04.14.08 Study in working with red paint. Alizarin crimson, Cadmium red light and Winsor Red. Winsor Red is new to my palette. I bought a tube quite a while ago. It looked to be real close to a pure red to me. It worked well, though a bit thin in confirmation for my taste. Nothing that a paper bag soak will not take care of. I found with the addition of Winsor red, I was able to add a mid range red to the study without muddiness. I have been using cad red light in conjunction with alizarin to get a range of reds but because of the secondary color bias of these paints there was a certain amount of graying going on so that it was not possible to get a sparkling clear red. Color induction was used to boost the apparent chroma but it could not relieve the neutralization in entirety. Winsor Red is a welcome addition and I look forward to some red paintings. Perhaps, another painting of Smaug of Hobbit fame may be in order.

04.15.08 Not wanting to do another shiny transparent subject, I cast about looking for an opaque, matte object for contrast…………….ah an old plastic electric drill….perfect!

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.

04.02.08 It is finally getting warmer, a bit unseasonably so, but who’s complaining : ), so off we go to the Pawtuxet River to capture some early morning light on water. Well, there was quite a bit fog and it was dispersing. I had forgotten how rapidly you have to paint in the early hours to keep up and capture the rapidly fading scene before you. Relatively rough attempt completed. My outdoor skills are going to need some industrial housekeeping to get the dust, rust, and cobwebs eliminated. Sounds like fun : ) Many pochades to come.

Soon, I can get to painting regularly outside for my dailies though my fingers felt like popsicles. Onward!!

04.03.08 Out in the yard! The fresh air. A cool wind on my neck and Jack Frost chewing on my fingertips. The harbingers of spring……….hmmmm, harbingers sounds too ominous. The heralds of spring, snowdrops! We have them scattered sporadically throughout the front and back yard. So bright and cheery : )

03.18.08 Today, the idea seems more about concept. I was casting about the studio looking for ideas when I lighted on the coppery ends of some 20 gauge shotgun shells. By themselves relatively boring but with the addition of a toy mammoth , it all changed. Suddenly, here was a creature moving through a strangely dark and ominous forest………

03.19.08  Well, it has now been three weeks with this years version of the flu. Malaise, weakness and a cough. But it is all slowly dissipating. I am grateful though. I still have been able to drag my carcass to the easel to do the the daily study. I think I have missed a day or two but I am planning to double up to catch up. I am beginning to find that finding something to paint is becoming part of the challenge. You begin thinking a bit more creatively of ways to combine objects. Recently, I am looking for objects with widely divergent properties to place together.

03.17.08  Ran across a vendor of farmed oysters out of Matunuck at a local farmers market. He opened a couple for me to try. O ya, they were great!  I decided to buy a dozen for reference…….ok, ok, a dozen may be a few more than I actually need : ).

My paint setup for this was low and I was actually looking down onto the now emptied oyster shells. While I was knee deep in this study concentrating a vague pink that kept flitting across the shadow areas, I heard sniffing sounds. I looked down and, to my horror, there was Mojo, our new 7 month old pup. He was earnestly checking out the setup and looking like he was ready to get on with the fun at hand.  There I am tied up because my gloved hands are as usual are covered with paint and Mojo is one of those dogs who explores his world not only by smelling but also by taste testing everything. With much shooing and cajoling, I got him to leave the studio. Saved! Hurrah, a disaster narrowly averted!  A sigh of relief escaped me and I settled back into the study. Five minutes later, he returned. It could have been the strong smell of shellfish but somehow I think it was just to watch the panic on my face. I swear I saw a fleeting smile cross that muzzle. He plunked himself down to snooze nearby.

02.26.08  Bit of an interesting thing occurred as I was washing my brushes at my studio sink yesterday.I noticed a dull orangish sphere out of the corner of my eye. It was nestled in amongst the bottles and sponges and various containers against the wall. Not really remembering putting anything there of that description I picked it up. It turned out to be the green gourd I had been painting a few weeks earlier. It had been a dark green with an orange spot then. Now, it was a dull orange with a bit of green. A reversal in color. Cool. It also felt a bit squishy. Actually, really squishy and a little liquidy when tilted. A day or three more and I would have had a real ugliness sloughing over my work area. Just missed a vegetable ambush. Woof! So instead, it will become my subject for tomorrow and then off to a timely long rest in the compost heap.

02.25.08 Todays daily turned into a lunatic race. Yesterday, I saw a bottle of tea resting on a windowsill facing west in the late afternoon. Great lighting and a terrific hotspot as the light was refracted through the plastic with the liquid leaving a burnout area. That was going to be my study for the next day. So the next day, I get all setup with a transportable french easel when I realized I had just set myself up to paint a backlit scene in a darkened hallway. Ok, what idiot approved this?  And there was the nice bright hotspots I was eyeing the day before, lol. I dove in anyway as the setup was done and the light was fading fast. So it it boiled down to me blocking in and then painting what I thought the values were and then rushing with the painting into the studio onto the main easel to check the values…back and forth…back and forth………back and forth. Not having buckets of time as it is was, I called it at 39 minutes done.  In retrospect, it all seems rather silly and I would like to say a smarter me would known better and moved on but then I ain’t that person……such is life : ). So I have learned not only about what I see lacking in the finished study but hopefully, a real nice lesson about thinking and exploring more about a setup in advance. I hope.

Dailies. This is the fourth incarnation of this practice over the ensuing years. each for different reasons thus learning different lessons. Initially they were to used to learn a forced method of deciding proper color and value. It worked with the added benefit of being a relatively quick painter. This time around, it is due to the large amount of time that I am spending doing digial artwork. I fear for my skills and so have once again started these 30-40 minute studies.