November 7, 2014A couple recent outdoor pictures done in Marin
Nicasio Reservoir oil on panel 8x11
Rodeo Lagoon Bridge oil on panel 9x12
I also put in another session on the David picture
I went back to my usual palette. Often enough, a strict limitation or set of parameters of some kind makes painting a bit more interesting and can shake out some ideas, but I wasn't finding it so this time.
October 30, 2014
I've started an oil painting using an old watercolor portrait of David Parker (see June 13 post) as my source. I plan to take a snapshot of each session's progress - or regress - and post it.
First the watercolor, done at the latest in 1990. I was staying at David's house and found him like this in the morning, sitting up in his woolens, pipe lit, and reading National Geographic. I'd already done a picture of him the evening before, but I was full of energy and this was too good.
David Parker watercolor on paper 22x15 collection of the artist
Now that I'm working on the oil, I have to puzzle out what's going on here in terms of the light sources, plus, what is all that stuff?. Well, I don't have to-have to, but I've found after many tries at this kind of thing that I can't make a straight copy with oils and have it look even ok to me, and my way into it, without having the subject in person to look at, or even a photo, is to decide on where the light is coming from, what color it is, whether it's a cloudy day outside, relative humidity, barometric pressure... Joking a little here, but not much. What's really going on is that I occupy myself with these analytical sorts of thoughts while putting down marks until they get a little traction.
I'm not sure why, but for years I've been fascinated by the possibility of making oils or acrylics using my watercolors as sources, and I've done one after the other, usually destroying or abandoning work on the result. Of course, I destroy/abandon plenty of other studio paintings for the same reasons - they look bad and I don't choose to keep torturing an already clogged and unpleasant paint surface, so maybe it has little to do with the source.
Anyway, one of my ways to amuse myself - consideration of the barometric pressure not being enough - is to work with a limited or unusual palette. For this one, I've chosen strontium yellow (an outdated dullish lemon yellow similar to the more modern nickel titanate yellow), yellow ochre, burnt sienna, copper chromite black spinel (a cool, inorganic black, usually sold under a proprietary name like the tube I'm using: Fragonard Black, made by Pebeo), viridian, and lead white.
First go, 32x24
When the whole thing is done, we can look back and see that I should have stopped here.
It looks pretty good, except the figure resembles me more than it does David, who my brother Glenn has described with amazing accuracy as a "natural Hugh Hefner" (btw, "natural" was one of David's preferred adjectives, delivered in the one-word sentence "Natural," to denote his approval of something). The watercolor looks like David, but the drawing is a little mushy and I couldn't quite make the direct transcription to oil convincing.
I worked and reworked the face but it just got more cartoony. I dug through my old photos and came up with one - me painting David standing in his doorway, from 1990.
This is about the actual size of the snapshot; David's face is less than an eighth of an inch high: I know because I measured it. Note the ridiculous clear lucite palette I'm using.
Here's session number two, the latest:
The microscopic photo helped with the general likeness, but my nice light effect from the first session is gone. More coming soon.
September 23, 2014
This is new:
Lefty oil on panel 9x12
From one of my favorite places - Stonington, Maine - fall morning/fish shack.
And here are a couple older pictures, two of my favorites from 1996, the first time Charlene and I went to France. They're from a vinyard near St. Saturnin in Provence, looking toward a hilltop hamlet called Croagnes. Done in alkyd on paper, they were painted one immediately after the other.
First,
Croagnes alkyd on paper 11x15 collection of Ms. Sonia Scott
Then stepping back, including the grown-over stone wall -
Croagnes 2 alkyd on paper 11x15 collection of the artist because I like it
June 13, 2014
Oldies today - off-the-cuff portraits on paper from the 90's.
The last place Charlene and I lived before moving to California was Hancock, NH, a small town in the Mt. Monadnock area. One of our neighbors was a man named Tom Pond, who hosted a philosophy book club, a monthly event that drew some of the more bookish locals to discuss the month's reading assignment (I remember Bertrand Russell and Iris Murdoch) over coffee and snacks. I did this quick painting, probably in the fall of 1998, of Tom on his porch, me on the grass below.
Portrait of Tom Pond alkyd on paper 15x20 private collection
Next is a watercolor of David Parker, a long time Maine friend of my father and stepmother. David was a gratifying model - perfectly happy to sit and smoke Parodi cigars for as long I wanted. I did this from his livingroom couch. When I showed it to my dad, he exclaimed, "Pasha Parker!"
Portrait of David Parker watercolor on paper 11x15
This last must be circa 1991 - 93 (I now have to do stylistic connoisseurship on my own pictures when I've neglected to date them): it's a watercolor of my father painting in watercolor.
Jim Hughes painting watercolor on paper 22x15
March 16, 2014
Last week was workshop week - here's a quick one I did in Nicasio, CA on the first day. Note the green - it'll turn brown soon and stay that way until next February or March.
March 4, 2014
A painting of my friend T. M. Nicholas done in the Owens Valley outside of Bishop, CA, I don't know, around 2000 or so.
T. M. Nicholas oil on canvas 24x20 private collection
February 14, 2014
Studio self-portrait oil on paper 22x30I don't know. Another painting. Seems to look like me. It's painted on a gessoed watercolor paper that has a really assertive surface, so 50% of my work on this was filling in the holidays (hollows between bumps, or the interstices between threads in canvas). More than 50%.
And here's another Maine-in-summer pic, from Beal's Island or maybe Great Wass.
Harborside garden oil on panel 17x24
January 29, 2014
Here's a rapid end-of-day 12x16 sketch of one of the students in my workshop last week.
Workshopper oil on panel 12x16
And here are a few of the alla prima pictures that will be in the Marin Masters show next week:
Interior study oil on panel 9x12
This was done some time during the sittings for the Sandra Wulff portrait (see below).
On Ramp oil on panel 8x12
Done in Oakland, from the Embarcadero frontage road, looking across I 880.
Tracks oil on panel 8x11
I like to paint edge-of-town pictures.
January 27, 2014
I'll have quite a few paintings in this year's Marin Masters exhibition
All oils and mostly 8x11 to 12x16 sizes. More information HERE.
December 4, 2013
Click on WHAT'S NEW 2008-2012, scroll down to the January 14, 2009 post, skipping over the first installment of my blow-by-blow account of the big fog picture's progress, and you'll see the genesis of the painting below disguised as a paean to spring clamps. In 2009 I started it in SF and had to stop for a while. Started it up again in October 2011 at the Berkeley City Club as a kind of ongoing entertainment for the members. I had a notion of painting the picture in a dramatic/elegant/old-fashioned location and getting some attention from the club attendees, maybe the press - like those might be good things. I even thought I might write a magazine article on the process once completed. Red flag right there.
I flubbed the press alerts, but I did have many many people walk by, some questioning, some commenting. Hindsight has shown me what foresight or even common sense did not - the difficulties I was inviting: poor light; little room to move; constant interruption; my tendency to indulge in loquacity when the topics of ME, PAINTING, MY PAINTING are broached, and in a related characteristic; reliance on an unreliable ability to pull out a decent painting in not-quite-ideal circumstances.
I think we had 17(!) sessions. I never quite got the traction I need to carry through, and then a little before Christmas, my model Sandra said she was going away for the holiday, so I snapped a few pictures.
Then the work started. I painted and repainted over the existing painting, squeezing what I could out of the pictures I took. I thought I'd finished it around the end of 2012 and brought it home to show Charlene. She pointed out a distractingly inconsistent treatment of modelling in some areas of the painting - which I'd wilfully ignored - so I brought it back to the studio and turned it against the wall for awhile.
Until May or June this year. I turned it face forward and it was apparent, for once, what I had to do: another fairly complete redo of Sandra's shoulders, arms. Honestly, after all the redoing, what was another? Anyway, a redo always invites more redos, at least for me. So I redid the dress, why not? Let's redo the hand again, just because.
Well, the redos are redone. I have not had it properly photographed, but here's my rough and ready jpeg.
Portrait of Sandra Wulff oil on canvas, 46x32
And, since I can't let it go yet, a couple photos taken by Charlene at the Berkeley City Club.
November 21, 2013
I went scouting/painting locations for my Walnut Creek workshop a couple weeks ago. I stopped at the Borges Ranch, or near it, and worked a few hours on the 20x30 below (since finished in the studio) until I thought the light had changed more than I was willing to follow. But there was time for more, so I put up the 9x12 below below, and painted the same thing, running after the shadows.
Afternoon Ride oil on canvas 20x30
Study for Afternoon Ride oil on panel 9x12
Here's another alla prima done in September in Hope Valley
September color oil on panel 11x14
September 21, 2013
Back from the Hope Valley workshop - a beautiful place to paint, two very windy days, two still days, one overturned easel (mine). Here's a very brief video of me working on a painting, to be finished in the studio -
I'm painting from near the spot from which this watercolor was painted a dozen years ago, looking upriver -
September 13, 2013
I went to the EBMUD plant in West Oakland a couple days ago - a lot of not much to paint, which suits me sometimes - and did these two: first the woodpile and then, turning 45 degrees, the heaps of rubble with the freeway and the Oakland twin federal towers in the distance.
Wood pile, West Oakland oil on panel, 9x12
Evening rubble heaps oil on panel, 9x12
I had initially parked on the opposite side of the road, on the other side of the railroad tracks seen above, relishing the unnecessary use of my old Jeep's four wheel drive, but a man in fluorescent colors drove up and told me I couldn't park there: city property, liability concerns, etc, etc. "What about the other side of the road?" I asked, noting the EBMUD no parking signs every three feet: "Not my problem," he said.
August 16, 2013
One more pic for the China Camp group - this started as a demonstration painting on the first morning of my Marin workshop last month, since buffed up in the studio.
Gray day at China Camp oil on panel, 18x24
August 4, 2013
I added a few pictures to the ALLA PRIMA gallery - alla prima, au premier coup, en plein air, painted in one go.
This one was done really quickly at Sand Harbor on the east shore of Lake Tahoe quite some time ago. I was painting - I don't know, something - which fascinated a few of the swimming kids, at least for the short term. One of them, shown in the picture, wanted to pose and gave me not more than 20 minutes before he slipped off the rock and went about his business. A fairly big apunte, painted over another, somewhat lumpy, painting, this thing gives me a little charge of enjoyment whenever I run across it in the stacks.
Tahoe kid sketch oil on panel, 16x20
Next is one I did recently, painting a model with a group of artists at China Camp State Park, in San Rafael, CA. A more staid performance than the one above. Same pose almost.
Breezy day oil on paper, 22x15
Last for today is also from China Camp, looking out across the bay in the morning before my workshop students arrived, done the Tuesday before last. Reminded me of an east coast sky.
Morning, San Pablo Bay oil on panel, 10x11
July 27, 2013
My Marin workshop just finished - it was terrific. We spent two grayish days at China Camp, then two sunny ones at Nicasio, working throughout so that everyone went home pleasantly tired.
Acrylic demo at Nicasio photo by Priscilla Patey
Which prompts me to advertise the next one: the Hope Valley workshop is going to be great. Any artists reading this who might like to take one of my workshops but haven't really decided - this one will have not only whatever I have to offer in the way of instruction, morale-building, jokes; it also has the place itself: beautiful, varied in its charms, uncrowded save for fishermen and the odd artist here and there. Anyway, I like it.
In other news, I've started this fresh new What's new page and put the last year's worth into the clearly marked archive to be found in the menu bar.