Thursday, April 30, 2009

Omnomnomnom ... Today's Underpaintings





As always, I find underpaintings nearly edible, and I eat them with my eyes. MMMM Omnomnomnom! As always I am tempted to leave them this way, but my painting experiences would be drastically limited, and I like more in a painting, so on I will go. The photo references are on the wall to the right, the upper the blue painting and the lower, the purple. EGADS I love red with purple (Osprey avert your tender eyeballs)!

The upper painting will have similar colors in the finished painting, whereas the lower one is going to be yellow-green and red-violet.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Hotcha!



This underpainting rolls my socks up and down! I love it just the way it is. I am not sure I can do anything to improve this image, but I will probably want to do more with it anyway.
*note VERY suggestive sky shape*

Cropping Options



This crop is based upon a 3:4 ratio, because I have a 30x40 canvas ready. This is a dramatic crop, and it is exciting. Decision still not made, but this is definitely in the running.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Older Work










Oil paintings from the late 70s and early 80s. Top: Self-Portrait with Cocktail Fork Earrings; Middle: Still Life with Plum; Bottom: Green Nancy Z.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Artist Can't Bear Fussy Details



I went berserk and painted out all the smaller shapes and I feel much better now.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Hop on the Table, Would You?



I literally threw everything off this table and painted the edges of the canvas with a black-blue violet. It is signed, the edges are finished. Now for the varnish, and then to have slides shot. I will take it to a photo place where they will make slides and load the images onto a disc so that I can upload it. Last time, the disc images were way too light, but I can manipulate them back to a semblance of the real colors, in Photoshop.

I will take several paintings when I go to the photo place; it is less expensive that way, per painting. Mezla I is finished, but I am still working on the Grand Tetons painting, so I will wait a couple of days. Plus that allows the varnish to dry (I hope ... it is very humid here at the moment).

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Better and Worse



In the midst of painting, changing anything changes the whole. In this case, I like the sky changes, and the less regimented trunks (they were all in a horizontal row at their bases), but I need to make more changes; now other problematic aspects have appeared. The mass of aspen leaves does not have enough variation in value; the little trees at left are too much alike in height, the thickness of the aspen trunks needs variation. These are the thoughts of a painter at her craft. Not lofty, but workmanlike.

Side by Side



Ah, the joys of Photoshop. I worked on this drawing so that it looks more like it does to my eye. Then I inverted it in both senses of the word, turning it upside down and making it a negative of the original image.

Funny thing, I finally saw something incongruous about it. The most compelling part is the highest contrast, which is the fangs or waves at the lower left (upper right in the negative), because that is where I put the ONLY true black area, contrasted with a very bright white.

Visually speaking, the left is the past, or the direction from which one is moving, in this culture. On the grid of understanding visual images, according to some sources, the toothy part of the positive image is on the thinking side of things, rather than feeling, and it is in the lower half, so low emotional involvement.

What I get out of all this is that my fears are not all that important to me, and I am moving from them into the upper right quadrant, my goals and dreams. Yet, the high contrast contradicts that, making me focus on past fears.

*mumbles to self, "let go, just let go and soar*

Monday, April 13, 2009

Visual Thought



This is a new problem analog. I really love looking at it. Drawing is the right-brain equivalent of writing. You know, on a deep level, exactly what I am saying here.

*don't you?*

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Mezla 2 and 3


The green hemisphere is much more a yellow-green than it shows here in my photo.


Mezla 3: Solar Wind.