04.06.08 I was looking for an object that I had little familiarity with. Familiar subject would be something that I have drawn or painted before. I settled on a pair of wicked witch high heels in my wife’s collection.  When painting familiar objects, you have to be careful to paint what you see and not what you know from prior experience. It is all to easy to start pulling information from the memory well.

Painting these shoes was quite a challenge. Unfamiliar angles, value gradients with rapid transitions over curves that dip and twist made these two paintings quite a challenge. I had succeeded in finding subject matter with which I had little mental frame of reference not to mention actively wondering just how do women walk in these things? 

As I was painting these, I had the strange thought that everything we see is an edge. A flat surface, that you are perpendicular to, is an edge. It is just an edge with a zero falloff. Wonder if that is really true? Not in a philosophical debate sense but whether as a rough rule for painting what you see. Instead of thinking of planes and edges, I could just be thinking of edges?   I shall keep it mind for awhile and see if it makes sense as I explore more studies.

Afterall, painting is all about edges.

04.07.08 Another successful attempt at crushing my perception of ‘what is’ based on past observations. This is a frontal view of an old dog skull upside down. It looked familiar in an overall sort of a way but it just wasn’t right. Once I tried to stop matching it up with my memory well of information, I was able to get to the study. The success lies in forcing me to paint what I see not what I know or what I think I know.