Grisaille Mania

I keep setting the same trap for myself with these oxide grisailles. They help me formulate the composition and values but when I finish the buggers I'm reluctant to slap the colors up there. They're just too damned detailed and I have fun looking at them. It's frustrating and fulfilling. It helps and it hurts. Art is hard.

Taking Sam's Advice

Finally, just a palette knife, straight paint, no brushes and no turpenoid. Sam Hyde Harris wrote that painting with turp wasn't really painting at all. Slap that stuff on the canvas and push it around. Mix on your palette or mix on the canvas - Just use solvents to clean your brushes. It's a funny thing about thinning your pigment; it fosters tentative actions. Once you grab that knife in your hand it demands paint. It makes you decisive.

I'm not sure if this is really markedly different than the oils I've been cranking out lately, but something about it just feels right. It's a new beginning of sorts. But, it's still those damn mountains. However it is the eastern Sierra from the Owens Valley. Tried this scene a dozen times before. Who knows where this goes?

Making Lines

If I can make hundreds of decisions in a given TV telecast, why can't I just make a clear decision where to put a freakin' line? Why is there so much second guessing? I know what I need to do.

Damn, art is hard. I can conceive it, feel it, taste it, but for the most part can't make my hands create it. It's a discipline where practice and proper training is essential

I pulled this one of out the archives. It was both easy and difficult to paint. I need this kind of thing for inspiration. It's a pastel on rough, ragged highly textured handmade paper. What probably made it work was that there was no dabbing. Every stroke had to made by pressing the color into the paper. There's no real second guessing here. Grind that pastel and make a damn line!

It's Been a Year

Procrastination and a busy schedule spells doom for a painter. After a year of doing dozens of paintings in my head it was finally time, today, to squeeze the tubes and push the paint around. The result is, being honest, cute and amateurish. But, it is time for renewal. Time for discovery. The smell of oils and turpenoid acts like a magical elixir. I started this thing at 10:00 am. After an hour lunch break it's 5:30 and time to move on. Time flies, especially when you enter The Zone. I think I've forgotten how to build in shadows although I think I got some good values out of the session. I feel good about the composition. The spring in Vermont was pretty spectacular so I allowed myself some crazy colors.