Almost done and just started

Almost done!

Just started:  2 x 2 foot Masonite panel, gesso, spray paint

I had a hard time taking the photo of the Masonite panel for some reason, but it’s 2 x 2 feet — which will be the largest surface I’ve yet painted.  Hmm.  My palette knife has been calling for something bigger, and here it is.  So gesso, and some spray painted nonsense for a background.  I hope to work on both of these this weekend!  🙂

Well this painting is done I guess.

The Eleven Have Assembled, acrylic on 11″ x 14″ canvas, October 20, 2012

I actually stopped painting this over two weeks ago, but at the time felt like it still needed something…  Then I looked at it the other day and it definitely seemed done.  I knew this would happen, because it’s happened before.  I get to a point where I feel like a painting is almost done, but still needs something.  While I try to figure out what that something is — I was thinking a lizard or a yellow-headed poison dart frog in the upper right for this one — at some point before I do, it just seems done.  Completely done.

What is going on here?  This always makes me question my artistic judgment.  Did it really need something?  Or did it really not?  Does it really still need something and I’ve just gotten used to how it looks and can’t see that anymore?  Man, what a frustrating way to end a painting.  I mean, I like it now, but I’m left with these nagging, perhaps unresolvable, questions — wondering if it could be better.  Grrrr!

Anyway, about the painting.  “The Eleven Have Assembled.”  So we have 11 squares, assembled in this arrangement.  I thought wording the title that way lended it some import.  Wax resists, washes, washes, and more washes, then splashes, a rough masked and spray-painted border, and then the squares and their textures!  The blue squares are manganese blue mixed with light modeling paste.  The orange are fluorescent orange mixed with gel opaque.  You can see quite a difference in body between the two.  I made all the textures the same way with my trusty palette knife.  The modeling paste with the heavy body blue dried rough and sharp.  The gel opaque basically kept the texture but flowed a little smoother.  The orange paint does not declare a weight, but it’s runnier than heavy body yet thicker than soft bodied paints.  I should mix each paint with the other medium and see what happens.  🙂

I like the effect I got here with the gel opaque, but I’m basically disappointed with the stuff.  I got it from Utrecht.  I would think that a product named “gel opaque” would just turn transparent and translucent paints opaque.  I had read before that opaque mediums do lighten the paint a little, but this stuff whitens it as much as adding titanium white!   What then is the point of this?  Falsehood in advertizing if you ask me.  Apparently the point is to sell expensive medium.  So, I have the stuff now, so I’ll use it, but lets be honest — it’s really just a white gel medium.   Opaquing paint without lightening it would seem to be a holy grail of sorts…

I guess I can say I’ve finally done what I’ve been trying to do with blue and orange since at least July with small painting 22.  That’s a good thing.  🙂

More

More little blocks of color

More texture!

Now all they need is more paint!

New starts

This is the one I mixed up all that alizarin yuck for. Ok, so it’s not so new. It’s new to you! 🙂

All silver and gold spray paint here. The silver was supposed to dry with a hammered metal finish. Yeah, not so much. It’s still plenty shiny though!

Border and background both ready to go! Please, no one tell me it already looks finished. It’s really, really not… 🙂

So that’s some stuff I got laying around the “studio” (also known by the moniker “the basement”).

Happy Halloween!

A year of painting and blogging!

Today I have been writing this blog for one year.  🙂  I started this to blog my paintings, suspecting that getting a little feedback on them would motivate me to keep me painting.  It worked!!  Moreover, I took Jim’s advice and decided to stick to a schedule of posting twice a week.  Though I did shift my original Tuesday/Friday schedule to Wednesday/Saturday, I still cannot believe I have actually posted twice a week — every week — for a full year.  Of course some posts have been… lackluster, but then I’ve also been surprised by which have been more popular.

So on this, the conclusion of year one, I want to sincerely thank all of you.  Thank you.  Thank you for visiting!  It’s not flattery — it’s straight truth when I tell you that it’s your comments and likes that keep the posts and paintings coming.  🙂

I want to especially thank Jenna, Marina, Dani, Joseph, and QueridaJ for all the artistic support and encouragement!  Thank you so much!  🙂

Here is a slideshow of the OMIGOD 61 paintings (mostly) I’ve completed this past year:

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Painting: Alizarin Yuck 2

Alizarin Yuck 2, acrylic on 11″ x 14″ canvas, October 22, 2012

There it is, the finished painting.  Here are the last few in-progress shots I hadn’t posted until now:

Added some black over the alizarin yuck. More than I intended to…

And the promised square!

It’s pretty much just an exploration into washes, drips, and palette knifed on paint.  But it was fun!  🙂

Insert clever title here

This completes the yellow washes

…which of course means it needs some blue splashes!

So yeah, after yet another laconic post I think I’m just going to go downstairs now and paint some more on it.

I think it needs a square.  😛

More paint on those canvases

Yellow washes!

The main change here is the blue border. And there are some more penciled in squares. Ooooo!  Foreshadowing…

So that’s some progress on those two.  I’m really counting on pictures being worth a thousand words, because today that’s really all I got.  🙂

A blue square

• un carré bleu
• ένα μπλε τετράγωνο
• en blå fyrkant
• sgwâr glas
• cast +4 square of blueness

What is it with me and squares?  I don’t know.  Good question.

Yup! That square is definitely blue. Definitely! Definitely!!

I mixed manganese blue with some modeling paste to retain some of the texture.  It worked and I think that’s the direction for this painting!

I invented a new “color”

I call it “Alizarin Yuck”.

Alizarin Yuck. (hint: it’s not the green)

As the result of what some may say was a paint mixing experiment gone horribly wrong (and I may be one of them), I ended up with a big pile of this.  Much more than I wanted for the canvas I mixed it for.  So I spread the rest on these canvases to be the first layer for something else yet to come.

Alizarin yuck.

Actually, I think the pictures make it look better.  Maybe I’m getting used to it — it seems not as bad as it was yesterday.  You know what they say — when life gives you lemons, invent a combustible lemon and use it to burn life’s house down.