Number 3 is almost done

I have been working on this one for ages it seems.  This is my third painting ever (see number one here and number two here.)

Someday I will get an easel.

Just before I put on what might be the finishing touches I thought to myself, "What the heck?  Screw it!"  And that was the best advice I could give myself and my powerful thought of the day.

One I wrote down from this weekend was: "I may not like aging, but I love having lived."  Perhaps a little bit more substance to this one.  Or not.  Depending on your way of thinking I suppose.

Palette

Here is a picture of my palette after doing some painting.  I find myself often more impressed by the random colors and shapes on my palette than I am with my works in progress.

This may be a little unfair, but for example, I've tried and tried to make abstract paintings and I end up with some pretty crappy stuff.  I don't mind saying it.  I can do a combo of abstract and figurative that looks ok.  But pure random shapes and colors that also have emotional depth?  It's not happening.

I wish I could paint every day.  It seems to take an endless amount of time to complete a painting.  I hope to have more paintings to share soon.  If only painting came as naturally as drawing.

Work Space

Here are a few snaps of what I was lucky enough to work on this weekend. (Sorry to be too lazy to adjust the levels to make them brighter for you.)

I would love an in home studio someday, but for now, my kitchen table can't be beat.

I love the light coming in the windows, letting me pretend it is not so cold outside.

I bit the bullet and did a color wheel, making additional wheels for common color combinations.  It turns out that my favorite is called split complementary.  Previously, I always thought of it as "two and a half steps."

To come this week: a photo session with June, breakfast with grandpa, and some work in progress.  Stick around!

Flower Piece

I suppose the inspiration for these was tulips, though to be honest I thought of poppies a lot too.  This is officially painting number 2.  And I had the same struggles photographing it as the last piece.  There is a lot more white than you can see here.  And the painting is brighter overall.  I'll get the hang of photographing art sometime I'm sure.

I used a lot of layers to create this.  And the original underlying drawing was created out of frustration.  I had been trying a lot of different techniques in order to learn and felt like the results were overly complicated.  I wanted to make something simple instead, so I painted these bright red flowers and stems and said, bah!

Detail 1

The result was appealing to me though, and I began to layer it with bits of paper and different colors of paint.  Hopefully once my technique is better my work will become progressively more simple.  I think it will at least.

Detail 2

Detail 3

So here you go, these are my flowers.  What do you think?

Birch Piece

I tried to take a better photo of this painting.

Here's how we did it.  Adam drilled a screw into the kitchen wall.  Based on its orientation and because the kitchen has windows facing south, this room and this wall seems to get the best natural and indirect light in the house.  You can still tell that most of the light hits the lower right corner of the painting.

Photographing artwork is a serious challenge!  It is amazing what the camera does to the color and the way it changes the light.  Or perhaps, the way it captures everything exactly, whereas the eye does some selective modifying when it looks at things.  Either way, a challenge.

Afterwards, I cropped it and adjusted the exposure using picnik.com.  It was useful since I don't have Photoshop on our new awesome computer.

More about this piece... I created a painted frame and green box based upon my drawing habits in college.  I have always had a hard time facing the blank white page.  (I recently watched this film about Georgia O'Keefe, where she said something like, "Each time we face a new canvas we are facing our whole life, from birth to present."  I wish I could get the quote right, because I like it.)  At any rate, I had a hard time deciding upon a first stroke.  So in came the box, and it freed me up.  I tried this technique with my painting.  Plus, it gave me a chance to play with creating textures with a palette knife, which is something I had wanted to try.  I also used a masking technique to create it, but this doesn't show in the finished painting.  The other thing about making the box was that I recently discovered the bar that Judith Murray uses in her beautiful paintings.  I like her bar, but I probably won't continue to paint boxes around my paintings.  When I look at this painting, I wish it was all forest and no box.  But sometimes you just have to stop and say, "enough is enough."  I'd rather have a finished painting than continue to work on this one.  So maybe it shows that I'm a beginner... but hey!  I am.

Happy Valentine's Day

Here is a love message I made especially for you.  

Yes, you!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Let's all let love grow into our lives as we move into spring.

Inspired by Elsa Mora.

My First Painting

I've got a new passion.

That is not to say I'm any good at it.

I've painted over so many interesting almost-paintings.  But I just don't want to call something done until it is really done.  The layers are interesting to me.

I'm working on building up the "canvas."  I put that in quotes since I am working on masonite board. Adam is mounting the board onto 1x2's for me and it gives them a lot more presence.

Birch trees

I'm trying lots of things out, so as my paintings emerge in this space do not expect a theme!  I have had some thematic ideas come and go, but mostly just want to play.  My next two pieces are a nude and a landscape.  I have been dreaming painted images and been having so many ideas.  One involves red and blue dots.  But then, the images of my mind never match what ends up being created.  I wonder if truly great artists can actually create what is in their mind?

Detail

I did one of underwater at water lilies that I just could not commit to and painted over.  Too bad I didn't take a picture first!

More to come.

PS Sorry about the poorly exposed iPhone shots.  The painting is much brighter than it looks in these pics.

My Sculptures

Here are some little darlings I made back in 2001. I took a class at la escuela de artes plasticas in old san juan. They were originally supposed to be interactive. I imagined them installed in a playground, where children could constantly be painting and repainting on them.

One day before they moved forever to my cousin Jimmy's yard, they spent on the lawn outside El Morro (where the school is essentially), with paint, my great friend Amy F., and paint brushes of course. But no one stopped by. I was disappointed. And I wonder why Amy and I didn't paint some ourselves. At any rate, they have kept up well.

The holes in some of the bodies are representations of those of us who are missing something.
Now I like them because I think life begins and ends with tunnels. In fact all of time may be a circular tunnel, to my imagination.

I had to add this last little note. This morning on my friend's blog I found a link to this woman's site. Oh my god I love this. I can't think of anything more inspirational at the moment.

June & the Raccoon

For awhile now I've had this idea of making a book of illustrations. Essentially, I will draw June at various ages with various things that rhyme with June. Here is a first start. I based it off of a photo of June when she was just a week old, though obviously without much detail. When I scanned my drawing onto the computer it lost a lot of detail, so I tried to fix it a bit in Photoshop and then colored it in shades of gray. What do you think?

Here are some potential others: sand dune; baboon; balloon; tune; moon; Saskatoon; maroon; loon; cartoon; goon; noon; rune. Feel free to add to the list.