Too Much Information? Don't Paint.

WATCH THE GREENS DANCE

Golds and reds are creeping into the greens as I write.

Today was a bum day in the studio. I came to hate my portrait of Steve and Zac. What happened was I read Vianna's blog. The  paragraph that grabbed my interest:

The first time I heard that remark, I thought, “Huh?” I spent so much time painstakingly reproducing every inch of a painting to look exactly like the photo or the set up. I took great pride in my ability to render but my art suffered for lack of editing. It also affected my enthusiasm; copying is tedious work.

She was right. Damn it.

Then I read Carolyn Andersen, Viannan's mentor's Thoughts on Painting. That article underlined what Vianna had written.

And I thought that's right. I've gone beyond where I wanted to go with Steve and Zac. I was copying a photograph. I went downstairs to the studio and tried to loosen it up, but I had gone too far; I had pushed into formal portraiture. I removed my attempt to correct strokes and went to read Schmid. He was writing about starting a painting and zeroing in on what interests you. Everything else doesn't matter. The thing that attracted me to paint Zac and Steve is the difference between their expressions: Steve, the father, is sweet and loving; Zac,the boy, was a smart-ass eleven year old.

My head was spinning from all the information I took in over the day. I ended up removing Steve and Zac from the easel. I mixed all of the paints left on the palette together to make a lovely, warm, yukky gray, good for the monochromatic, 'blocking in method.' I'll try tomorrow, without reading a thing.

I should have painted greens. I was going to, but Vianna's post side tracked me and I ended up having a day like the day I had when I took a tennis lesson on serving the ball. I was pretty good at serving walking onto the court, but not walking off. After the lesson, I couldn't serve to save my life. No aces were coming off of my racquet; my head was filled with what-you-should-do pointers from the pro.

Bottom line: If you're reading about how artists make art, don't paint that day and expect anything worthwhile. You need time to absorb the information. Instead, go out on the deck and watch the trees dance with the wind.

Interesting fact: Schmid paints on lead primed canvas or masonite. That allows him to go back to a totally white surface if he has to. Gesso primed canvas absorbs the colors that stain.

Something Easy

You all know by now that this new,improved format is driving me nuts; my "art" is deteriorating. I'm furiously drawing fry pans full of mushrooms, cartooning monsters and painting distruction. My chagrin has ended all  focused activities in the studio--although the break did point out some inaccuracies in the portrait of the two brothers as I paced the place wringing my hands. I just can't figure out how to get the images of previous posts to show up where they belong in place of those exclamation points.  I never use exclamation points when I write. I was taught it was an extraneous punctuation mark; the words should be exciting enough. My missing images are screaming my alarm.

 I'm writing right now, just to write. I want enough words in this post box so I can add an image and see what I can do with it in this new format.  I tried picture placement yesterday, but  only got one  in the center of the field when Honey called me for dinner.  I often like to put them on the right side to break up the copy--much like you would break up copy with paragraph breaks...I've  meandered enough. Let's see what dragging does? Okay!  Here's early spring photographed Friday behind my house. That's an improvement--although I didn't get to size it... I know nothing about pixels. I relied on "small," "medium" and "large."

Nevertheless, a step forward. A reference photo for Spring in the Bog posted.  And printed out. The scene will be a nice landscape, if I eliminate the tall tree in the foreground. At last, something easy.