Monthly Studio Update - December, 2004

Studio Update:

This month I had an important discovery: I need reading glasses to paint by! It is really helping me to see and finish off tiny details...I can't help but wonder if I had trouble finishing off paintings like Joseph, Toucan Table, and Little Goddess because I couldn't see?!

 

Sunroom, work in progress, oil, 12 x 16"

Sunroom as a very complex composition with a very dramatic two-point perspective of the glass doors layered with the sun's casted light. I have about a 20-minute window, from about 4-4:20 P.M., to paint by before the light changes significantly. With the help of my new glasses I am "cleaning-up" all the little blemishes that I can now see.

 

 

Self-Portrait, work in progress, oil, 12 x 16"

I am keen to enlarge this self portrait. I love the idea and the symbolism yet I am still painting what I see in real life. I am in the sunroom looking back at my studio but my image and the view is reflected in the class. If you look closely into the silhouetted shadows you might discern the studio table at the bottom and perhaps a few details of the interior. The little light box in my head is the front door's view window across my studio. The key symbolic idea is that my body is the studio and my head is the light.

 

Windows, work in progress, pastel on black paper, 18 x 24"

This is a study for Self-Portrait. With the painting I have been going around in circles tying to get the subtle color variations of the painted wood door frames. Finally I decided to draw a study in pastel of the wood alone. This enables me to see nuanced shift of color between the bottom area and top with out getting confused by all reflections in the window panes.

 

 

Pencils, 2004, pastel on red paper, 18 x 24". Available

I am beginning to get a little bored with black paper. One way to shake up that mood up is go with bright red paper! Using the color red as a base hue really keeps me up on my visual toes because every color I use changes its vibration as soon as it hits the red paper; magenta pastel on red paper looks blue! Just think what that does to all the other colors. A result of this is that I end up working with unexpected color combinations which I then can incorporate into my paintings.

 

Easel, 2004, pastel on black paper, 18 x 24". Available

This is a pretty good image of my studio. The big slanted wall is really a large wooden temporary wall covered in canvas that I use as a backdrop. You probably can sense this but I am feeling very close to my studio...I love the forms of the easels.

 

Yellow House Across the Street, 2004, pastel on black paper, 18 x 24". Available

For some months I have loved looking at the color of this house and so sat down for a few sessions and drew it.

 

 

Mourning, work in progress, charcoal on Rives BFK, 18 x 24"

This month I found out that an important friend of mine died of leukemia. He is the critic that reviewed one of my exhibitions in Greece. These two works deal with loss. The gesture of the body is crucial but also the lighting. The piece above was almost finished but it had felt like a standard life drawing not something that was expressing how I felt. That is one of the problems with straight realism often it is merely correct but doesn't express passionate feelings. So I blasted the hell out of it and the model is coming back, tonight in fact, to pose again.

 

Loss, 2004, charcoal on Rives BFK, 18 x 24". Available

This piece started out about the model's own sense of loss and when Thodoris died I knew exactly what it needed to complete the feeling. On a totally different problem concerning nudes is how to draw their privates. I have been drawing nudes for over 30 years and through observation of other artists' nudes, other people's reaction to nudes, and my own introspective feelings I have found that if you want to experience the whole pose and see the whole composition it is crucial to downplay the detail, light, and size of genitals. As an artist beware if you don't!

Corner, 2004, oil on archival panel, 12 x 16". Available

I love this painting, its very subtle no great dramatic lighting but for coloring there are feathered shifts of color, I had a great time painting it.

 

Corner, 2004, pastel on black paper, 18 x 24". Available

On several of the pieces I am painting an oil and drawing a pastel of the same subject. I am looking to exhausted some of the possibilities of the view. And I am thinking ahead that some of the scenes I will enlarge and the smaller version and pastel can doubly serve as studies.

 

 

Coffee Pot Bayou, 2004, oil on archival panel, 9 x 12". Available

Green is a very tough color to photographically reproduce. In real life this painting has a spectacular colored lime-green front and yet it registers very softy.

 

Salt Lake, 2004, oil on archival panel, 8 x 10". Available

Salt Lake is a composite painting taken from the pastel drawings I did in Salt Lake. The purpose of the Salt Lake studies is that they are reference material for the painting of Venus.

 

Studio Floor, work in progress, oil on archival panel, 9 x 12".

I am having a great deal of fun with this painting. Two things seem to be at influence here Picasso and my 50's home/studio. There is something so "right" about slashing diagonal lines and brilliant colors. When I work with color I compare and contrast the extremes between hot and cool colors and combine that with my overall feeling about what I am painting.

 

Studio Floor, work in progress, pastel on blue paper, 18 x 24".

Again a pastel study of the same above.

 

Tape and Paper Towels, work in progress, pastel on purple paper, 18 x 24".

Another theme of glass, reflections, and transparency. This piece is also reminiscent of an earlier pencil line drawing I made.

 

Richard, 2004, pastel on black paper, 18 x 24". Available

Color theory is a lot of fun to work with. In this portrait before I had highlighted the chair I drew is face with what I thought was way too warm highlights. After a little thought I decided to blast the chair's highlights with hot light pink. The extreme heat of that popped the chair forward a simultaneously, by relationship, the color of his face softened to give me just what I was looking for.

 

Easel, work in progress, oil on archival panel, 12 x 16".

This piece is very similar to a pastel drawing. The difference here will be that the light material hanging down off the light will be tin foil with a million crazy highlights; I am wickedly looking forward to painting them in. Actually I am hoping that I can give them something like a Pollock dripping effect. This scene is also my set up for Toucan Table below. The purpose of the tin foil is to block the light from my easel so that it cannot cast light onto the glass jar.

 

Little Goddess, work in progress, oil on linen, 18 x 24".

This painting is a real labor of love. I think I have been working on and off it for over 3 years. In hindsight my biggest problem was finding the right lighting for the model in my studio to reflect what outdoor light would be like. After a lot of tweaking I found the light I was looking for and now it is a question of getting the finishing details done but also to get them to feel "right".

 

Glass Jar on Toucan Table, work in progress, oil on archival panel, 12 x 16".

Slowly but surely this piece is moving towards completions, the glasses are helping me a great deal here. I know exactly what I want the piece to look like when it is finished; it must be very slick but have depth and form. The table has a painted lacquered surface which combined with the reflective glass and the oil paint medium must accumulate for an overall polished effect.

Making so many other works is making my approach to these last two paintings easier. I am simply getting into a flow of painting by stages, letting it rest while I move on with other works.

 

That's it for December, I wish you joy-filled New Year.