Pop Goes the Artist!

Last night, I finished the painting of the dachshund that I mentioned in my previous post. I’m a little astonished at how quickly it went–I painted the entire thing, with the exception of the background and shadow–yesterday. I’ve always worked fairly fast, but it’s rare that I have the patience (or the time) to spend nearly all day on one project. Even when I’m enjoying it, I get restless.

I’m pleased with the way it came together. This is the first time I’ve painted a dog that’s all one color (actually, it’s the first time I’ve painted any dog other than Lucy, a tri-color beagle mix), so I was worried about whether I’d be able to handle the form of the dog’s body satisfactorily. I’m also fairly pleased with the composition– squares are unusual and I wasn’t sure if it would look right, but I think it turned out ok. However, I’m afraid the dog’s tail might have to go– I feel like it leads the viewer’s eye out of the picture and is just a distraction. I’ll think about it a little more and perhaps post it for crit on WetCanvas. Some fresh eyes might lend a new perspective.

The reference photo from which I worked, as I mentioned before, is not my own. I got it from the reference library at WetCanvas, so I’m using it with permission, but I still felt funny about painting from it. The painting is my own, but the image, I feel, is not, which means I definitely won’t try to sell this painting. That just wouldn’t feel right. I might give it away, if I find someone who really wants it, or I might just keep it for myself (and put it where?). Anyway, I just wanted to make it clear exactly what’s going on with this painting. I’m not guilty of plagiarism or copyright violation, but I don’t feel that this painting is entirely my own creation either. It was, however, an excellent exercise in mixing paint and everything else.

(”Purple Dachshund” acrylic on canvas, 24×24″)

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I’m taking a brief break from painting for the next few days, while I work on the altered book that I made for James last year. I’m adding two new spreads, as well as touching up the older pages. Some of the collages need to be reglued and in places where the pages have stuck together, little bits of paint have been pulled up. (That’s the biggest problem with acrylics–slightly tacky even when dry.) I’ve been told that Dorland’s Wax medium, designed for use with oil paints, makes a good topcoat to keep pages from sticking and to protect them. (Certainly it makes for a more elegant and inviting presentation than wax paper layered between the pages.) So I’ll have to order some of that from Dick Blick and give it a try. Once I have those new pages photographed and posted in the Webshots album, I’ll make a note of it here.

Well, it’s been awhile. Since finishing up the drawing of my eyes and setting up my display in the library (which, by the way: SO COOL to walk through the lobby and see it in the display case all official-like), I’ve done basically nothing arty, other than some sketches at the beach, which barely count. This was beginning to depress me, because no matter how much I tell myself that my bursts of creativity have always been cyclical in nature, I never quite believe it when I’m in an “off” period. That, and I’m always afraid that I’ll do to myself in art what I did to myself in writing: burn myself out so thoroughly that two years later, I still haven’t recovered the will to write. I’m terrified of the same thing happening in my art, and every time I go through more than, say, a week without doing something creative, I’m afraid that I’ve lost it altogether. Well, maybe that will happen someday, but it’s not now.

I went down to DC yesterday to see two exhibits at the Phillips Collection (more on that later) and then stopped at the Utrecht store near Metro Center and bought a couple of canvases. I’d like to do the fourth and final painting in my Lucy series (Blue Lucy) before I go back to school. It needs to be landscape orientation, but I’m not sure what photo I’ll use yet, since I have several with potential.

Right now, I’m just beginning work on a square painting of a dachshund. I got it from WetCanvas’s Reference Image library, and while I’m normally reluctant to work from other people’s photos (even when I have their permission, as I do in this case), I just couldn’t resist the combination of the breed (I love dachshunds), the pose, the expression, and most of all the dog’s very unusual color–a sort of sandy yellow that I’ve never seen in a dachshund before. It should be a challenge, but I’m looking forward to it. Pictures shall follow.

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Yesterday’s museum excursion was a lot of fun. As I said, I went down to the Phillips Collection in Dupont Circle, which is currently doing an exhibit entitled “Klee and America” as well as winding down its extremely popular “The Renoir Returns” exhibit. The word “the” in the title of that last exhibit is very important, since the exhibit contains only the one Renoir, The Luncheon of the Boating Party, which at this point is almost a cliche. I’ve never been a huge fan of Renoir as compared to the other Impressionists, so I was actually rather pleased that the rest of the exhibit was less him and more the others.

The Paul Klee exhibit was much better. I’ve always been a fan of Klee, but have never been familiar with very much of his work, other than a few paintings like Twittering Machine. After seeing the exhibit, which featured about 80 of his works, I think it’s safe to say that I’m still a fan. I was most impressed by the sheer range of his work–from fairly large canvases to very small drawings. All abstract or at least very stylized, but the colors and techniques he used were really interesting. In particular, I loved a series of small works in which the background was done by spraying on watercolor, over which he added stylized, detailed line drawings. From a distance, all you could see were his luminous watercolor washes, but once you got closer, a whole new aspect to the work revealed itself. Very, very cool. And, as someone who experiments with a variety of media and styles, it’s always encouraging to see well-regarded “art history book” artists who didn’t limit themselves, for whatever reason, to one small niche in the art world. (Pictured above is “Red Waistcoat” by Paul Klee. Image from Olga’s Gallery.)

I got back from the beach earlier this evening, both happy to be home and very, very disappointed that the week was over. But! Miracles of miracles, I actually fulfilled my resolution to sketch every day, completing about 12 sketches in six days. It helped that I never ended up sketching in public, something I don’t really enjoy, and that there were plenty of pretty and interesting things around to inspire me. This first sketch is of either a small tree or a large bush, growing next to the house next to us. I used Prismacolor markers, and despite my awkwardness with markers and deep frustration with trees and foliage, I like the way it turned out. (I am fascinated by trees, visually, but they–and their accompanying leafy greenness–are pretty much the bane of my artistic existence.) I don’t have very many colors of markers, either–maybe 10. Probably a five to ten minute sketch.

My feet, in lovely sanguine Pitt artist pens. I don’t like pen and ink for finished works, but I really enjoying sketching in pen. Perhaps the fact that I cannot possibly erase frees me up from worrying about perfection? I don’t know. But I like it, and the sanguine color is a nice warm alternative to black. As for the subject, I seem to draw my feet a lot–mostly because they’re always there and sometimes the only thing around to sketch. People at the beach tend to move around too much to sketch, but my feet don’t. It’s not a perfect drawing, but it’s all right. The bunchy lines around my ankle, by the way, are meant to be the anklets I was wearing.

Finally, a colored pencil sketch of the path onto the beach, as seen from my porch. I almost never use my colored pencils (and these are watercolor pencils, actually), but I brought them along on a whim, and I’m glad I did. I don’t think I’d have the patience or desire to complete a finished work in them, but they do make for lovely color sketches. In the case of this particular sketch, I decided to focus more on colors than on the textures of ocean, sand, grass, and sky. I’ll definitely have to spend more time playing with these colored pencils (and maybe someday buy myself some more colors) and next time I go out sketching, I’ll bring some heavier paper so that I can experiment more with the watercolor aspect of them.

Tomorrow morning, I’m leaving for the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a week of fun in the sun.  Although I’m reluctant to give myself anything to do other than veg out and seriously catch up on my reading, I am going to try to do some art; namely, a daily sketch.  This is something I should be doing anyway because it’s good practice and a good discipline.  But.  I’m lazy.  So I’ll start in a week when I’ll have a lot of free time and see where it goes from there.

To that end, I packed up a pencil case with some watercolor pencils, graphite, charcoal pencils, markers, etc.  All drawing stuff, since my travel sketchbook (5.5×8.5″– perfect size for a backpack or large purse) is only 60-lb. paper.  If I come up with anything worth sharing, I’ll scan it and post it when I get home.

Have a good week, everybody!

I finished this drawing this morning, just in time to include it in the display I have in the local library this month. (More on that in a moment.) As I mentioned in my previous post, I’d been fooling around in my camera, actually hoping to get a good shot of my mouth, to paint on a small, square piece of gessobord I bought a few months back. Well, I didn’t get any shots that would work for that, but I came up with a decent shot of my face that looked neat cropped to just my eyes. I was pretty intimidated by it–slightly larger than life size and mostly devoid of distinct lines and areas as it was. But I needed something else to put on the display, so I went for it.

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I do think it bears some resemblance to me and the shading turned out better than I anticipated. I’m learning how to slowly build up much lighter layers of pencil, rather than going dark right in and trying to do a lot of blending. With the exception of the very dark darks, the softest pencil I used was an HB (your average #2 pencil, which falls right in the middle of the light/dark spectrum), and most of the drawing was done with an even harder pencil than that (H, if you’re interested). It tried my patience a bit, but I think it really helped keep the tones smoother and more subtle. It’s definitely an approach I’ll have to experiment with more.

The “official” title of this piece is “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman” (ha, I crack myself up). It’s 3.5×8″, done in pencil on smooth Bristol board.

And now, actually I have to go to work, so I’ll be back later with more info about the library display. (And hopefully a picture, eventually.)