Winter Day

Silverpoint on a warm light gray toned paper
18 x 14

I may have mislead you. Unlike a politician this was not my intent. I have always said that silverpoint was good for smaller pieces, but couldn't really hold up for something bigger. It just can't produce the dark darks needed to be noticed from across the room. I may have to rethink that. After looking at some of Dennis Martin's work I noticed that many of them are pretty big, much bigger than I had expected. So I took a shot and tried something bigger myself. Now this is not a huge drawing by any means, but it's about twice what I'm used to. It seems to hold up pretty well both near and from across the room, at least the size of my rooms. So bigger may be better.

On the downside it takes forever. The earlier parts had already started to tarnish by the time the last lines were added. I started this back in May or maybe early June and just finished it up a couple weeks ago. I didn't work nonstop on this though. There were quite a few weeks that it didn't get touched at all actually so it's hard to guess exactly how long it really took to finish. It certainly felt like a long time. Then again, it was nice to have something to go back and chew on.

Enough about that. What I was trying to do here was show how nice it is to curl up with a book when the snow in laying on the fields, the warmth of the figure against the cold of the landscape. Besides I loved the light. I hope I got somewhere close to the feel of it.

Twig

Didn't mean to be gone that long guys, sorry. It's been a long and rather interesting summer. Overall not that great but there were flashes that kept me wanting to see what would happen next. It looks like that the way it will be for a while to come too. At least now I'm used to it. On to the pictures, that's what you're here for.

I've done virtually no painting or drawing at all in the last few months so this had the potential for complete disaster. I'd wanted to do this piece for quite a while, but something always seemed to come up and push this to the back burner. Instead of going right to the finished picture I thought you might like to see a couple of the studies that I do beforehand. There's a lot of stuff done that nobody will ever see, but are nevertheless important to the process. This is where all the drawing issues get worked out. Before I start the final piece I have a pretty good idea of exactly where I'm going.


pencil heightened with white
22 x 15

So here's the final drawing of the figure. If it wasn't right there would be no reason to go any further so it was pretty obvious that I needed to spend as much time here as necessary. Besides I like to draw, this was the fun part.


Watercolor
15 x 11

So now that I've got a figure I need to put her in a landscape or some kind of environment. An excuse to go for a walk in the woods, most excellent. Not the best watercolor I've ever done, but it serves the purpose. She should fit in there nicely. It's really best compositionally to do this all at once working with basically abstract shapes and then adapting the shapes to figure and surroundings. Sometimes you get lucky though and this way will work out all right. Let's put it together and see what I've got.


Watercolor
30 x 22

This is what I thought would be the final piece. I'm not so sure though so this could turn out to be another study. There's some good points but I think there are parts that I could and should do better. And this is why it is best compositionally to work on the whole piece at once instead of putting together pieces. On this particular painting there is no deadline and no one is dying to see it (as far as I know) so why not keep going and do it right.


Watercolor
22 x 15ish

This is a detail of the previous piece and makes a pretty good image on its own. Right now I'm leaning toward cropping it down and salvaging this part and later going back and repainting the whole piece, maybe an oil next time.

Edit: I've switched out the last two images with ones that are closer to actual in color at least. Images seem to come out about a step lighter here than anywhere else. Anybody else have that problem?

Intimate Landscape - Bloodrooot

Oil on Panel
12 x 13

I thought I'd already put this up, but here it sits in draft form. Yet another oversight on my part, easily corrected.

This is another of my intimate landscapes. Every so often I like to just pick a small bit of land or streambed and see if I can bring it to life. That's pretty much what I up to here with a delicate little bloodroot flower. These are about the first of the spring wildflowers. When they start blooming winter is officially over for me.

I think I'm caught up now. Everything that's worth looking at is now posted. Wonder what I'll do next.

Sheltered Cove

Oil on Panel
16 x 12

Once again I find I don't have much to say about this. Another foggy day, more water, some foreground rocks. All together I think it works fairly well though.

Daydreams

Silverpoint
11 x 8

After those last two let's cleanse the room with something a bit better. Not much to say about this. I'm thinking about cropping a little bit off the top, but that will wait until framing time, assuming I frame it at all. All for today, not feeling very talkative. I just wanted to put something half way decent up for you to see.

Changed my mind, I do have something to say here. This is actually a second version. The first wasn't that bad with one exception. I wasn't all that satisfied with the face. Considering that's the center of interest, that's really not such a small problem. But it just needed a little change so maybe I could fix it. I've said that erasing is iffy at best with silverpoint. In this case iffy turned out to be no way, won't come off. Well, it is a gouache ground so maybe I could just reground it, gouache is opaque right? Yeah, not so much here, and the toned ground proved to be impossible to match. One last try, sandpaper. Sand off that spot and do here again. Yeah good idea. This is a second version for a reason. Things just went from bad to worse to the point that the only way to save it was to start from scratch, totally new version. Should have done that to start with. The moral is with silverpoint, just don't screw up. Know what you're going to do and do it right.

Close But No Cigar

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I seem to do a lot of things that fall just short of what I'm trying to do. Today's post will be devoted to a couple of those so maybe I can put them behind me, and move on to something with more potential. Realistically I know I'll keep playing with them until they're either right or screwed up beyond all possibility of fixing. Maybe you'll have a suggestion or maybe you'll convince me that they aren't as bad as I think or maybe I'm talking to myself and this will just be a catharthic experience.


Oil on Canvas
18 x 30

Something's just not quite right. The middle building in particular is bothering me. I think it needs to be pushed back some which sounds easy enough, but in practice is proving a bit more difficult. The brick silo isn't really working with the dull red barn either. Okay, fix those things and problem solved right? We'll see.

When I first saw this barn all the paint had been scraped off and it was a lovely silvery gray like, well, barnwood. When a got back a day or two later it was already painted with a coat of primer that was this dull red. It still had a charm to it, but it wasn't the same feel. Now it's got it's final coat of bright red, and it's turned into the red barn cliche. I'm sure the farmer likes the new paint job much better, and I'll admit it is a good looking farm, but something's just gone from it. It seems to have lost it's character. Maybe that says something about me.


Night Calls a Woman
Oil on Panel
18 x 12

A couple years ago I was watching something on TV, Austin City Limits I think, and there was this band (forget the name, sorry) playing this song that kept repeating this phrase, "night calls a woman." It stuck with me, and just would not go away. So to free my mind of this one musical phrase I did this. Nocturns seem to be quite a bit more difficult than I had imagined. This is the second, maybe third, version, and it's still not quite right. The good news is, I seem to be getting closer. On the other hand that phrase still hasn't completely left my head.

So there it is. This may be a first for me. I never let anyone see anything before it's done and ready for public consumption. In my world it's either right or wrong, and if it's wrong then fix it or start over. Next time I'll find something better to post.

Back Studies

oil on canvas
10 x 8

oil on canvas
10 x 8

Just a couple quick little studies today. I always seem to end up with little odds and ends of canvas off the roll. Being incredibly cheap (I prefer to think of it as thrifty) I always keep them around and eventually get them used up. That's the case here, just bits and pieces of leftovers put to use. I haven't even bothered to stretch them. If nobody wants them they may never get stretched, but that wasn't the point though. The object was practice. If they happen to turn out half-way decent so much the better. Any thoughts, anybody want to give them a home?

Quiet on the River

Oil on panel
11 x 17

This wasn't what I was planning on posting today, but the more I looked at the other painting the more I thought, nope, I can do it better. There are things to fix. So that's what I'll be doing the rest of the day - making small corrections on a variety of pieces that aren't bad, but not quite right. I seem to do that a lot, fiddle with things until they're absolutely perfect or screwed up beyond all hope. Never really gotten anything perfect though, but the day's still young.

This little piece was done specifically to fit a frame I've had laying around for several years now. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. In spite of that I think it came out pretty well, and it does suit the frame. There was a very limited palette used on this, just milori blue (like prussian, but supposed to be more lightfast) venetian red, yellow ochre and lead white. There was no challenge to myself or anything like that, it just turned out to be all the colors I needed. On that note there is a lot to be said for using a limited palette. Harmonious color is almost assured, and you find that you really don't need every single color ever made. The old masters used very few pigments, and they got along pretty well. I remember one of my teachers once saying that with all the colors available these days there should be some pretty good painting going on. I'm not really seeing that. Maybe we suffer from an embarrassment of riches.

Ground Fog

Oil on Panel
5.5 x 12

I've got to tell you I like fog. No idea why but I do. Not constantly you understand, but now and then. When I first moved out here, before the building spree, this is pretty much the way it looked most mornings. It would burn off fairly quickly so it wouldn't be depressing all day. Now fog is more uncommon and to see fog rising from the fields like this I need to go out a few more miles into the farmland. I think I like the subtlety of the colors and the quiet that usually comes with it. That's what I was going for here anyway. Welcome to my world.

Black Fan

In keeping with yesterday's ramble about paying attention to all the elements in a piece I though this may be of interest. It's a little older too so maybe you can use it to gauge my progress or lack of progress. First let me say this is not the way to put a picture together. Don't try this at home.


Another little silverpoint as you may have guessed. A decent drawing, the forearm and hand seem nice and solid. Overall though, nothing to write home about. It's certainly on the blah side. So it sat around for a while until I decided maybe I could still pull it off.


That's a little better with just the addition of a vertical element and a horizontal. Now there's a little stability to the image, but still not right. Too much of that so what feeling. It needs some depth.


Now that's not so bad, not my best, but much better than the original version. There's some solidity to the composition, some depth. The lights and darks are balanced out all right. (The image is about a half step too dark here, sorry.) It's more than a figure just plopped down in the middle of the page. Not that that can't be pulled off, I just didn't originally do it here.

One other vaguely interesting thing here is that since it was done over a period of about eight months the earliest parts of the drawing had started to tarnish already. I don't think you can really see it here, you can just barely see it in person. From across the room it really isn't apparent, but up close the figure and to a lesser extent the horizontal ledge is much warmer than the distant landscape. That will even out soon enough, but it was nice to see the change. Normally the change is so slow and subtle even I don't notice it.