Late Afternoon Sun

A view of Phoenix on a winter day, late afternoon.
Focused on simplifying shapes and values.

6 x 8, oil on card board

Gouache

Just South of Downtown Phoenix in the old warehouse district. A little gouache study.

I may have mentioned before, I have a love hate relationship with gouache. I enjoy it's opacity and the unexpected accidents that happen. And I love the matte satin finish. It can be a little tricky though because it changes value so much as it dries.

Drawing and Probity

Drawing is the probity of art - Jean Dominique Ingres. I had to look up probity: uncompromising adherence to the highest principles and ideals. That could have more than one meaning.  

One is, you can't fake it in drawing. In painting, you can dress things up with color, texture, showie brushwork, etc. But in drawing its just you, your pencil and the paper. You are somewhat naked to the world showing all your strengths and your faults. 

This is good in at least 2 ways. First, it reveals what you need to work on. But more importantly, it gives you the most direct form of expressing your ideas and perceptions. 

Milton Glaser tells a wonderful story.* His wife brought home a gift, a new turntable for his classical records. The store owner said it was the best you could buy. It was just a slab of wood with a turn table and the stylus arm. No automatic retraction of the arm, no dials or controls except for an on and off switch. 

"What did you pay for this"?

"A thousand dollars".

Milton went back to the store and asked the owner what was up with this simple device costing $1000?

"Did you swindle my wife?"

"Did you try playing it?"

"No."

"Go try it and then come back."

Of course, when Glaser played it, his records sounded better than ever. When he went back to the store, the owner explained that for the best sound, you want as little interference between the initial signal and the final sound. Every time you add a spring for automatic retraction of the arm, a dial for this, a knob for that, you create interference.

In drawing, its just pencil and paper, dark and light. Straight from your perception to the final image with minimal interference. Probity.

*I can't find the original story so this is best as I can remember it. Details may be off but the basic idea is accurate.

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.

The Color of Brown

Last week I posted a plein air painting I did of this building in Phoenix. I wasn't overly happy with it but I felt there was potential. Here is a second version that I did in the studio. I cropped in closer and gave more thought to the color of the building. I like the compression of space that happens when you paint a small part of a distant view.

Here is last weeks version.

Sargent in Phoenix

I went to the Phoenix Art Museum on Wednesday to take some pictures of a John Singer Sargent portrait.

A story is told of a journalist who made arrangements to come and observe Sargent paint. The journalist came and sat to watch what he thought would be a flurry of flailing brushes and paint. Instead, Sargent would look carefully, mix up a color on his brush, raise it to the canvas and hold it there for a few moments without making the stroke. He would do this a few times and then finally lay on a beautiful stroke. The journalist thought Sargent was teasing him, until he realized: that's how careful Sargent was to get the right color, value and intensity in each stroke. That's what I like in this painting, the beautiful transitions of tone that portray the light falling over the form-without obscuring the brush strokes! No smoothing out. Each stroke is perfectly modulated in it's value and hue creating the beauty of form plus the beauty of one stroke of color against another stroke of color. 

Jean-Leon Gerome. When I was in college, he was held in derision as a promulgator of the stiff academic tradition of the French Academy which opposed the Impressionists. Regardless of what one thinks now, this painting shows tremendous skill in composition, values and story telling.

Finally, a painting by Walter Ufer, one of the early Taos Artists. Ufer's paintings intrigue me because of the luminosity in the form shadows. He puts so much reflected light into them that they often become as light in value as some of the areas that are illuminated by the initial light source. That is usually considered a bad thing but he pulls it of by controlling all the other values and changes of hue. As a result, there is an interplay of figure/ground that doesn't often happen in figurative/realist work. The B/W version below makes this even more apparent. Notice the masterful arrangement of values. In some areas, the figures are lighter than the surrounding shapes, darker in others and same value in still others. (James Gurney calls this the Windmill Principle and gives a good explanation.}