The Young Prince

I have a folder of photos of faces I've been saving for paintings. This image began as a series of blind contours (my usual warm-up/loosen-up), which led to the shapes that ultimately became the crown, or flames, or whatever they are... The face seemed like the right one for today, so I just dove in. I enjoyed every moment of this, from capturing the features in pencil before starting with the watercolors, to the hours of color glazes that built up to the final surface. The time flew. I listened to two albums by Jimmy Eat World, back to back, four times. There were some silent spells between starting them over, when I was lost to sound. I guess I painted for about 5 hours.

This is my first attempt to paint an African face. I was drawn to the beauty of the features, and the play of the warm and cool browns. It was done all in one long afternoon session and finished in an hour or so the same evening. Watercolor on Arches hotpress, 19 x 19. Click on the image for a larger view.

Grief

This painting is the one I've been stuck on for about a month. Travel (family and work) has taken a lot of the time and energy in recent weeks. That's been good and bad... but it has definitely made it harder to paint. Even when there is time there isn't enough energy.

And this image has been in the way. I had to do this one first.

I think I'm done with this. I don't know if the painting is done, but I'm done with the painting.

When the image emerged on the paper, in a mass of lines from blind-contour drawings of paintings of totally unrelated subjects, laid over each other in every orientation (I turn the paper), I was surprised. Then I realized what it was, and what that bleak landscape in the center meant to me, and I knew the title. That led to the color scheme, and the surrounding darkness. Figuring out how to handle the head, and refining the muscles further took a while. Then the image just wouldn't finish - it always seemed to need more. Every time I thought I was done it seemed to need more the next time I looked at it. Like the emotion itself...

I had a recent visit with my Dad where he was more energetic and humorous than I've seen him in over a year. I left later than I meant to, and barely made the next family event in that busy weekend, but I couldn't tear myself away. I loved getting more of him back. I couldn't get enough. The chemo is working, but it has some harsh side effects, and it's not a cure. The enemy has been mostly shut out, but the seige continues, and the defense takes a lot out of Dad. That's what I'm grieving, I think - the partial loss.

Watercolor on Arches hotpress paper - 19 x 19. Click the image for a larger view.

Self Portrait Marblehead Kettle

I discovered a few years ago that I can usually get an additional drawing done on vacations if I set it up somewhere so I can sit for even five minutes at a time and keep making progress. This makes me happy and it fills in all sorts of little waits and odds-n-ends of time.

This trip, to Marblehead, MA and Boston, I decided to combine a little self portrait with a rendering of an object that I found in the kitchen of our rented house. I love these round kettles - but we don't own one.

I can see one significant error in the drawing (maybe you can find it, too) but I'm happy with it anyway. I enjoy looking this closely at things (only a detailed rendering gets me this far into an object's shape and lighting), and I'm particularly pleased with the handle. The photo is a good bit darker and higher in contrast than the real thing was when I sat to draw, usually with good light in the little sun porch I set up as a studio.

12 x 14 inch sketch book - rendered with an HB pencil. Click either image for a closer look.

Boston and Marblehead Sketches

I didn't get a lot of time to sketch in Boston or Marblehead - we explored and wandered so actively for the 7 days we were in MA. But my little moleskine ("Poco Uno" as it says inside the front cover = so it won't get confused with "Grande Uno") was in my back pocket a lot. The first sketch here was from Marblehead - I sat on a bench in the street near our rented house and drew this (in pen) to remember the place by. The owner of the garden store next to the bench came out to sit and see what I had drawn, and told me the best restaurants in Marblehead. We had already dined at one (The Barnacle).

The next three are rapid pencil sketches done on Memorial day in Columbus Park, near the Aquarium. I loved the Aquarium, particularly the cuttle fish, the penguins, and the four storey tank, but the crowds finally roused my claustrophobia, and I had to go outside without finishing everything. So I let the others meet me later by cell phone connection, and I wandered out into the sunshine and sketched what I could. People sit still for surprisingly short spells - it's hard to have time to catch anything. The guitar player was better than most, because he played four upbeat songs from the 60s and 70s before getting up to leave.

The last sketch is a longer study in Grande Uno, my larger moleskine, and is of the Marblehead Harbor. Local teenagers were pushing each other off the floating dock below me, and the boats had increased all week in the harbor until there were probably several hundred spread from Crocker Park, where this was drawn, all the way over to the neck.

The best thing about sketching, to me, is the way the drawings later evoke the place more powerfully than any photograph. It's not the sketch that does this - it's the remembered cumulative time and actions that created it. It puts it more firmly into my memory.

Click any image for a closer view.

I also did a longer drawing in the house - but that's for another post.

Sketching in Graham, NC

A few weeks ago our family and a friend went to a movie at our favorite family-run second-run theater, in Graham, NC (the theater we call "The Graham").

I didn't feel like seeing the movie - I felt like sketching, and getting my dessert somewhere in town. So I sketched this old brick building, because I like the arched windows and the brick ornamentation on top. I sat on the side of the portico of the big granite courthouse that fills the traffic circle at the heart of the village, and drew until my legs went to sleep.

Then I walked into the building I'd been drawing, into the corner business, which is the Graham Soda Shop, where I sketched this group of teenage guys while I had a strawberry shake. The exterior drawing is in a larger spiral bound sketch book, the inside scribble is in my larger moleskine.

Click images for closer views.

I visited one my art professors recently (Marvin Saltzman, a painter mentioned in my art profile, here), and the visit (and a gift he gave me) have inspired me to draw more, and to paint even more to please my muse and no one else... So you may see more drawings, as I try lots more things in my various pads and moleskines, and you may see fewer paintings, as some are for my own internal exploration.

Palouse Painting

I spent an evening in the Palouse, south of Spokane, WA, back in the fall. I loved it. This photo captured some of the feel of the valleys and small canyons that show up between the long hills. It also reminds me how the light was at the end of the day, though the camera doesn't do it justice.

This piece of paper has already been three other things, and has been painted over several times. It has a history, and some texture as a result, and colors that show under the others, particularly the cadmium orange.


I am finding my way with this painting, trying various colors as underpainting, and painting some areas over and over. I am on completely unfamiliar ground, trying to see what colors and approaches work for this piece, and for the mood I am trying to capture. So here it is in three stages.


I'm not sure any of the colors showing now will be the colors showing at the end. It's far too disjointed and garish right now, but these colors are just the extremes that will vibrate through and under the final colors.

I'm trying to figure out how I want to put the paint on, as well. This is far smoother than canvas, and has a different feel. The direction of every brush stroke matters, and I get it right sometimes and other times I have no idea how I should apply it.

It's good to be lost but not so lost I can't find my way eventually.

Arc of Sky

When I think, "What do I want to paint?" the answer is often "trees and sky." I have been trying to capture what I feel about trees, particularly "tree skeletons," as I call them, since I was in junior high. I recall a postage stamp assignment we had (probably in 1974 or 1975). I did mine for the upcoming bi-centennial, with a colonial lantern theme, but the stamp was dominated by a huge tree trunk and branches (a tulip poplar).


My cards, when I make them, all have "Tulip Tree Press" on the back - because I heard, again in junior high, that artists named their presses. I joked that mine was a spoon, since that's what I have used for a printing baren all my life. I use the press label on any card, though, even hand drawn. It started with a book project with limericks done in linoleum block prints, and then to Christmas cards made from linocuts, as well. Even the year at UNC-CH that I made them on a silkscreen, I still used the press symbol. Trees.

Here is the photo that inspired the painting above (ink and watercolor, 19 x 19). I took this several years ago at the waterfowl impoundment north of Durham, near the Butner Seed Nursery. It's a quiet place with some impressive trees, with souls. I have exaggerated what I love about these trees - the arc of sky they seem to hold, the way they form it together, the off center balance of the two. I want to try this again, but capture the reaching more, the weight shift, like a dancer reaching. This painting is more still, like an arched stained glass window - the next would have more movement.

Other paintings/posts about trees: Here, and here, and here, and here and here.