Still Fish

It's interesting painting with Geoff - not only because he knows a lot, and gets interesting things to paint, and because it gets me painting at all, but also because our points of view are mildly different, which makes sometimes for interesting differences of opinion.

For instance - Geoff is very much from the paint-what-you-see school, by which I mean that he paints exactly what he sees with no arty monkey-business: no visible brushstrokes, no exaggeration of any kind. It's very spot-on, very tight, very beautiful. (His images are authoritative, although I prefer a little brushiness, if only in the background.)

So as I was finishing The Fish (Herring & Sausage), Geoff commented to me: "You should add some of the background colour" (referring to the cloth hanging behind - far behind - the still life), "and maybe even see if you can get some of the folds in."

"Yeah, " I said, "but I can only see a tiny sliver of the curtain. I don't know why I would want to add it in."

"Because it's there!" was his reply.

OK: yeah: a pretty good reason.

So I added it in.

Thing is - it looked totally out of place: a random slice of a colour that didn't exist anywhere else in the painting.

I took it back out.

And then I came up with a damn good reason: being there isn't a good enough reason to include something in a painting: it has to be there and be relevant.

That, I think is a/the difference between Geoff and me!

Still lifes with Geoff

I now have a painting buddy: Geoff. I started attending the figure drawing sessions at his house in I think September, after seeing his poster up on the walls at ACAD. I was trying to get some portfolio pieces together to apply to the New York Academy of Art (which I am now no longer going to do - at least not this year). After I went once or twice, I realized that I'd actually seen one of his pieces for sale at the Show & Sale at ACAD. I even remembered the price.

So I started drawing and painting with Geoff, and since we share a more or less common idea about Art (ie: that it is about more than just "having fun"), and seem to get along quite well (as long as I can put up with him telling me that my "stylized painting actually worked!"), we have been doing some still life paintings together, initially with the idea that we'd do a "larger" still life at the end of it. (It was supposed to be this week, but then I got really sick.)

While we were painting together, I tried to paint more or less the way he does, or at any rate, to learn what I could from his style of painting. (I'll admit that I still don't really know how he paints. It's a mystery to me: he uses these little tiny #0 or #2 round brushes, starts in one corner of the object and kinda stripes his way to the opposite end of the object, everything rendered perfectly before moving on.) I also tried "poor man's sight-size": that is, raising the (small) canvas/board to the same exact level as the object, marking the top and bottom of the object as I saw it, but then not bothering with a plumb line or being picky about measuring. Geoff does NOT measure (or, rather, he uses only his eyes to measure, no tools), and so I was/am trying to learn that from him as well. (Though I still do a bit of measuring, especially in figure work.)

The first still life we did was an egg: a "rounding" exercise, as Geoff called it. (The roundness of the egg is similar to the roundness found on the human body; the colour of a brown egg is similar to the colour of flesh. Ergo it's a great exercise for those who enjoy painting the human body.) We attempted to capture the lights, dark lights, shadow, terminator, reflected light, cast shadow, local colour...um, anything else? We did it in one sitting (ie: three hours, which seems like a ridiculous amount of time to paint one egg...and yet, mine still isn't light enough!)

Apparently, we also did a pear, which I think was the 2nd still life object we did. Mine came out pretty dark.

After that, we painted a cute little eggplant - same kinda deal as the egg, just a different colour. (Notice all the "wasted graphical energy"in the background...)

Next, we painted a gourd over two days. Mine failed miserably, so I scraped it down. Sorry.

After that, we painted two African violet leaves in a glass of water. I was still painting "Geoff style" but feeling kinda trapped by it. Still, it was an excellent exercise in observational accuracy. I was also trying to paint much tighter than I normally do - without the "wasted graphical energy" that Geoff complains about. (Basically anything that doesn't have to be there.) I was, in essence, attempting to paint only what I saw. I want to resist using the word "photographic" in my description (since photography brings a host of its own problems, such as lens aberrations and lack of colour in shadow), so I will say that I was attempting 'visual verisimilitude'. How's that grab ya?

Geoff's drawings and paintings are very tight, very clean - very nice. I like them quite a bit, and yet I do not wish to draw or paint in that style (except briefly to study it). It is my opinion that there is no wasted graphical energy if the picture turns out nicely, and so for the next painting, of radishes, I went back to my familiar style of painting. I attempted to leave part of the background showing through in the larger leaf in this painting, but I ended up painting over much more of it than intended, essentially ruining the attempt. (Geoff also uses a tinted canvas, so I asked him why, since he does not allow any of it to show through. He said it was to avoid the glaring white of the pristine canvas. To each his own.)

Our last still life painting together so far was a return to eggs: one brown hen egg and two quail eggs. I had to somewhat muscle my way in between Geoff and his girlfriend, who was painting with us: Geoff had kindly left for me the angle that he preferred - and one that I detested! It was looking straight into the light, which admittedly gave a nice rim light on the eggs, but the problem for me was that the hen egg and the 1st quail egg were more or less on the same exact plane, creating a boring dynamic, and the 2nd quail egg was all but obscured behind the hen egg. How this was supposed to be such a beautiful angle was beyond me. But I was able to stick my easel where it didn't belong and pound out this painting. I remember nearly finishing the first day, then I came late for the next painting session, got back in there, pretty much buggered everything up, and finally more or less salvaged it. Again, I tried - and failed - to let the background show through (in the brown quail egg), and the hen egg at least is likely not as light as it ought to be - I have a hard time getting my lights light enough and also retaining chroma when painting alla prima.

Winter plein air painting

I just lost my post and had to start over from scratch. (I love old-fashioned phrases like that - which we are losing in the face of 'progress' and 'modernity'. Wonder how that phrase originated?)

So here are my thoughts on plein air painting at the Bow River:

Thanks to the warm weather we've been having -- Chinook winds have blessed us with double-digits highs for some days; today was I suspect around 8 or 9 degrees -- I decided to do some plein air painting. I haven't done any in a while, not since I left Taiwan I don't think, and I wanted to get outside and enjoy the warm air. So the past three days, I have been painting part of the Bow River. I picked a spot on the 10th Street Bridge and faced northwest. My original intention had been to paint the bridge to the NW of that bridge (I don't know what it is called), but I decided to paint instead the grand Bow in all its frozen glory, as well as some of the north shore, trees, bushes, and the hills in the background.

Before I go any further, let me preface this by saying that I tend to panic quite quickly when painting landscapes. I'm not sure why it is -- I think it's the sheer complexity of the subject matter. (I have to paint every single twig on every single tree?) Well, I know I don't have to paint that way, like my man Andrew Wyeth (who passed away on January 15; and though I like his stuff a lot, I didn't even know he wasn't dead, so it was kind of a double shock: oh, he's alive? and now he's dead?) or like my main man Richard Schmid. In fact, Richard Schmid, in his incomparable book, Alla Prima: Everything I Know About Painting -- (which is a lot) -- says this: "I regard meticulously detailed paintings done today as naive, as if the artist lacked the ingenuity to show detail in a more fascinating way. Even when such paintings are reasonably successful, they evoke little more than (my) admiration for the patience required to do them."

I walked down 10th Avenue (having first purchased an easel, as I didn't have one), approached the riverside to see if I could paint from there, didn't like the angle, continued across the bridge, stopping at the first little alcove built for gawking at the river, didn't like that angle, continued to the second alcove, like it, and set up my easel and canvas board facing northwest towards the opposite bank of the river. I'd wanted to paint the bridge in the distance, but quickly scrapped that idea: it didn't seem well-placed in the composition: too far to the left, indeed in the extreme upper left-hand corner, which seemed to lead the eye into the painting...and then what? Not much to look at from there. So I scanned around with my hand cupped into a, um, cup shape, over my eye, and eventually settled on a composition. It is subtler, ie: perhaps not as eye-catching at first as the bridge, but I prefer the shape of the bank and the expanse of ice in the foreground. I look forward to doing all that using my palette knife.

I laid in a wash using paints thinned with turpentine, then went over that with slightly thicker paint - eventually totally covering the wash (at least in the sky), which made me wonder if the wash was a worthwhile step? It's how I'm used to starting a painting, and it shows through in the foreground ice (albeit a little too orangey), so I guess I'll give it some thought. I brushed in the mid-ground (ie: the bank) and some general ideas of the colour I wanted for the ice before laying the paint on thick with the palette knife. I was happy to get to that stage, as I just knew that was the way to handle the ice.

The only thing was, when I wrapped up my painting session after about 2 hours (I was cold, had to pee, and was going to my friend's house to paint), I was not at all pleased with the result. in fact, took my palette knife and scraped the entire thing down. And to my amazement, it looked much better! Somehow, scraping it down was exactly what I needed to salvage the painting.

On my second outing, I returned to the exact same spot, set up my easel, and started to paint. I didn't get far. I was confronted by all these leafless shrubs in the background, which made for an annoyingly transparent screen: they were a light greyish, but the background behind them was quite dark. How do I handle that? In fact, how do I handle all those damn trees and bushes? There was no way I was going to paint in each and every one. I knew that wasn't the way to go, anyway. In fact, I already knew the answer, I just hadn't stumbled onto it:

to simplify any subject, squint down and paint the lights and darks as you see them.

When I finally remembered to do that (advice from Richard Schmid again), I was able to block in simple lights and darks and the painting progressed much better. It began to have the "shape" of the scene I was painting (especially when I stood back about 8 feet), although I was again unable to finish - for more or less the same reasons as before.

Note to self: ease up on the consumption of liquids before going out to paint, and take a pee break immediately before setting up, if possible. Anyway, I was heading over to Geoff's for more still life painting, so I didn't have hella long to paint anyway. After an hour and a half, I had to leave, and since the weather was turning nasty after that, it would be while before I could go back and finish it.

In fact, a week later, I still haven't finished it. Here is the painting as-is in its unfinished state:



















Oh yeah: and another thing that I realized while doing this painting is that I can use sight-size to guarantee a fair bit of accuracy. Once I realized this, I measured the distance from the right-hand edge to the right-most tree trunk, then to the clump of trees to the left of that, and finally to the far left-hand edge - which was much further out than I'd expected from my viewpoint! On the other hand, the expanse of ice in the forefront was pretty much spot-on to what I'd expected, since I had hunkered down to compare the canvas to the scene before I started painting, and was therefore certain I'd be able to fit in the dark clump of ice in the foreground. (I sure hope that ice remains more or less static so that everything I mention here ends up in the final painting!!)

Day One of New Working Method

I got myself set up to work in the sight-size method of drawing and painting. Set my easel up next to my (simple) still life (a green apple on an orange cloth), got a small canvas board and built a viewfinder out of cardboard: cut it to the same size as the canvas board and taped in string across the horizontal and vertical middles. Put tape down on the floor where I was supposed to stand each time, lined up a piece of tape with a line drawn in marker down the middle to line up with my string in the viewfinder, and a piece of tape that matched the level of the cloth when everything was aligned, and I was ready to go.

First thing I discovered is that sight-size method is a bitch. It's ridiculously difficult to measure the exact distance from one thing to another using a knitting needle (and I quickly switched to my left hand so I could make marks in charcoal with my right hand). I also discovered why you're supposed to have your canvas at a 90 degree angle to the still life: so you can transfer your measurement without moving your body about, or without (as I did) looking at your canvas at a weird angle. I tried two times and erased everything before I got moving along on the third try.

I plotted a few points the best I could, then I kinda ran out of steam for simple plotting. (It was also getting somewhat late, maybe 10:00PM), so I ended up "eyeballing" the rest: drawing the apple the best I could by comparing my canvas to the real thing behind the crosshairs of my viewfinder. I wanted to get the main colours down today so I can finish the piece next painting time. (I am going to alternate painting and drawing.)

The second thing I discovered is that my composition sucks: the apple is way the hell in the front of the canvas, and 60% of the painting is background. (It seemed "exciting" and "edgy" when I did it, but looking at it now, it kind of sucks.) I remember trying to pull an art school composition in Teacher Clock's studio, and he was like, "Don't do that...." I may be able to salvage the composition if I beef up the background. Although I don't want the background to dominate. It *did* seem exciting and edgy when I looked through the viewfinder at it...

The last thing that I discovered - or maybe "discovered" is the wrong word - is that I'm not sure sight-size is for me. Or at least, I'm not sure this mathematical-seeming plotting of points on the canvas is for me. Then again, I DO want to progress in my drawing, and maybe this is the best way to get the skills. It seems difficult (excruciating, really) and inefficient and well, what's the adjective form of "drudgery"? (Drudgerious?) It feels drudgerious. (It feels like mathematics, and everyone knows how evil mathematics is.) In other words, it's probably going to do wonders for me if I stick with it. So I'm going to - at least for a while. I'm going to T-R-Y to do it "properly" (as I understand it): ie: plot a bunch of points on the canvas and connect the dots and get a totally realistic picture from that. However, I am sure I will also do what I did today: eyeball part of it just to get through it.

I also discovered that rubbing in a thin layer of the local colour of objects in the painting may not be a totally excellent idea. I think that's the way it's done when oil painting is done using glazes, but it occurred to me that what do you do with reflected light? It seems to me that you will end up with an unwanted layer of local colour where the reflected light is going to go. I'll have to look into that. Maybe you can simply layer the reflection over top and everything's cool.

Last day of being an unproductive non-Artist

Well, I've been feeling crappy lately, depressed and unmotivated.

But all that has changed!

I think I was just drifting, not sure what to do about studying art. Well, a million thanks to Paul from the Learning to See website, who has inspired me to take up pencil, charcoal, and brush, and to work on a series of series of drawings and paintings. Pretty much the kind of thing I was looking for so I can become productive again. (And I am taking steps to stave off depression and listlessness and getting lazy and letting myself go over the holidays...)

So, on the last day of a shitty year, the last day of feeling shitty. From tomorrow, I am going to start working on a series of small charcoal, pencil and oil sketches. (I am particularly excited about using charcoal, as I have never used it the way he does - and now I intend to start learning.) I'm also excited to do small oil sketches, which is what Teacher Clock (鍾敦浩) in Taiwan recommended we do. (And I'm planning a date with David Leffel this year, so I want to work hard so the workshop pays off.)

Apropos of nothing, other than I came across this website today: wow!!!

So: to 2008: good riddance! To 2009: you're all mine, baby!!! I'll be posting my efforts here, both good and bad.

(PS: Despite what the blog entry says, it's still only crappy 2008.)