Since a little of the deadline pressure has evaporated, I feel free to work on some things that don't need to be done soon. This one has given me a lot of trouble but I did some glazing and blending on a few of the worst areas this morning; now I can move on to another piece.
Starbucks (Homage To Hopper), work in progress (click on image for larger view)
It also needs a better title.
I've been bothered by the fact that the rocks/pebbles look so hard and stark, so I mixed some violet and grey with glazing medium and brushed it over them. I think it softens them and unifies that area.
Bowery Graffiti Wall (Revok + Pose), work in progress (click on image for larger view)
All in all, not a bad day's work.
After finishing Persephone, I picked up three other pieces and made a little progress on each of them. Here, I worked mostly on the puffy brown coat:
Then moved on to
With four days of drying time, this will be ready to go to the Waverly Street Gallery on Saturday. And now I will be on to the next project.
It turns out that I don't have to worry about finishing the little New York City pieces right away; they're better suited for the fall, anyway. Now I can breathe deeply again and concentrate on the two big shows coming up.
But here's this afternoon's late-in-the-day work:
This already looks better, now that I'm not trying to be loose and flashy any more. With time, this can be a really arresting piece.
Late yesterday I put in some time on this; my original intent was to use flat brushes and get a more expressionist feel, but it turns out I don't have a clue about how to do that and end up with a piece of art that looks good. So I just did the best I could, and experimented in one or two places with some tube colors that are meant for portraiture.
It turns out the colors in the water are much deeper, much more intense, than the saturated ones in the sky.
I also added some color to the skaters in places here and there, and brushed up the scuffs in the ice:
The first part of the day was devoted to finishing the clusters of apple blossoms and doing a little work on the skin. I burned out after a while (amazing how long it takes to do those clusters correctly!) but tomorrow I expect to finish this piece. It should be dry by Saturday.
I'm feeling less anxious about getting everything done in time. The painting is going well overall and I make progress every week. I've collected a bunch of news stories for the dessert series, and have figured out how to mount them on panels. The New York City Short Stories aren't as far along as the other pieces I need to finish, but they're small and won't take a lot of time to finish. So all is well.
Persephone is shaping up. I decided to focus on her today and not let anything distract me. Worked on: Twigs and branches. Leaves. Sky holes. Adding yellow-gold spots to background. Hair. Skin.
After she dries, I'll touch up any rough spots, check the skin values one more time, and finish the flowers. Right now the flowers are the only thing that needs some serious attention, so it looks like this will be ready for display by the deadline. That's one less thing for me to worry about.
A friend emailed me today, and she wrote about how experimentation is important to her as an artist. After working on the previous paintings I decided to get back to this one and enjoy some freer brushwork.
I suppose I could continue to refine this forever, searching for and finding tiny areas that need to be sharpened up or that might be improved with yet another coat of paint, but it's time to put this one to bed. There are a couple of spots I need to get back to once the paint dries, but I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Sometimes I feel like my work is too sterile, too careful. With that in mind, I try to paint in a freer, looser style, but it almost never works out.
The skaters below need to be finessed, but at least I can play with the icy rink. The marks left by skaters have a nice flow to them, and they add to the composition. A friend long ago noticed that there was no drama to the lighting in the series, but I took the photos on an overcast day and I'm really not good at making things up; I can imagine strong, direct sunlight on the scene, but trying to fake it would only lead to disaster.
Art supplies are expensive, and I've had to fork out a bundle over the last few months. With that in mind, when it came time to renew my membership with NOAPS and to enter the Gallery Underground show, I had to bow out. Artomatic has cost me $150 to register; some would say that's a bargain for the amount of show time and I agree, but I hope a few things sell soon so I can replenish my bank account.
The decision to not enter the Gallery Underground show was a tough one; the painting below was conceived specifically for the upcoming show, and now I don't know what to do with it. But i was very unhappy about having to rush the work on it. I went back to it this morning and though I only spent a half hour, it looks much better to me now that I'm being more careful about the brush strokes.
No, not the ones associated with creatures of the night, just the ones cast by the intense sunlight on the walls of The Green Room. I'll let them dry and then get to the grout between the wall tiles.
Meanwhile, the floor tiles continue to stymie me. The ones in shadow are a bluish clay color, while the ones in sunlight are almost white. It's hard to keep them separate.
Since I need finished work for four upcoming shows, I've had to dig into the archives of 3/4 finished pieces. The two below are fine works; I just have to carry them over to the finish line.
This first one has been waiting for a long time for me to develop some basic understanding of flesh tones. I've improved somewhat over the years. The photo makes the brush strokes look scratchier than they are, and I have to work on three faces on the left.
This next one is huge, but I was able to get a lot done on it yesterday. I am excited about working on the hands next session. Note the reference pieces in the upper right hand corner.
It made sense to go back into this fairly wet painting and try to pick up some of the golden strokes I'd painted over in the background. I also took out some of the busier branch lines at upper left. Now I'll let the whole thing dry for a few days and then re-work the flowers, which are looking pretty raw right now.
Got the housekeeping chores out of the way, and budgeted an hour or two to work on the skin and the tree branches. Here's where things now stand.
Moving forward. I still find small areas that need finessing.
Also:
A nice, easy painting. Not too much more to do on it.
So glad to have finally made some progress on this one and the America series in general.
So much for planning to use broad, flat strokes and more natural color. I do love the intensity of the color; it's what attracted me in the first place. So I'm not going to grey it down, and I do also love the way one hue slides into another, so no flat brush strokes here.
Maybe next time.
Sometimes something just ticks you off and you end up spending the day (or in my case, the next day) grumbling. On top of that, I had to run out on an errand, because it's going to snow again tomorrow. So I only got to work on this one, but at least it's looking good.
I think I've got the problem of the facial features solved, at last. Now I just have to get some control of the skin colors. The dappled shadows I put in a couple of days ago are nto working; she looks bruised. Also, the shoulder on the right side of the canvas needs to be extended. Did a lot of work on the background and the hair today.
I made a lot of changes to the main figure; brightened up the colors on the cap, added some darker shading to the jacket and leggings, etc. I think I need to change my "mark," make it looser and more lively. This piece just looked too stiff to me.
I was really unmotivated today but managed to get a few things done on this.
This needs to be camera ready by Thursday! I think it'll make the deadline.
Because we got 4-5 inches of snow I thought I'd resurrect this little piece. It still needs work, of course.
The many, many tiny lines that indicate where the layers of brick separate from each other require a lot of patience and skill. I am lacking in the kind of skill that this little painting needs; I can blame part of it on the brushes, which are too soft and are prone to wobble, but the est of it is the sheer fatigue of trying to get the lines to be parallel to each other.
I'm going to have to go back and paint between the lines in some cases. But that's it for today.
I've mentioned before that I want this to have a darker, warmer feel...I think I can do it with some glazes that will build up the color and give it some depth instead of flattening it out. But it's time to take a break.
Over the weekend I worked on quite a number of pieces, but I'm dissatisfied with most of them. So I'm not posting those updates but am starting the week with three little paintings that I worked on this morning.
