Insta-painting

A Study in Brown Boots, three.

For my friend's birthday, I decided to use three of the tiny canvasses that I already had (see previous post). There is something very gift-able about tiny canvasses. A large canvas can be a burden on those who are in transient parts of their lives (as I am too), which is not how you'd like your gift to be perceived of course.

To make these gifts more personal, I decided to use three of her Instagram photos as the theme.  She often takes photos of her shoes on Instagram so I chose a study of three brown boot photos, one of which happened to be a photo of both her feet and mine. I worked on them all at once so that I could keep the brown of the boots similar.

Here are the paintings underneath the original photos:

The floor got an accidental texturing when I went to just put on a light wash of burnt umber and paynes gray, but the paint had already started to congeal and harden on the palette. I liked the texturing though so I replicated it all over the floor. I think that it keeps the wood floor from swallowing up the brown boots. I was already worried that this one would have too much brown.

My feet are in the cowboy boots while hers are in the rounder boots, which are the same in all three pictures. The cowboy boots seemed difficult at first but they went in like a dream. Oddly it was the left plain boot which frustrated me the most--the perspective is still not my favorite but sometimes knowing when to stop messing about and just call it good is the best thing an artist can do. Otherwise you end up scraping and repainting one area and the whole picture can begin to look overworked.

I couldn't resist making the single leaf in this two boot shot more prominent than it really was. I think that it draws the eye over and even gives the impression that looking intently at that leaf was the true intention of the the owners of the two boots. 

I had a lot of fun with the leaves here and made them brighter and more prominent while also downplaying the texture of the ground. I'm still wondering if I should have gone with the texture or not--at the time it just seemed too busy. 

Raw Sienna and Burnt Umber are invaluable. It's amazing how difficult a really great brown is to mix if you only have primary colors. I find that a touch of raw sienna can enhance almost any mixture with added depth.

I'm quite happy with how these knees turned out. Once I saw how slick they came out, the rest of the project just flowed out (even though I stopped midway to go get brunch). 

The cloth of the skirt had a nice consistent pattern which made the shadows easy to build into the picture. 

One thing about these downward perspectives was that it was not intuitive which way was "up". Each canvas is 3x3 and should be hung near each other, in my opinion. Otherwise it would just be a random tiny painting of someone's feet.

So it goes...

After months of not painting (to study, of all things. bleh), I popped out this lil portrait of Kurt Vonnegut for a very good friend of mine. It's teeny, which was necessary. I want very much to be good at faces, but it's slow going and I need to be an unintimidated as possible to attempt one.

The tiny canvasses came in a five-pack, so I'm going to keep trying. Even though I sent this one overseas, I might continue with the author theme. Maybe I'll try David Foster Wallace next.

The Dark Knight

This bat leapt out of my mind a few years ago. Unfortunately it landed on a bit of scrap wood that I had liberated from the back of the store room at a former place of employment. I've always really liked bats. They are furry and clever and can fly. What's not to like?

This painting was born out of the mental circuitous reasoning that if bats use sound to see, then they are like conductors of colors. Here the bat's wings take on the pose of an ancient maestro. And in the night, colors float on the air like notes. 

Drawing Life

I went to a life drawing class last weekend--something I've never done before but have always been intrigued. I would recommend it strongly to any artist who is feeling a little uninspired or lacking the time and energy to create art on your own. I have been feeling all of that lately. Graduate school is not conducive to one's hobbies.

A friend of mine came up with the idea to go. (I strongly recommend bringing a friend. A nude in a well-lit room is all kinds of awkward, so someone to make regular eye contact with is a blessing). But it was just what I needed. It was like an artistic workout. The model started out doing a series of two minute poses, during which my pencils flew to make crude outlines before her timer went off. Some of the results are just pathetic--but no time to care, just flip to a fresh page and begin again! She gradually did longer poses and here are some of the results:

Even though they are just so very rough, there is a life to them that appeals to me. In my haste to beat the timer, I infused my energy into the drawing. This exercise mocked my usual tendency to agonize over the details and exposed my real instincts. 

PhotoHog

I am not a good photographer.

And by saying that I don't mean that I crop heads out of the picture, or fail to focus properly, or skew the horizon, I mean that I don't take photos with pure intentions (and sometimes I do skew the horizons...) And in this facebookian world, perhaps few people are pure of camera anymore. But I've almost always plotted and schemed my digital images with the idea that I will use each pretty picture as a reference for a painting. The photos I take are a means to an end. A jumping off point. If I do take a picture for the sake of it, then I put much less thought into the composition and the lighting, etc.

Photos are so easy to take though--whereas time to paint is incomprehensible most of the time. Especially this week. And next week will likely feel the same.

But sometimes I do manage to get from vista to click to upload to composition to actual paint on actual canvass.... like here:

Here is a photo I took of some rowboats in southern Europe.

Much more fun, right? Once I plotted their position I barely looked at the original picture again. Real life colors don't interest me too much. I experimented with the sea floor and waves with impunity and was mostly pleased with all the strange bits. The water is much less realistic than the boats (which is saying something) and there is a lot of texture that this photo doesn't really capture. 

I really like how the shadows turned out 

Without shadows, a painting is anchor-less

Each boat had to have its own personality.

(I do not enjoy taking photos of paintings based on my photos)

Captain Kirk's Girlfriend

Muses come in many forms. An obvious lair is the art museum, where we aspiring artists miss the paintings for the brush strokes. I peer into the corner section of an Ensor, eyes agog to take in the technique. I often leave art museums with an idiotic sense of shared ability. Then I take up my brush and stand staring stupidly into the nonchalant canvas for an hour. 

But I'm frequently visited by the Muse of the commercially cerebral Victoria's Secret catalog. The girls are voluptuous and pouty and pose in semi-natural  positions (as compared to high fashion modeling). Also they wear very little clothes, so it's a nearly nude study of catalog-perfect bodies. I'm a product of western consumerism so while I will paint a good chunky lady with pleasure, I gravitate to the typical hip-to-breast hourglass that is the archetype feminine silhouette. 

The top painting is the first draft of a sexy green lady I painted in 2009 and here is the finished product:

I attempted many versions of the face; struggling with something that was understated but not too weird. Obviously the face is the least interesting part of the work. This is one of the few pieces that I bothered naming. I liked the uber-nerd reference as well as an attempt to explain why she is green. To be honest (and that is what this blog is all about), I was experimenting with form and using an atypical color to highlight the importance of form. I think I meant to make her many colors, but the green just flowed so well. Regardless, she is one of my favorites. Acrylic on a found piece of particle board. 

Bollywood

This is an old one for me; painted sometime in 2006 while I was taking a Bollywood film class for my undergrad degree (it was an elective). The layers of clothing inspired me, as well as the colors. I can't say exactly why I grouped my people in the center like this though. It's not a great composition, but I was experimenting with human form and cloth techniques. I like the trees, especially the way that the bark came out. Truthfully, I had intended to fill the scene with different people to give a sense of crowding (India) but I guess I got bored and put in the trees instead.