Here's that big painting again. It has changed a fair bit, but I am really struggling with working from photograph rather than life. The apple is from observation (There are apples in my studio?...surprise, right.) The mountain, is not. There just isn't enough information in my Monument Valley photos. I probably just have to blow them up.
I did away with most of the previous composition. It actually looked better as empty negative space rather than purplish mountains in the distance and a fuschia bleeding heart. It just wasn't working. So it's gone. The power of the brush. I still don't know about this whole thing. I just keep showing up.
I reread my first entry concerning this piece, and I am currently feeling completely the opposite. I am not a restrained painter. Trying to press myself into this box is just not going to work. I do best off the cuff, usually the first time, and often quite quickly. Which is beginning to make me think I need to give up the oil paints and return to acrylics. I currently fight with the preceeding layers of paint when I work, but with acrylics the paint dries almost instantaneously allowing me to constantly restate my observations without interference from underlying colors.
This was all done on the same day that I began the painting. I have added the shadows underneatht the squash and worked in more detail into the vegetables. It was a good day painting.
I really love the boards this painting is on. I love to touch them - the smooth sanded surface of the gesso, the mounds of block printing ink - plastic and chaotic - like a fingerprint. And now, once it is dry, the thick impasto of the oil paint. I'm so sorry that we can't interact with great works of art through touch. The photo of this piece was taken with a flash so the wet paint is reflecting that light in places, and I have already added shadows underneath the squash. It makes them look as if they are sitting on the boards themselves.
I had a really good painting yesterday. I guess you never know when it is going to happen. It was a long day at work, and I dumped myself in front of the canvas rather reluctantly for just an hour. I was fed up with this painting - very frustrated at the craftmanship of the piece. As I was driving home from work I thought I should go back into it and really risk something, really try to paint, loosen up, push the color across the canvas with the brush rather than timidly dab at the pigment. And I produced the rock formation in the middle of the piece. I like it. I am excited about the piece again, and beginning to play with titles for it.
I can't put titles into Blogger right now for some reason. But if I could....#$%@!!! is kind of how I feel right now. Some days are like that. These two pieces are growing by leaps and bounds, however, very akwardly - like adolescents. We shall see. I am thinking of a new name for the piece as well.
Here's that big painting again. It has changed a fair bit, but I am really struggling with working from photograph rather than life. The apple is from observation (There are apples in my studio?...surprise, right.) The mountain, is not. There just isn't enough information in my Monument Valley photos. I probably just have to blow them up.