Woman Thinking In Pink And Red; Woman Standing In Primary Colors; Woman Resting In Blue And Yellow; Woman Reclining In Primary Colors

Today's sketches, from life.

Standing Woman was a five minute drawing; the rest were 30 minute drawings.

Pastel and charcoal on approximately 9"x12" Sennelier La Carte Pastel Card.

Thanks, Casey Klahn at the Colorist for recommending this support.  I like its finely sanded surface, and it's easy to make four 9x12s out of one large sheet.

Huge improvement in working conditions

This beautiful new palette (the glass top) with shelves is precisely the right height for me when I'm painting. It's also on rollers that really roll, so I can move it around to where its needed.

The glass is great because I can scrape it clean, if needed (razor blade paint scraper), and also because I can get paint off of it and onto the support easily.

The shelving system underneath it works beautifully. It's a custom assemblage put together, on the spot, by an extremely helpful salesperson at the Container Store in Old Town Pasadena. Randy asked me about my purpose for the shelving and then designed this system that works beautifully for me--and then pulled the parts and put it all together right there--and took it out to the car. Of course, it's worlds better than my old system, a piece of glass on a too short trashcan, but it's also terrific, period.

Sad Woman

Sad Woman was drawn from life in 2008. It's on paper, about 15"x22."

I spent today at a workshop taught by Steven Saitzyk at Art Center College of Design. The topic was "Mastering Oil Painting," basically a tour through the materials and techniques oil painters use, with thoughtful and informed explanations for why things are done the way they are--and with recommendations for best and safest practices. This was enlightening in many respects and money well spent on my part because it provides a framework for analysis of future painting issues, as well as answering specific, immediate questions about safety, solvents, oils, paints, media, varnishes, and supports.

One question the workshop answered was whether it makes any significant difference to our environment to give up using pigments made from toxic metals. The short answer, I believe at this point, is no, if the paints are used responsibly. Additionally, because of the relatively short history of modern paints that do not use these toxic metals, while there may not be known problems with some of them, this does not mean they are not harmful. The bottom line, I think, is to use what works best for the particular application, but use it as carefully and responsibly as I can.

Three Oil Sketches from Life, 2008

These are oils on 12"x12" squares of cardboard. They were painted from life, in Ron Llanos' painting class at ACAN. Cardboard is a wonderfully soft and textured surface to paint on--and you can frequently get it for free. The obvious drawback is that it probably won't last as long as other supports, but I did gesso (prime) these cardboards before painting on them, so they are somewhat protected.

Adding glazes and modifying Lorena 20"x24"

The portrait of Lorena finally got dry enough for me to try applying some glazes. I used M Graham's non-toxic walnut alkyd medium for oils, mixed with small amounts of paint.







Note: The top photo is of the eyes after I read pasadenaadjacent's comment and re-painted; the lower is of the askew eyes pasadenaadjacent commented upon. The last photo is of the whole portrait, as it now looks.

Exercises with the Zorn Palette

These are oil paintings on canvas, each 12"x16" and each done with the Zorn palette (except on the right, it looks like I may have picked up a little ultramarine blue at the end and put it on the hair and maybe some bits of cadmium yellow, also at the end), painted around 2006. The painting on the left is a self-portrait, done while staring in a mirror (and, no, I don't literally look like that, though I certainly painted what I felt at the time); the painting on the right is my version of a color copy of a work by an artist unknown to me. (This was an exercise from my then teacher, John Paul Thornton.)

The Zorn palette, named after a turn of the century (19th to 20th) Swedish painter, consists of white, ivory black, a yellow and a red (so I was told). I think I used yellow ocher and cadmium red, as my yellow and red on the copy of the unknown painting; I think I used alizarin crimson as my red on the self-portrait.

What you will quickly discover with this palette is that colors are relative. Your black and white mixes will look blue-ish, and your yellow and black mixes will look green-ish. If you take your black and white mix and mix it with your red, you will get something purple-ish, and so on. You can get a lot of beautiful colors from mixing these four colors in varying proportions.

In trying to re-construct when these were painted, I googled this wonderful artist, John Paul Thornton, whom I was lucky enough to learn from when he taught at the now closed Fine Artists Factory in Pasadena. His blog is aptly called Art and Courage; apparently he will have a book, available in June, also called Art and Courage. If you are interested in learning from a great teacher, I recommend checking it out. If it is anything like his in-person lessons, it will be well worth looking for.

My 2008 student version of Gustave Courbet's Early Self-Portrait, aka "Is that Johnny Depp in fancy dress?"

Gustave Courbet painted his dramatic self-portrait very early in his career. My copy (from an 81/2"x10" reproduction of the original painting), posted here, is on cardboard in oil paint. The original is astonishingly good--and also astonishing because apparently Johnny Depp has a look-alike in another time and place. (Great jumping off place for a science fiction story).

As general matter, I learned a lot by copying the work of others. This (finding something you liked and copying it in grays in the same size as the original) was an assignment in Ron Llanos' painting class at Art Center at Night. (If you're curious about Ron's critique, he thought it was okay, except for the whites of the eyes, which I made too white. He was absolutely correct. I didn't go back and change the painting, so the error is still visible.)

Initial sketch

This is what I hope will be my second painting from my visit to the Vancouver, Washington farmers market.

I'm painting on a larger scale: this canvas is 30"x40." It's also a canvas that is fresh out of the wrapper (very unusual for me, since I tend to use and re-use my painting supports).

Anyway, since I actually had a white canvas to start, I decided to plan my painting directly on the canvas. I used my dark oil bar to lay down some lines that, while I will soon paint over them, at least give me some assurance that what I'm thinking of can fit well on the canvas.

My plan is to keep adding Flower Seller posts as I paint (this is this morning's work), until I either complete the painting or it morphs into something else.

LA Day:Red

This is a painting in progress. I started it yesterday and will want to wait a day or two and look at it again to see what I want to add/change. It is on a 16"x20" canvas and has its origin in a cell phone photo I took this winter at the old LA Farmers Market.

Although I paint in oil, I don't use any turps or turps substitute. Clean up is by wiping as much off the brushes as possible and then washing/rubbing with soap and water. The brushes are actually in better condition than when I used Gamsol.