Painting Again

I haven't been out painting much lately. I've been busy with illustration work and teaching. But I finally got out last week and painted this house in Mesa. I intended to add the windows when I got back to the studio but I liked the relationship of the masses too much and decided to leave them out.

Antigua Guatemala

Earlier this year I went on a short trip to Guatemala. This painting is a 1 hour study from a photo I took.

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.

"As Long As You Can Start…"

Out looking for something to paint can be a frustrating thing. You know you are going to invest two or three hours so you want to find something to paint that assures your time will be well spent. I should know the the folly of that attitude by now. After wasting an hour driving & walking around in Charleston, Utah searching for a paint-worthy subject, I finally just got out of my car, lugged my traps out into a field and started painting. The house didn't really excite me but I decided to give it a shot. I took Hemingway to heart: "As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come." He was right. I began to see the quality of the mid morning light as a worthy subject.

Therapy

Robert Redford once said, "Everyone in Hollywood has their therapists. I have Utah!" 

Bob has it right. I've been spending time in Utah every summer for the last 50+ years of my life. I went to school at BYU in Utah. My parents both grew up in Park City, Utah. It is a glorious place. One of the fringe benefits of marrying my wife is their family cabin just behind Redford's Sundance Resort.

This photo shows an example of the therapy that Redford spoke of:

(Our cabin is a couple hundred yards behind me as I take this photo.)

Most years I don't spend very much time painting while there and spend time with my family. But since I have that Sonoma Plein Air thing coming, I decided I would try to paint a few pictures.

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

Another Head Study

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.

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.

Backlighting = Shapes

A small study based on a photo in Phoenix. As I've mentioned before, backlighting often provides strong / dark light patterns and shapes to work with.

To Paint…or not…

This is an older apartment building that has intrigued me for years. It is nothing fancy, just a solid building from…the 40's? I've often thought about painting it but never quite got the final click in my head that there was something worth spending a few hours on. Last week I went into Phoenix to paint, after driving around for over an hour, I decided to give this place a shot. I think there are some possibilities here I want to further explore. 8x10 on canvas mounted to board.

Mesa Churches

Practice, Practice …

This past weekend I participated in the quickdraw in Scottsdale's Fall For The Arts Festival. Main street was blocked off and 30 artists filled the street, each creating a piece of art in 2 hours. I wanted to paint this theater from a photo and sketches I had done over in LA earlier this year. I knew it would be a little ambitious to finish a painting this involved so I did a practice version a few days before the event. Sure enough, it took me 4 hours to complete the painting. I did it again and got it down to a little over 3 hours. After 4 more repeated paintings (so 6! altogether), I was able to get it down to 2 hours. Painting the same painting 6 times in a row may not sound very creative, however, I found it to be instructive. It taught me how to better simplify and economize - making every stroke count. When I did the painting on Saturday, I finished in time, not by feverishly throwing paint around, but by making decisions (both rationally and intuitively) about every color I mixed and every stroke I made. It turned out rather well. 

This version is the 6th practice piece.

Central Phoenix

A little (6x6) painting looking south on Central Ave in Phoenix.

Little Acrylic Study, 6"x 6"

Backlit San Francisco

Another study (8x10) based on a photo I took in San Francisco a few years ago. I like painting subjects that are backlit. It simplifies the shapes and creates wonderful atmospheric perspective.

Circles Records and Tapes

One of the cooler buildings in downtown Phoenix is Circles Records and Tapes. It was originally a Studebaker showroom, built back in the forties. Inside the round glass front was a turntable floor that would go round and round with cars on it, showing them off to the passing public. A good example of streamline deco design, of which there is not much in the valley. Sometime in the seventies, it became a record store. Unfortunately, with the changes in the music industry, Circles finally closed in 2010. The building is still there but is threatened by the fact that the owners have not registered it as an historic building. You can read more about it at Modern Phoenix. This is a small color sketch I did from a photo I took a couple years ago.