Pierre-Paul Prud'hon ,"Standing Female Nude Seen from the Back"

Antonio Mancini "Resting"

Edgar Degas, "Woman in Bath"

I’ve been thinking a lot about the use of texture in composition, and the balance of using things like impasto within a finely tuned painting. Below I’ve put up a couple of new studies, one portrait of the model, and the other a study of my pitcher and lanterns. More to come!

Rachel, 2 hour study

Lanterns, 1 hour study

Using marble dust simply purchased at the nearest art supply store, I added it to the paint I was using, along with a little linseed oil.  Here is the still life set up I was working from.

Unfortunately I didn't use the awesome purple flower things in the final painting, although they still served an important purpose, as will be explained below.

I was so excited about fall, so I had to get some fall veggies to paint, the colors were just too great. Plus I still had an apple from the last still life I did (might as well use it, apples keep their shape for a long time, great for still lifes, although I can only imagine how un-tasty it was!). I was looking at N.C. Wyeth’s work recently, and I love his use of lighting, so I decided to try out something dramatic a la The Opium Smoker.

N.C. Wyeth, "The Opium Smoker"

Here is the underpainting, done with a mix of turpenoid, french ultramarine, and burnt umber (my preferred wash).

This next image shows that I blocked in part of the apple and squash. The pumpkin was blocked in using an amalgam of cadmiums, and I used a pre-mixed pile of titanium/flake white mix with the marble dust and linseed oil molded with a palette knife to create pumpkin-like texture. I decided to do this on the pumpkin only, and the squash I would try to glop on the putty mixture without mixing it with any other colors to first form the texture, and paint over it with color when it was dry enough. This squash slop experiment can be seen ahead as well, although the adventure was only just beginning:

Everything blocked in: partial apple, pumpkin with paint/goop mix, and squash as normal. Glowing white spot of straight white paint texture for the linen table cloth.

Creamy goop in the middle is marble dust and linseed oil. The goopy is then added to the pile of flake white/titanium on the right.

Same block in as the previous photo, only this time with white paint/goop mixture thrown on the squash on the spots that I would form later once it was dry and more moldable. Excuse the yellow tint of the photo!

Also as another type of texture test, as can be seen in the images above, I used both  straight up flake and cremnitz white paint (with no dust or oil) to make the texture of the linen table cloth. I’ve had accidental success (is there any other kind of success?) with making brushy texture with white and later going over it with a thin golden glaze, then wiping it out and leaving a golden glow. So, I thought I would try it on purpose this time. The criss-cross texture was what I was going for, I had no proper brushes that created this sort of look, so I used one of those dried flowers that were in the initial still life set up above. The tops were stiff enough to move the thick paint around, and the separate “bristles” were symmetrically spaced so as to create the look of woven linen. Improvising in the studio can’t be beat.

So as far as the rest goes, unfortunately I didn’t get images of the squash experiment, as it went slightly ary when the goop didn’t dry quickly enough. Such a downer. I set up the goop on the painting to dry over the weekend, and I knew I would be gone for a few days for a family wedding, and thought that I would be able to come back fresh on Monday with a goop that was set and ready for me to shape it before it was dried completely. I come back, all excited to form that squashy texture, feeling so proud of myself and thinking “Wow, Rembrandt would be proud”. But oh no, the goop was still as wet as when I put it on 4 days prior. I could blame the lack of air circulation in my small studio, or for the air conditioning that might have been blowing in there while I was gone. But I have a feeling that it was either a) the type of paint I used or b) the type of oil I used.

Anyways, cranky as I was I waited a few more days, molding it as much as I could, until the following week when it was finally set and dry enough for me to paint over (or I just became too impatient, either one). Luckily while the waiting was killing me, I was able to work with the linen texture I had created, which of course was pretty much dry two days after I set it up. So every day I added a new thin layer of glaze and wiped it out, letting it build up in the crevices of the textured surface. The first day I did straight up yellow ochre, next was a mix of burnt umber and sienna. Next I did a thin layer of titanium white and ochre, then final layer was burnt umber, burnt sienna, and the yellow ochre. The apple worked itself out, I had previous practice under my belt. The pumpkin worked out the best I think, the texture was appropriate in most places, and I was doing thin glazes of more cadmiums and yellows over the right spots.

So all in all a visual success, and I learned quite a bit, and will keep chalk in the repertoire absolutely. I’m absolutely confident that I could have taken it further, as with any painting one hardly knows when/how/why to stop, but I felt it had served its purpose in teaching me something. And really, to me a painting used for practice where one learns something means more to me than a boring painting that is done by a boring old formula and was boring as hell to make. Here is the finished not-so-boring  Fall Drama. Happy Halloween!

Fall Drama, 14 x 18

The Awesome Parents and I

My amazing husband and friends

There were a lot of people who came out for the show, despite all of the hooplah about the impending weather. The doors looked fantastic, there were so many people who commented on what an awesome idea it is to use them as display, I would say ‘Yes, I know, my father is a genius!’ (thank you, Dad!). Many people also took a moment to stop by and look at my work, which is great, and I was fortunate enough to sell a piece that I personally really liked so all in all an immensely successful day!

Although I didn’t get to walk through the whole festival, it was interesting talking to some of the other folks who were doing the show. One of the coordinator’s of the festival told me there was a woman there who had been doing it every year since the show began, which I thought was pretty great. My continued observation garnered by doing the show is that despite the fact that you are presented with raw, unfiltered criticism of your work, you are also faced with such a variety of people who actually enjoy it. I spoke with so many different folks who were either artists themselves, or had a relative who was an artist or who just purely loved looking at art. It’s nice to hear why a certain piece is appealing (or not appealing!) to someone as well. I had a lovely conversation with a woman who not only appreciated the red mats I used to cover the display supports, but she was familiar with and loved Russian painters! Another guy suggested that I should go into the tattooing business, something I honestly had never thought about, but am almost seriously considering… tattoo artist by day, moonlighting as traditional painter by night, sounds Romantic!

So, again, great people, no bad weather, and art everywhere. A good success, and now it’s time to work on some new stuff and finish the things that have been brewing on the back burner, now that the big show is done. Lot’s of inspiration everywhere as usual, my mother-in-law lovingly sent me a book on the Hermitage, which is in St. Petersburg, Russia, where we all went together a few summers ago. What an awesome place, seriously. I’ve been looking at the paintings of Rubens that are in there, and am thinking a copy might be in order. He handled paint so well, would love to try and figure out how! I will be sure post an update soon, Rubens or not! Hark, I hear a Rubens now…

As for what I’m working on now, I feel like there is a lot going on at once.
I’ve been working on two full-figure paintings, which is fun and something I haven’t done in a long time. Major influences have been, well, pretty much everyone. The thing about being mostly self-taught is the luxury of being able to choose your teacher. Simply find art that you love, find out why you love it – which in my opinion is finding out how they did it- stare and stare until you figure it out, experiment with that, rinse and repeat. Here are some studies of the model’s portraits.
Still lifes are both challenging and interesting, but only when you get them just right. I’ve been looking at a lot of different still life painters, Latour for the florals, Hensche for the color, and most recently Melendez. Examples here:

Luis Meléndez Still Life With Bream, Oranges, Garlic, Condiments, and Kitchen Utensils

Henry Hensche The Yellow Bowl

Henri Fantin-Latour Flowers

And further work has been looking to the sea. I got to get out and do some plein air with a painter friend Joshua Langstaff, who is a pro at it. We took a trip to Two Lights State Park, which has a view that reminds me of Winslow Homer’s ocean work. I was mostly just getting over how overwhelmingly awesome the ocean view is, and tried to figure out the coloring more than anything, as it was one of those cloudy, balmy days where it looks threatening of rain. Luckily for us it didn’t. I’ve posted a picture of my view, and a picture of Winslow’s painting that I was just studying nose-to-nose with at the Portland Museum of Art recently.

Winslow Homer Weatherbeaten

I’m hoping to use the sea view in two current paintings, so most likely I will hit Two Lights again soon. I promise to post some more of my own work, for now here’s a picture of one of my many sporadic methods of starting a still life, and the ‘finished’ product!

Next up for me I think will be trying out some copies. Although school starts back up for me in a week and a half so then I will be concentrating a lot on that. But my free time will be spent either sleeping or painting hopefully! Other good news, have been looking for a space for a possible new drawing group in Portland, Maine. There are a few interested parties as well as a very interested classical realist trained painter moving to Portland soon, so hopefully there will be something interesting coming out of that, more when I know more!

I put him in a dish with sides because he was pretty active, I can imagine why! (I say ‘he’ because I just do, I don’t know what gender it was.) I put a cool pack under him just so he could stay cool… so the still life set up is still ongoing, I keep changing it around, I’m currently using a dark red shirt molded and wrapped up to shape like a lobster.
I’ve been looking at other lobster still lifes for inspiration, such as this one by Jan Davidszoon de Heem (Still Life with Lobster and Nautilus, 1634):

and this one by Anna Vallayer-Coster (Still Life 1767):

I’m still getting ideas and making sketches and such, I will post more pictures of painted/drawed on things when they are worth putting up!

This is how our lobster ended up:

N says it was delicious!

P.S.-The other blog has been found and taken care of thank goodness… its probably a good thing that I’m a painter and not working with computers ha!