More Paintings

My new motto is "Paint More" or "Draw More" or "Letter More" depending on what I'm doing. In that spirit I'm taking pictures of things in progress and posting them more often as well. That will help me remember what I've done to get where ever I end up--does that make any sense at all?

Anyway, here are the middle drafts of  three paintings in progress. The one above has a cut out moon taped on right now so that I can move it around and see where I like it best rather than painting it in and out a bunch of times. It was one of my insomnia flashes of insight so I thought I'd pass it on.

As Picasso said "A painting is never really finished, it just stops at interesting places."

Variations on a scene

I have taken my own advice for a change and now have three different sky paintings in progress. I stopped at the "Van Gogh-ish" version of my previous post and then started two more good sized paintings on canvas and a small 8x10 on paper. (The photo of the finished 8x10 is in the post above this one called "More Paintings.")

I cut a parent sized piece of heavy paper from my stash into several 8x10 pieces and they didn't buckle when I gessoed them--yippee. So now I have several pieces gessoed and am going to do variations on a theme on each one.

I've also got a series of pears that I'm working on in pastel. And knowing me, at some point I'll probably start mixing the media, colored pencil, pastel, and ink all together on the same painting. That's the really fun part for me, experimenting to see what happens next.

Someone said that if you already know what's going to happen when you paint then why bother? ( I read so much that I can never keep track of who said what.) That's how I feel, even when it's not going well. Then I take a break, clean house or weed the yard or go for a walk and come back and try something different.

All the artists that I've talked to recently work on several pieces at the same time. I guess I had to experience overpainting one painting ad nauseum before I could make the connection and do it myself.

In all my many books on writing they say that writers write in order to discover what they have to say. I think that I paint and draw in order to discover what it is that I see. So off to put my painting glasses on.

Finished 8x10 Landscape

Process Journal: Skyscape painting

I've been trying to paint skyscapes semi-realistically in acrylics. It's been a struggle: to make time every day to paint, to believe that the results will eventually be worth the effort, to just stay at it, no matter how it looks at any given point.

I haven't actually painted in a painterly way for about 30 years. Usually I do abstract backgrounds for my lettering or draw in colored pencil. (So I really should cut myself some slack--but that's another post.)

But then this wonderful artist, Victoria Adams, had a show at the Tacoma Art Museum and I took a short class from her and was totally captivated (some might say obsessed) with trying to paint skies.

After the first two weeks of painting the same painting over 6 or 7 times and pushing it past the version that might have been ok and to a place that definitely isn't, I had the revelation that if I painted 7 paintings instead of one painting 7 times I'd have 7 different ways to take the work. And I could stop on any of them at any time when I thought that maybe I liked what I'd done.

I've been away from painting this way for so long that I can't trust my eye to see whether or not something works (I try to stay away from labeling things "good or bad"--even though sometimes they are just crap). But I find myself actually dreaming about painting at night and having to work on three or four paintings during the day. It's just so darn much fun. I'd forgotten how much I loved the act of pushing the paint around on the canvas. Yummy!

I have decided that I should record this learning process for myself (short memory span--and overloaded circuits) and if it helps someone else at the same time then that's just hot fudge sauce!

Now that I've been painting almost every day for three weeks I've learned a few things.
To recap:
1) Work on several paintings at once.
2) If I get stuck on one work on another
3) If I think one looks pretty good--STOP--do not add another brush stroke
4) Wait at least a day, hang the unfinished things up and walk by them to see if any ideas occur
5) It's ok if my stuff looks amateurish, because it is, I'm learning. Learning is good.
6) Paint MORE

Yesterday's revelations were that I'm working too big and that I should do smaller paintings 8x10ish on heavy gessoed paper to work out design problems before I go to bigger canvases. Also maybe I should do some sketches and draw the ones I like the best onto the canvas instead of just winging it the way Victoria Adams does. After all, she has been painting skies for 30 years while I haven't.

So here are the last 4 versions of the painting that I repainted for 2 solide weeks!

4th version

5th version

the top one I liked best and the bottom is where I left the realm of realism, finished and moved on

to the next canvas.

That's it for today--I'm off to paint.