Apunte

I've been looking at Sorolla's apunte's lately. That's the word used in a book I have for his small, quick oil sketches he made on sight. The english translation is simply note. And that's what they are, quick notes of a scene. I'll put some up on a later post, but not here with mine!

This is a quick apunte I did in downtown Phoenix. The Westward Ho, Fillmore and Central.

Color Sketches

I have a couple of magazine illustration assignments I'm currently working on. Here are the color sketches I've done in gouache.

PM…not AM

For a few years now, I have been teaching a painting class where we go into the city and paint on location. It's always been a very fun class. And it's always been in the morning. This February I will be teaching it again, however, it will be in the afternoon. I thought I knew downtown Phoenix pretty well but this has forced me to find new places. More accurately, it has helped me to see old places in a new way. That's what happened with this painting. I've seen this church a hundred times before but never this way. I did this last Saturday afternoon looking west on Monroe. I think it is one of the locations we'll go to.

Barriers and Passage Ways

Another view along the canal where I ride in the mornings.

The original scene did not have a gate in the wall. When I painted it that way, it felt like a barrier so I made the opening to allow the viewer to enter the painting.

Sketches in Higley

Started painting at 5 AM this morning and painted for about an hour and a half. These are the results. Each painting is about 3x5 & took about 20 - 30 minutes.

Fast Color Sketches

I've been trying to get out every morning and do a painting. It's not been easy as I am still in the final stages of finishing the illustrations for "The Tomb Robbers And King Tut" (the book I am illustrating for Viking Books). I often find myself in the position of having a finite segment of time with an infinite amount of things I would like to paint and wanting to make the best use of my time and not waste it on a lousy painting. I often thereby paralyze myself with indecision. Then I was looking through Kevin Macpherson's book and saw this little 3 x 5 color sketch he did. It inspired me. So the last few days I have been going out and doing 2 - 4 little color sketches/notes in about an hour. They are 4 x 5 inches. I am using a #6 bright for a brush, which is fairly large for that size of painting. This of course speeds up the process and forces me to really simplify.

Monday I went out to the Salt River basin just NE of Mesa. I arrived early and was all set up by 5:30 when the sun was beginning to peak over the horizon. This was my first painting. It had the moon getting ready to set.

I then drove down the road a ways where Red mountain was getting the early warm rays of the sun.

Turning about 90˚ to the right was this view of the layers of mountains.

More Utah

Ink Studies, Siguenza Spain and Heber Utah

I'm wanting to take a break from the city work I've been doing. Just for awhile.b So here are some ink studies I've been doing to explore some ideas for paintings. In these studies, I am trying to break the composition down to about 3 or 4 main values.
These first 2 are based on sketches and photos from a trip to Spain a few years ago.

In the mountains of Utah is the Heber Valley. My Mom was born there and then grew up not far away in the then mining town of Park City. We visited there every summer of my childhood. We now have a cabin in the same vicinity, thanks to my wife's family, so we continue to spend a week or 2 there every summer. For years I have thought, I need to paint this place. I'm finally going to start. This again is based on a photo from some time ago.

60 Minute Head

Another of my efforts to regain my head painting abilities. It wasn't really only 60 minutes. I did the first pass in 1 hour and then did a little work on the shadow side of the face. You can see how it is not as broadly painted as the shadow. I started with a palette knife, laying in large shapes of color and then refined it a little with brushes. The first lay-in was pretty good but a couple days later, I realized the shadows were not dark enough. That was when I got back into the painting and fussed around a little too much with the forms in the shadows. Nonetheless, I'm reasonably pleased with the outcome.

It's All In Your Head…And Hand…And Heart

Self Portrait

Observing light on a form and translating it into paint on canvas. It's not just seeing. It's grasping the the visual world in a way that you can understand it well enough to describe it on a 2D surface. Finding how to manipulate both the observed form and the paint itself to give an explanation of what you see. The stuff you have to work with is paint, brushes, color, value, shape, edges, contrast. Those are physical things you manipulate. Raw information comes in through the eyes. It goes out through your hand, brush and paint onto the canvas. In between, in the mind and in the heart is where the stuff really happens.

Painting a Head

It's been awhile since I've painted from a model, I went to scottsdale Artist School last Saturday and painted a head. I know some artists who seem to never lose their chops. For me, if I'm not doing it regularly, I feel it. I had to really work on this. I painted a couple of hours at the school and then reworked it for a couple more at home. Although I see more I should do with some of the forms, it's now fairly satisfying. But I see I need to be doing this more often.