting with the mix. So far we have done two red/greens: Viridian and cad red light and sap and Winsor red. Since I had already taken Sylvester's picture and was ready to go, I used purple/yellow (which we haven't discussed yet) because he seemed to require it. Having a decision about which color range you are going to use greatly simplifies the process, you just line up the colors and get going. I was slinging stuff around on this one not quite knowing how to get what was necessary out of a purple/yellow combo. In any case, he is a handsome devil and reminds me of Zapata.

Mugshot 25: Jill W.

This is an honorary daughter who came for a visit and succumbed to the purifying mask.

Also, I want to thank all of you for your generous comments on these paintings. It's so exciting to open up the blog and see response. It helps to keep the fires lit.

Tom P.

This is a mugshot of a good friend. I am thinking I have to shift out of the criminal element because their photos are so terrible, bad light, bad color, pixillated when enlarged....it shouldn't be that hard. I am thinking I will take my own mug shots of the people in my life with my new fancy pants camera and have more CONTROL over some of these issues.

Mugshot 24

This guy had a very high creep factor.

Mug Shot 23

Ah, testosterone. You can see it at work.

I admit I was in a rapture working on this nose, It was so --- there, such a fleshy anchor for this boy's face. Also, since I have been getting in bad trouble with backgrounds that I add after the figure is painted, I laid in an acid yellow wash first thing to give me some color to relate to as I painted the head, and it was a much more comfortable way to go. I had to soften it tremendously later, but at least I was in the family of yellow at the end.

Purifying Mask, Spa

This is the big one I have been working on, it is 40 inches square and was commissioned for a spa in Kansas City. I was initially planning to use a more youthful model but they asked for this particular one....which I thought either barking mad or enlightened. I will go with the latter.

Nude by Andy Pankhurst

Another day in the barrel, so here is yet another painting by a painter I like very much.

Outdoor Portrait by Mieke Teirlinck

Still working on the big painting. In the meantime, here is another painter's work I greatly admire: Mieke Tierlinck, Dutch. She paints everything from life and does it quickly, in one shot. She also paints everything, landscapes, interiors, still lives, people. Is there enough time in one life to master all these?

Self Portrait by Lucian Freud

I am working on a large painting and so have nothing completed to post, but here is a painting by one of my favorite painters, Lucian Freud. He died last month, in his mid 80's, and he painted right to the end, which is how it should be done.

Red Peppers on Pink

Down to the last two peppers. Another wave of family came through and we went to the ACL festival in Austin, so now I am recuperating and gearing up for a big painting that is already in the works. This one is also a painting for the Texas Moleskine Roundup group.

Peppers and Sprouts?Green

On this one I tried some color things.... mostly green, a bit of red. On the next one I did mostly red, bit of green. This is along the lines of three (everything should occur in this relationship: most, some, a bit). Except that it is along the lines of two. I have been told also that it should be in the same relationship as a martini, which would be mostly gin, some vermouth and a bit of olive. But then the olives you get these days are huge and you often get two, and sometimes very little vermouth. Treacherous.

Peppers and Sprouts

This is all that is left in the fridge after a wild family weekend. Also, it is a practice painting for the 2 Moleskin journals which I have not done and mailed on, and no one has emailed and nagged me about it, such a nice group, so I have to get at it. As usual, when I am away from the studio for a few days and get back to painting, I am all thumbs. This won't do if you are working in someone's journal.

Campari Tomatoes

I had just a bit of time in the studio today because I have family about to visit and I had to stuff everything under the bed and clean the rest of it. These little tomatoes are sitting on a piece of silk taffeta I have carted around for years.

Nude Study 3

In last night's painting session, I had 2 wipers, 2 keepers, each a 30 minute pose. We had a great model which makes it more fun. I ran out of steam in the last half, whipped from a long day.

Mugshot Twenty Two

This is a great whopping 12 inches square -- intimidating to have all that room, but also really great, exciting. I feel like I have known this guy forever, he is life size and I have been in his nostrils and ears all day. Also need more stamina to get it done in one go.

Nude Study Two

Another meeting of the painting group last night and I painted hard and fast and didn't get home till 10:30. No juice to paint today, so I am posting the best of the studies. These are 30 minutes long and I am using Jennifer Balkan's formula: 3 generous batches of paint, a warm dark, a cool mid tone, and warm light; with burnt umber quickly lay in only a gestural form of the body and then the darks, followed by mid tone and light, finishing with restrained use of highlights if any. I got 3 ok studies and 1 wiper, not too bad for the end of a long day. It's so amazing and riveting to paint or draw from life -- total concentration and no thinking, you just have to keep your energy up and your concentration skewered to the model.

Mugshot Twenty One

I'm thinking of bumping up to 10 inches square. This guy had a swan's neck...but I had to abbreviate it because I wanted to get that black net top in there. My painting self wants to work bigger and my thinking self wants to learn how to get it all in no matter what the size.

Mugshot Twenty

This guy was so pink.

Mugshot Nineteen

Lots of chin.

Mugshot Eighteen

I painted this six times, the first 3 I didn't post. She had these red rimmed thyroidal eyes that I just couldn't get down and this pale yellowish translucent skin. These mugshot people aren't healthy for the most part. And I want to say only once without defensiveness, that it is hard to get it all when jailbase.com is repeated every inch across the faces, because often the type will cover a tricky shadow at the corner of the mouth or eye and it can't be seen clearly. Not that I'm whining. But the more I couldn't get it, the more determined I was to keep at it. The top one is good enough for now, I can't stand to look at it any more. As they say, the line is oh so thin between the heroic and the pitiful.

Thank you everyone for such nice comments on the last study.

Nude Study

I painted a mugshot today but it turned on me in the end and I had to wipe it. Will try tomorrow. Today I am posting a study I did Monday night in a painting group. We have a model and do 4 30 minute poses. At the end of the session we did a quick 15 minute pose (this one) and I was able to get it down in broad strokes with the parts in the right place and the values pretty much ok. I feel encouraged because I see that I am learning to condense visual info faster and establish the form without too much thinking. I just want the image to go from my eye to my hand without cerebral detour.

Mug 17

This boy was completely magnificent. His skin! There was every color in it and they were all practically the same value. Very interesting painting experience.

I don't know the reason for this, but the women in the mugshot sites routinely have the thinnest eyebrows I have ever seen. It would be interesting to hear what a sociologist has to say about that, what conclusion could be drawn. I have a feeling it is heartbreaking.

Mug 15

I painted this guy yesterday and it was a bust, but he is so beautiful I wanted to try to get him down if possible. It helped to have done him once before because my observation was much more acute. Also, I worked with a big hog bristle brush and tried to be economical in my description and to stop before that poisonous period that I often have at the end of the painting where I am trying to fix and smooth things (AAAAUGH!). I did drop it face down outside, though, so then I did have to go back and fix things, but it is good enough and much better than yesterday's painting.