Two Weeks of Work

Tried working "outside" in the garage this weekend. It was too nice to be in the basement studio. 

Long Time No Post

Things got busy with transporting work for a show as well as a crit on campus last week. With that being the case time in the studio was a little less than normal, below are shots of the images that were worked with over the past week+.

 Oil paint was used to begin to tighten in some detail on portions of the green lamp piece. I think the contrast of some more in focus detail may be a needed balance to some of panels that are mark making focused.

Spent a majority of time working with this piece. The last photo here really shows how the image got away from me, but the opportunity to salvage it should make the image more interesting than where it was going earlier in the week.  

There was a good deal of paint left over on a palette and rather than saving it, the paint was dumped onto these panels along with some of the water from the cleaning bucket. Panels and palette were stacked on top of each other to dry, hopefully they will stick together and when pulled apart something interesting will happen.

Week of 6/13

The panel configurations get worked as flat configurations then broken apart, reassembled and worked again. Looking at the stacks against the wall it became apparent this weekend that the stacks were configurations as well, so in a way to work them as an entire unit or configuration a blue line was painted that meandered across all of them. The edges of the panels really could be more of an important element in my final work than previously thought.

Current in-progress configurations.

Progress on Man with Stripped Shirt image, bottom shot being the most current.

14 of the 15 2x4 panels were built over the past week. Hopefully I can crank through the 18 2x2 this week and next, then rip a few of those squares into triangles, counter sink the nails, putty the holes, prime and sand everything in the next month. I really view the panel fabrication as part of the painting process.

Work 6/11 — 6/12

Beginning to fabricate more panels. The current plan is to build 15 2x4 and 18 2x2. Which would be more than enough for 5 72"x72" configurations. I figure I'd spend an hour each night working a a few before or after I go to the studio.

I gave Caleb a small stretched canvas and a few brushes, he hung out for an hour just fine while I worked Sunday.

This image has been giving me fits, the colors from the source image are skewed warm and red, plus I waffle on the temperature differences between the forehead and the lower portion of the mouth. Currently there is not enough distinction in terms of temperature between the various portions of the facial structures to separate them enough resulting in an image that is flat. Started this one back in early January, it still feels a long way off as either a finished image in and of itself or as parts to be worked into different configurations. 

Work: April 9 – 12

Work from the last few days:

Got the warm value of the baby's sweatshirt blocked in as well as further details to both figures.

Brought some detail back to the iron rendering on the bottom right to help balance out the yellow graphic element above it. Not sure if I like this now. The iron seems more like an illustration than a painting. 

I want to work a single large image on these last untouched panels. Not sure what I want to paint. More time behind the camera is needed to find some new imagery to work from. Or maybe searching for objects of interest may be in store.

This portion of the studio is thought of as the staging area, a place where panels can be arranged  and looked at. I still like the idea of at some point presenting all of the panels in a gallery stacked up against the wall and than rearranged everyday to show new images on the front of the stacks. Maybe even some of the panels would be binder clipped together. 

Progress - Man With Stripped Shirt

Worked on the stripped shirt, trying not to paint each stripe one by one but working the whole thing at once.

Detail

Work from 3/2 — 3/4

Further exploration of panels combining with the large portrait. The flowers were something I had worked on this past summer. They had been almost forgotten until I found this panel at the back of one of the stacks. Kind of a nice surprise when I paired it up with the other panels to it's right. It was exciting to have forgotten about something due to the volume of work in the studio. That will be important to the work. Doing, forgetting, rediscovering, incorporating. This piece may be done.

Proportions: 72"x48"

The bottom panel had been for a long time paired with the large portrait in the top image. Maybe it works better this way. I think that the simplicity of this configuration helps the viewer to really look at the sleeping portrait which had been a huge compositional challenge when it was paired with the large stripped portrait above. I am thinking now that the top panel may look better on the bottom as well rotating it 180 degrees to allow for the linear elements to work off the figurative a little better.

Proportions: 48"x48"

Worked fast and used a lot of matte medium with the paint when roughing in the baby's head. 

The medium really helped give the acrylic some body and I liked how it loosened me up with the application. Not that this was the first time using matte medium in this way, but it had been awhile and I had fun rediscovering what it could do.

Stripes on Shirt

It had been a few weeks since I last worked on this image, began working on pushing values in the face further as well as roughing in the stripes on the shirt.

2-9-11

The last configuration of this seemed to be working, with that being the case some additional paint was added, then sanded. This is starting to work now.

While the paint dried on the Woman with Red Stripes piece some time was spent furthering this piece.