Working Processes

When I walk through the studio door fresh in the morning, I usually look at the work on the walls and write a cut list of things that I think need to happen in a painting. It can be a bit like this:

Black blacker
highlight flower
counter circle bottle
shadow
dark red table edge.

In doing this, I find it easier to get up and motivate with a brush, and I don't have to remember the flash of inspiration that happened to get squashed somewhere in the routine of the day. My list also has mundane things like clean table, prime canvas, email, add link, choose 4 for Friday deadline. Some lists take a few days, and it is just another dayjob after all. And it's mine to create and crack the whip.

The throes

Often I find that a painting will reach a point where it looks almost finished- as in the composition works and it is basically 'painted', yet for whatever reason lacks in 'punch'. Figuring out what to do next is often a long, cumbersome and drawn out period. It can take me weeks or months to discover or decide what the missing element is. Sometimes it's best to give up and accept the piece for what it is, while other paintings demand that extra mile of effort. One of the hardest things to accept is that it's often going to get worse before it gets better. Nobody really likes to look at their creation and think 'you sure are ugly- and a bore! what was I thinking?!'

So what next? destruction in search of creation? I can only hope that each additional element augments the visual/emotional impact of the painting, or that it might lead to a moment of revelation. The rewards can be great, but sometimes you will be left with an overworked, tired and lifeless waste of spent materials.


Somewhere along the line....

Direction? graphic

I want to believe that it's hard to believe that we're still waiting for DSL to be hooked up at the studio after first placing an order 14 days ago, but then again, it is TPC (the phone company) i'm talking about so it should be expected. It has been a minor irritant and a distraction (there i just had to get that out)

Painting is still going well.
Recent notions:
I've been slowly heading in a more graphic direction for quite a few years- harder edges, clearly defined colors etc, but i'm not entirely sure that's where i want to go. It seems that some of the energy and depth of an artwork gets lost to the ends of making an image. Still, i've made a point of making the paintings do something that is near impossible to capture on film or pixels- Layered translucent colors and the sensation of brush strokes in paint never translate very well into reproduction. That is good for the pleasant surprise of seeing the pieces in person vs an image of the piece- something that i'm not so sure happens with much of the work that i see coming out of this decade that is purely graphic and flat and perhaps intended to be reproduced. Usually these works strike me as drawing or illustration or graphic design. So here is an image of a recently finished painting...

Compulsion Entranced, oil on canvas 36" x 24"

Next comes my issue with how an image is made... through a long struggle to find itself, or simply draw it and fill in the bits and done?

Technically goofing off?

This morning I woke up in no particular mood to rush off to the studio, instead having a list of odds'n'ends that I could do on the backend of my production - database entry and the likes. Somehow, I ended up surfing (surprise!) and found myself trying to figure out how to get a map application to work for me.

After many hours of tweaking and tearing my hair out trying to figure out a specific detail (which I never did really solve) here it is....

http://miscellaneum.com/ajax-yahoomaptest.html


It's much like a google map in that you can click and drag and have the map unfold as you need more. I've added specific locations from where I painted some of my recent landscapes. Maybe I'll even update it, or do some of that dreaded back end work to catch up on entering more from the past.

...

And then I find there is another prebuilt service which let me put this together in an almost painless matter of minutes, and it uses the google map system.

http://miscellaneum.com/pixagogomap.html

Return

Now I can say that the beginning is beginning. Vanessa and I just returned from a short 10 day trip to London and Paris, where we reconnected with friends, drew in pubs while drinking proper English beer, and experienced acres and miles of fantastic old master painting. It is sad that we don't have more old European masters here in San Francisco, or America for that matter (excepting the Met), so we gorged on it. The National Gallery, Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, and the old Tate. If we had more time I would've like to have visited the Tate Modern, but I figure we have access to the type of art they have on exhibit. So with all that fresh in my eyes and washed over my artsoul, my excitement to get going again is making me bounce off the walls.

Walls. Our studio had been the site of a benefit auction, so I had cleared out my space to allow for their presentation. Upon returning, I decided (despite the urge to jump in) to make the most of the clear space and refinish my rather thrashed walls. Holes filled, skimcoated and painted, I then chose an new configuration of the various sizes I'm starting in order to break up the space.

And in between coats, we signed up for dsl, so we'll be able to research and post from the studio. So hopefully next week I'll be able to post an image, so this isn't all blather and no glitzy images.