Strangely enough for me… I wasted the entire day trying to update my gallery resume… looking up exhibition dates that I didn’t actually bother to record and so on. So… this is a painting from a while back… when I made the switch back from digital to traditional media. I used acrylics for the first year or so then switched back to oils. This is one of the acrylic pieces.
I called it “A Continental Breakfast” because of the cinnamon rolls.
I have a cold. I had a cold yesterday. ….and on Monday. Not a horrible cold. It’s about a 6 on the Kleenex per hour scale.
Monday, I spent an hour or so working on Rocking Horse Dream then decided that I needed to do something that required, um… no physical exertion.
So, I got out Drippy. I spent a while on this Monday and Tuesday morning and got it to the point that you see it in the first image. Personally, I don’t like it at all. I thought it looked better in the monotone stage.
This is after an Indian yellow glaze made with lots of water and a bit of gloss medium. I wanted it to pool in places. I added (too much) salt to it to sort of kill the brushstrokes and add some texture to the paper. Once this was dry, I scraped off some of the salt and gave it a coat of clear medium. I like this even less than the first thing.
This is from today. I scraped off more of the salt and cleaned things up a bit, did a glaze of Phthalocyanine Blue, let that dry somewhat then scumbled across that with Titanium White… twice. I’m still not all that thrilled with it but I can see a bit of potential. I actually like what’s happening in a few places. I suppose the next step is to repaint a few of the areas. It should go a little bit easier seeing that many of the edges are already defined. It’s fairly easy to stay inside the lines when the edges are in relief. I’ll repaint them anyway.
Colors are Golden’s, Open Acrylic Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Orange, Hooker’s Green, Phthalocyanine Blue and Indian Yellow with Utrecht’s Titanium White.
Another session of building forms and working with colors. Some of this stuff is finished other than adjusting it to fit into the surrounding image. I don’t foresee any major changes.
I did add a fish.
Colors are the same as yesterday with the addition of Sennelier’s Chinese Orange
Again, there wasn’t much chance of getting a decent shot of this. It’s got 2 coats of gloss acrylic on it as well as a considerable amount of wet oil paint. Thanks to a polarizer cranked all the way up, gimp‘s autocolor functions and half a dozen graded (a “quick” mask made with a gradient fill… it lets you focus things like levels and color adjustments, gradually change the lighting across the image, etc) edits… um… it could be worse.
This is the first oil session. Yesterday, before I sealed this I painted large patches of phthalocyanine green across it and sprayed them down with a water bottle. The drips aren’t all that obvious but it did work very nicely as a sort of glaze to pull the whole thing together. Today, I’m just trying to get the (oil) colors started and rework a few of the forms so they fit together a little better. It is going a lot faster and using a lot less paint than the acrylics.
Colors: Gamblin’s Cadmium Yellow Deep (When I first opened this tube, I thought maybe I had the wrong color. It’s not nearly as “deep” as I expected. It has its uses though.), Sennelier’s Burnt Sienna, Sap Green, Ultramarine Blue and Titanium White… Winsor Newton’s Cadmium Red Deep and Cadmium Yellow Deep.
This is a nod to Manet’s “Olympia“. I took the legs, hands and head from my “Condescension” painting, reworked them and printed them out… transferred that to canvas and reworked things a bit more. The servant, hair, bed and so on are done with a not so automatic drawing.
This is 30×40… acrylic on canvas.
I basically just spent time filling in a few of the remaining forms. I’m sure there will be changes once I get this into oils but the under-painting is coming along nicely. I’ll probably spend an hour or so on it in the morning, give it a couple of heavyish seal coats and let it dry overnight… maybe go back to Poem for the day…
Colors are still the same.
This painting has three levels: Standing, chair and step stool. I spent much of this morning sitting on a step stool trying to get this to work. I managed to get a sort of temporary fix for the orange thing that was on the bottom. It seems a little simplistic. I’ll have to see how it works with the rest of the painting. Working at this size is a little odd after working on “normal” sized stuff for so long. Gauging the relative size of things is difficult.
I decided that this rocking horse needs to be a sort of walnut or red oak (we’ll see what fits), and that this needs a red under-painting. In real life, it’s sort of spooky and glowing. This little image doesn’t quite convey that.
It’s getting there. This canvas isn’t quite raw. It’s got a couple of light seal coats on it. It still sucks up paint like there’s no tomorrow. I love the dense colors I’m getting but I will be happy to move on to oils.
Colors are the same… Thankfully, Open Acrylics don’t dry out on the palette overnight.
Spent this last session trying to get things to work together, fiddling with colors and just trying to get this painted in. I gave one of the kids a partially eaten bag of candy.
I’m sure you can see that there are still signs of a struggle in a few areas. That (now) orange thing in the lower center is giving me a hard time. The rest of it’s falling into place fairly easily.
Colors are the same as yesterday.
I decided that there needed to be a second hobby horse in here since that’s probably what hobby horses dream about and since there just happens to be an adaptable form, complete with rider, right in the middle of this.
The screeching face now belongs to “Mom”, who’s understandably stressed at the sight before her. I spent some time filling in that corner, hoping to draw a bit of attention away from the face and pull it into the painting. It will definitely change once I switch to oils.
The “mother and child” grouping are awaiting the child’s turn on the dream horse… add some screaming children all around; cheering our wooden pony’s dream “self” over the finish line… You got a rocking horse’s dream.
Colors are the same as yesterday with the addition of Sennelier’s Terra Verte and Raw Umber.
This is a painting based on “A Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H Lawrence. …A little bit anyway. Ok… Not at all. It did help inspire the title though. There is an actual rocking horse in there (It’s right next to the eye.) It looks a little bit like a baby reindeer right now. It will probably continue to look like a baby reindeer.
This is the result of a fairly long session. I think I’ve managed to get some of the lower half of this working. I’m using acrylic. It’s easier to sketch with. I managed to get a sort of “mother and child” group going. Something of a recurring theme with me. …There’s a couple of figures that I like. That screeching face up in the right-hand corner is going to undergo some major changes… one of which may have it leaving the painting altogether.
There’s still considerable work to do before I’ll feel comfortable with moving onto oils. I do like this a hell of a lot better than I did when I started with it.
Colors: Sennelier’s Phthalocyanine Blue and Venetian Red, Golden’s Open Acrylic Cadmium Orange, Bone Black, Cadmium Red Medium, Ultramarine Blue, Phthalocyanine Green, Dioxazine Purple and Cadmium Yellow Medium and Utrecht’s Titanium White.
Studio Time 