Thursday, December 04, 2008

Back to Painting

I've gotten a couple painting sessions in now, and I am feeling much relieved. The above painting I started, um, quite some time ago. More of the panel is covered now, and as I started back up I noticed that since I started the piece, something about my painting has changed. As I looked at the dry paint (hip, back, upper arm) compared to the wet paint (forearms, hands, lower 2/3 of the legs) I thought about the former, "Gosh, that's chromatic!" I remember exactly what I was thinking putting those stronger chromas in there and I wonder what will become of this painting and how will it be different than the if I'd finished it two months ago. I put a 2nd layer on the face while I had the flesh tones on the palette.

I'm also closing in on this one. I may have finished up the sitting person's hands, and have moved on to her shirt. Our left side of her shirt is almost there, the other side has hardly been touched. Then I started going into the background with another layer of black, and am really trying to lose those edges that are in shadow; the back of the sitting woman's head and everything beyond the lit part of her arm, and letting all detail fade until we hit a lit part of the standing woman. I will do the same all over the canvas, carefully choosing which edges will be completely lost in shadow, which will be softly visible, and which will be more crisp.

Tomorrow, I will not be painting on either of these canvases. I've decided to treat myself to a day long class tomorrow at ARTichokes with an artist I've admired for several years, Rich Bowman. This will be completely outside the box for me. I haven't attempted a landscape since maybe high school, though I have envisioned landscape paintings often. Work in this class will be done exclusively with a palette knife, which is a tool I completely lack experience or comfort with when it comes to painting. Finally, I think we're going to be working from *gasp* our imaginations! As an artist who is, ironically, completely uncreative, this all sounds really intimidating. I really am looking forward to it, though, because I have often thought about including all these elements in my work but just haven't attempted it or really known how to approach it.

Don't forget that I am also teaching two classes at ARTichokes this month! Portrait Drawing on December 11th and Figure Painting on December 18th. See my classes and workshops page for more info.

1 comment:

dugbuddy said...

Man, can you put a whoopin' on these paintings so quickly. Just lovely work.