Art Lessons

I guess you could say the results of the painting experiment are in. Once the painting had been drying for a couple days, I started to notice that the areas heavy with impasto medium were beginning to crack and discolor. So that's a big red flag on using a lot of impasto. That's unfortunate, because I really enjoyed using it to beef up my paint. I guess I'll have to work on my proportion. I don't want to imagine I can't use it at all. I think I'll just have to use less of it.






I went to the Walters for a bit again this weekend. Mostly, I got up close and personal with some fantastic oil paintings. I tried to get into the artists' heads and really try to see the painting as they would have as they were working on it. Even as magnificent as some of them appear from afar, when you get really close, you can see it's just one brush stroke at a time. I think that will be my mantra: One brushstroke at a time. I think if I practice zen-like patience, I should be able to develop higher quality paintings.

I only had an hour, and mostly was looking at painting, but I did get one post-worthy drawing done of Rodin's Death of Apollo. My proportion is still not great - his legs are too long. I think part of the problem is that I was working without an eraser, as usual. I think I need to start seeing the eraser as a tool and not a sign of weakness. :)



The "Woman Alone" painting is still on the back burner. I have plans to work tonight on a Chiaroscuro-style self portrait based on a photograph of my 16-year old self - one brushstroke at a time.

Experimenting in Oil

Wednesdays have become my "art night." I went to one life drawing session, but then the next week I was too fired up about working on my new painting series to go, and I spent the evening working on Woman Alone No. 1. Yesterday, I was completely planning to go back for another life drawing session (I even got a bunch of quarters at the store to plug the parking meter), but the minute I stepped across the threshold of my apartment a deep fatigue fell over me. That happens a lot: I walk in, drop my bag and laptop, hang up my coat, and then all I want to do is to sink into the couch with a DVD and my cats napping by my side. Sometimes, it's really difficult to drag myself back out of the house once I get home. When I have no particular obligation to anyone other than myself (as is the case with going to life drawing in Towson), it's even more difficult.

So the short of it is I didn't go (to my only slight regret). But I figured that if I was going to stay home, I would be at least somewhat productive. I was too tired to give the focus demanded by my Woman project, so I decided I'd just do some experiments with paint.

I recently purchased Oil Painting for the Serious Beginner by Steve Allrich, and have read about half of it. The book is pretty good, but it's restricting, because Allrich only really expounds upon the way HE paints, and really does little to explore other techniques (like glazing, which I was curious about) or other palettes (he doesn't put green on his palette, so there is a chapter about mixing green, but hardly anything about using green paint). Regardless, I did find out a lot of information I was looking for. It definitely wasn't a waste of money.

One of the most interesting things Allrich had to say was to use black paint. I've been taught by both serious painting teachers I've had not to use black, because the black that comes out of a tube rarely, if ever, occurs in life. Instead, I'd always been taught to make a mix of umber and blue to make a deep gray that can be warmed or cooled accordingly. Allrich does not agree with this school of thought, and encourages the use of black, but says to think of it as a color in and of itself, not something you add to other colors to make them darker. I thought that was interesting.

Since my tube of Lamp Black was unused from date of purchase (probably 6 years ago now) I decided that I was going to open it up and use the hell out of it.

I also took this opportunity to explore some other things I wanted to try out - different brushes, using the palette knife, mixing on the canvas, adding subtle color to black, creating texture with impasto medium, etc. One of my main objectives, as well, was to see if I could complete (or "complete") a painting in one session (known as alla prima), since I know how my attention span can wander. I don't want to end up with another half dozen unfinished paintings that I lose the source material for and end up gessoing over (as was the case with the canvases I'm working on right now: they were once other paintings).

It was a fun session. Great to play with the paint without worrying about the results. I learned that I need to figure out the best way to thin my paint (it was either too thick or too runny; rarely did I get a perfect medium). I learned that I bought horrible paint brushes that shed like crazy. I learned that if I'm going to be serious about painting I have to come to terms with the fact that I'm going to go through a LOT of paint and I have to be willing to put in the money to buy supplies (which can be tax deductible in certain cases if I remember to keep receipts). Mostly I learned that I have a lot to learn, and, as Allrich indicates in his book (and much like advice related to writing), the best way to learn how to paint is to paint a lot and look at a lot of paintings.

Here was what I ended up with at the end of the night. I think I may go back and redo her face in finer/better detail when it dries. I might also add some spot colors. Who knows. It's an experiment: I can do whatever I want.

Phthalo Blue Gets Into EVERYTHING

Worked a couple hours this evening, starting in with the oils. I wish I could say it all came back to me, but it didn't. I have a lot of remembering and a lot of learning to do. I'm thinking maybe I should have started with a master copy, just to work on technique before I started on a "real" piece (like I'd planned in the beginning). Oh well.

Painting also takes a lot more patience than I've been willing to give activities for a long time. This will certainly be a test for me.

Under the Painting is the Underpainting

I began the underpainting last night. I admit to not concentrating on it fully (I was tired and distracted, but still wanted to get started), so it's pretty flawed even at this stage. But it's still a start. BOY, did I miss painting. It is such a good feeling to start up again.

I worked this in acrylic, but the overpainting will be in water-mixable oil paint. I am running low on several key colors (white, phthalo blue, and burnt umber, especially, since I use those colors almost exclusively in making grays, blacks, and other neutrals), so I'll have to do some shopping before I start the overpainting.

I'm still trying to decide whether to attend the life drawing session tonight, or to focus my efforts on my painting. I probably won't have another opportunity to work on it till Monday, and I don't know if I want to wait that long. Decisions, decisions...

Ghost, Ghost, I Know You Live Within Me

As so often happens with my plans, they've changed. I was trying to go through the motions of classical study, including doing some master copies and self portraits and other sort of "standard" exercises, but I quickly got bored. I'm not sure when or why it happened, but I had a flash of inspiration over the weekend about a painting project I want to begin. No, actually, I do think I know why it happened. I've been playing the hell out of Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and I think it has gotten into my brain.

The album, which grows more fantastic with each play, is a concept album about--or greatly influenced by--the life and death of Anne Frank. What has really been haunting me about the record are the images evoked by the lyrics. They are at once beautiful, but also unashamedly sexual and raw, sometimes violent, and always pure in their emotion. And if you put Anne Frank's face on all the "you"s and "she"s in the lyrics (it may not have been the intent, but it's difficult not to do so), there is an added layer of creepiness--the sexualization of a young girl. Even further: the sexualization of a dead girl. One could even take it so far as pedophilia, and almost abstract rape, because the girl cannot defend herself or enjoin herself with any of the images Mangum evokes. But I'm still never offended by the lyrics, perhaps because the passion is unashamed, unassuming, and guiltless. I think "haunting" really is exactly the right adjective to describe this album.

Here are a few of my favorite snippets from the lyrics:

And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy's shoulder
And your dad would throw the garbage all across the floor
As we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for

...

Now how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through
Your mouth to make those muscles move

...

Made for his lover who's floating and choking with her hands across her face
And in the dark we will take off our clothes
And they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine

...

Semen stains the mountain tops

...

Your father made fetuses
With flesh licking ladies

...

The movements were beautiful
All in your ovaries
All of them milking with green fleshy flowers
While powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines
Smelling of semen all under the garden
Was all you were needing when you still believed in me

...

But now we move to feel
For ourselves inside some stranger's stomach
Place your body here
Let your skin begin to blend itself with mine

...

Probably my favorite:

And here's where your mother sleeps
And here is the room where your brothers were born
Indentions in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore
And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies
All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes

...

So I think I was inspired to create my own images that juxtapose beauty with both overt and covert sexuality, in addition to praising ownership and guiltlessness over own's own sexuality. I'm also interested in the fine line between girlhood and womanhood. Anne Frank is 15 years old in perpetuity--a girl. That, in part, is what makes some of the sexual imagery on Aeroplane uncomfortable. But at 15, a girl is going through puberty (if she has not already finished) and is beginning to explore her own sexuality. Certainly today, many girls have lost their virginity by age 15 or 16. This is true whether or not anyone wants to publicly acknowledge it.

One of the first images that came to me was a pair of bare knees and hands clasping or grabbing at a skirt in some sort of strong emotion--distress, or desire--pushing it upward. I don't know exactly where this image came from, but in my head, it represented a lot of the ideas I wanted to portray. Unable to get this image, or the ideas evoked by the music, out of my head, I took some photographs last night that I plan to use as studies for a series of paintings I want to do. I think some of them work really well as just photographs alone, but I don't identify myself as a photographer so I have difficulty seeing any of them as finished works of art. I'll probably still go on to paint them, and then decide which works better.

I used high contrast and harsh light to achieve a more interesting visual effect, but there are obvious symbolic subtexts as well. In the costuming, I chose ultra-feminine pieces of clothing--lacy, airy pieces in muted neutral colors. Some of the pieces remind me of 1940s clothing, which may be part of the reason I chose them. The interesting thing about some of the pieces were that, though they were dowdy in cut (button to the throat, full sleeve, cut past the knee, etc.) they were made of sheer fabric. If nothing is worn beneath, the nudity of the figure is exposed. I also chose to crop off the face/head/identifying features of the subject. This isn't for the purpose of objectification; rather, I want these pieces to be intensely personal. But I also want to demonstrate the universality of the feminine dilemma.