Getting Back To Painting

I am finally starting some larger paintings. For 2 years I have been so wrapped up with the book I was illustrating, along with teaching, that all I have had time and energy for is small plein aires. It is always hard to get back into it. I find all kinds of resistance. I start asking myself, is it really worth the time? Aren't there more worthy pusuits? Is this going to be worth the investment? It's a terrible and unproductive way to feel. I finally slug through and start with small steps. I go through sketches and photos and make more sketches. Finally, something starts to emerge. I would like to pick up this painting at that stage and share my process with you as I progress.

This is a photo I shot in LA back in 2013. I've worked with it a few times feeling like there is something there but, until now, never got the juice going.

                                     

After doing these sketches, I felt there were some possibilities. I then did a small 4 x 5 color sketch.

I liked what was happening but was still feeling a little iffy. I finally decided to do a section of it as a study, although a relatively large study that would stand on it's own.

So this is one of the 2 paintings I am working on. It is 22" x 28". This is the first pass. When doing a larger painting I usually do quite a bit of changing, scraping out, glazing, repainting all of which gives a lot of texture and depth. So over the next few weeks, I will show the progress and talk about process to the final painting.

Here it is in a little bit earlier stage.

I will be posting my progress in the coming weeks.
Happy New Year.

The Big Sleep…or…The Big Burn

Some paintings just paint themselves. In this case, what started out as one of those times developed into a much more adventurous endeavor.

The Loyola was a wonderful old theater in my hometown of Westchester, a suburb of LA. As with the Globe in a previous post, I took some pictures back in the late 70’s. A few years ago, I finally decided to start a little study. It turned out to be a rich experience of color, paint strokes and nostalgia. 

It sold quickly at my gallery to a couple from Northern AZ. Soon after, they moved to the damp West Coast. (They settled in Marina del Rey, about five miles from the location of the Loyola!) About a year later, the buyer came back to the gallery explaining that the painting was pealing off the backing! They were very respectful but said they either wanted their money back or for the artist to repaint the painting on a more permanent ground. So I began repainting. Everything was going along swimmingly until I tried to hurry up the drying process before I painted in the final elements. As I often do, I put it in the oven, raised the heat to 170, turned off the heat and let the painting sit in the “dryer”. All was well til my wife came home, decided to roast some vegetables, turned on the oven to 400 to pre-heat (without knowing there was something in there) and then got busy with something else and forgot about it. I came in from my studio a few hours later, as I walked into the house I could smell something wrong and found my painting to have a not so wonderful toasted effect.

So I started for the third time. This one should have gone easily but I kept fighting to keep the spontaneity the first painting had. In the end, I was pleased with it, sent it to the patrons and they were thrilled.

About this same time, I did a demonstration at my gallery in Scottsdale where I began another painting of the Loyola, a little different view. The demonstration went well and I thought “with a little more work back at the studio, this could be a swell little painting”. However, when I got home, I couldn’t find it. I drove back and sure enough, it was laying in the middle of the busy intersection of Goldwater and Scottsdale Blvd. I had left it on the top of my car.