Tackling The Elephant, Part 3

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It's an unanswerable question, I suppose, and everyone who fancies themselves artists asks themselves something similar: 

It was such a simple step. What took me so long?

Today I took that yellow ochre sketch and added burnt sienna for the shadow areas, and the form rose off the canvasboard to meet my eye.

 

The point of the work is to explore using directed strokes to impart a feeling of volume and I'm actually fairly thrilled to be able to say to myself that I have grasped that just a bit. 

Burnt sienna also for the shadow under the elephant and darkening in the trees in the distance.

This is the warm underpainting that will support the cooler colors I'll by layering atop ... for which stay tuned anon.

Tackling The Elephant, Part 2

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I like this silhouette bit more than the last time I did it. A lot more. 

 

I am trying to copy as close the original as I can. I was unhappy at first, with my inability to sketch this out using paint and then I had trouble thinning stuff out to the way I wanted it.

It's still not perfect. But it's better.

At Last I Try To Tackle The Elephant

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Over a year and a half before this, I was working through a book called Learn to Paint in Acrylics With 50 Small Paintings. I got up to number 46, a painting of an elephant that explores contour painting techniques. And it was at that point that, for some reason, even though I had absorbed many of the techniques well, or so I had thought, I ran into the wall I ran into so very many times.

It's not a wall so much as a fog that pushes back. I can spend time dissecting it but knowing what stopped me wouldn't have done much more than given me labels for it all. If you're trying to reinvent yourself as an artist, you know what I'm talking about without another word and I can't find one anyway.

So it all sat there on my drawing board for more than a year, waiting for me to get back to it, while I did PBNs, wasted time off a dwindling life span (statistics being what they are) and letting my social media addiction get the best of me. Not that different from the billions of self-made aspiring artists in the virtual world, really.

I thought about the idea of shortcuts and assists, then. It occurred to me one of the things I didn't like about that first attempt at this was I couldn't sketch out the shape in yellow ochre and feel confident about it; the harder I tried, the sourer it felt. This, I theorize, is what pushed me off the track and landed me straight in the mud. And all the inertia and ennui followed.

It occurred to me that I didn't have to be flawless about my sketching to start and further, I already knew techniques that would allow me to transfer a reference to the media. It was so simple! It just involved, in this case, printing a copy of a scan from the page, coating the back of it with soft graphite (4B Prismacolor Monolith, for what that's worth) laying the print on my media (still the eight-by-eight canvasboard) and rubbing.

A bone folder from my GD days did the burnishing duty. This is what I have:

That light gray pattern is a basic outline concentrating on the shadow areas. It should be enough to get me started, again.

Wish me luck.

The Paint By Number Life Preserver

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The first real post on art in ... well, a while.

For a while I was going great guns with the series from 50 Small Paintings, and was thinking I beat the wall that I usually run into when I try to kick my artist game up to the next level. To be fair to myself, that next level was in sight.

Then I hit number forty-five and ... the engine sputtered, died, and wouldn't start up. The picture is that of an elephant, and it just kind of mocked me. And then I couldn't do it. Then the pandemic hit, and all its psychological centrifugal forces. And just like, that, my habit pancaked and I fell into the hole of too much Candy Crush Saga (we do what we do), too much Facebook posting.

It's a touchy road back, but I started blogging again. Didn't have that much to say, so I made it a sorta-daily photo blog (quite a time to do it, what with Covid-19 reshaping our world). And then, I got out the PBN.

When I started really hitting the freestyle acrylic paintings, I left a last PBN just-started. Isn't It Romantic, a Dimensions Paintworks joint, a fanciful Venetian scene full of saturated color. Well, I didn't have anything but the basic urge left, so I pulled that out, got out the paint pots, and got back to work on it.

It's feeling good, and it's confirming a hypothesis I've long had. It occurred to me that that, like repetitious workouts, when you hit a rocky spot in the road artistically, keeping the motions moving is sometimes enough. I started late on becoming an artist, I wanted to keep going, I need to remain prolific ... but then the old executive dysfunction kicks in and the inertia returns and you just scroll and hit the space bar in social media too much. 

Over the last two days, I've been mixing paints out of the PBN kit, filling in numbered and lettered spaces on the card panel, and getting the sheer joy out of just the physical act of painting which, I think, is at least half the thing of it for me. It's pleasant to work, it's pleasant to work on art. It, in and of itself, is a nourishing thing.

So, I'd suggest to anyone like me who's aspiring to an artistic life to have thier own version of paint-by-number for whatever media they're working in: something that just makes them follow instructions but makes them get out the media and work it, just for the sheer somatic joy of creating an artwork even if there's no particular creativity involved in it. Just working the media is bliss, even if a limited sort.

It's the sort of lesson that may have come late, but at least it came to me. I owe it to myself, and certain others, not to quit on myself now, like I have so very often before. Some motion is better than no motion, and doing something half-assed is better than not doing it at all.

And I'm thinking I can do that elephant painting, maybe this other brush I had here will do the trick.

I'll keep y'all posted.

50 Small Paintings #4: Deep Blue Sea

3598The next painting is an exploration in a simple gradation. In its simplicity it suggests looking out to a placid, sunlit sea.

The first step was to sketch in the shoreline and horizon with a mixture of unbleached titanium and yellow ochre. It was then a rather simple matter of gradating upwards, starting with a mix of titanium white and light blue permanent, leaving a sliver of canvas showing through, then applying successive horizontal strokes of the same with an increasing proportion of cadmium blue before the preceding strokes have wholly dried. This strikes me as a way of a sort of blending on the painting, a dash of alla prima. 

The work is finished off by adding in a sky of the same white/blue mix we started with, leaving a bit of canvas peeking out to suggest a cloud in the distance, and filling in the shore unbleached titanium. Comparing the finished work with the photo in the book, I find myself okay with it generally but a tidbit unsatisfied with the smoothness of the gradation. The author suggests attempting this several times if one is not satisfied, but I'm satisfied enough, for now.

... the scene of the crime:

50 Small Paintings #2: Simple Sunset

3595The second of the series of 50 Small Paintings is "Simple Sunset". It shan't take long to see why.

It's a brief yet effective experience in using pure tube colors as well as layering them.

First, a fat stripe of Cadmium Yellow Light (Lemon Yellow had to suffice, since I, at that time, had no Cad Yellow Lt) across the lower middle. Then, a big stripe of Cad Orange overlapping that. Then, coming down from the top, Cad Red overlapping the first two. Below the horizon, Mars Black. Put a few bumps on the horizon to suggest distant clumps of trees, and a short horizontal stroke of Titanium White for the setting sun.

Once again, how effective and evocative this simplicity is! I, with just my meagre re-emergent artistic skill, have created a scene you can kind of melt into, that reminds me of slightly-out-of-focus, heat-distorted sunsets I've seen portrayed in film.

How powerful, this modest amount of technique is.

And at the end of it all, the palette. We drank water that day.

50 Small Paintings #1: "Moonrise"

3594My Brown Eyed Girl is always on the lookout for compelling things that make me want to create. This is credit that must be stated. And, in her (so far) tireless quest to do so (much gratitude) she located, at the Mighty MultCoLib, a book by Mark Daniel Nelson, titled Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings. This book delivers exactly what the title advertises: 50 small works, most seem to be easily accomplished in a single sitting, each concentrating on introducing and giving experience on foundational skills in acrylic painting but each resulting in a charming little simple yet displayable painting.

It also touches on principles of design and display: the works are conceived in groups along common artistic themes so that they may be displayed together in harmonious groups or strategically against each other to create thematic contrasts.

I found a gold mine here and intend on doing all 50. And it has been rewarding, exciting, and fulfilling. There are more aspects to this work that I'll get into later, but, for now: the first painting.

These are all going to be done on 8 inch by 8 inch acrylic-primed canvasboard, the sort you find in every art store (the book specifies 5-by-5 and advocates exploring preparing your own grounds but 8-by-8 works just as well and I could fool about creating my own ground but I just want to get down to it (and the text is very accommodating about that as well)). Here in Portland we are blessed with more than one value-minded art supply store (mid-level acrylics and sensibly-priced canvasboard are in good supply at not only I've Been Framed but also Artist & Craftsman Supply), so exploring and getting an honest-to-goodness start on a painting practice is both convenient and not about to bust any budget.

So: ready, steady, go. Here we go down the road toward painting and illustration.

"Moonrise" means to introduce the aspiring acrylics artists to basic paint application and basic mixing. The only colors used here are Titanium White and Mars Black, and here's a view of the palette immediately after the work was completed:

For the record, yes, the big cracked cup had coffee in it, and the brushes were almost (but not quite) rinsed in the coffee more than once; some artistic traditions must be maintained.

First, the entire square was covered with a dark gray mixed from the two colors. Second, the dark mass of the hillside and skyline were added with pure Mars Black. Then, pure Titanium White was used to create the Moon and the reflection in the water (short, wiggly, horizontal strokes for that). As a finishing move, more dark gray was mixed and the sky and water were went over once again, to make it as opaque as possible and also to clean up the edges on the Moon and reflection.

The Moon was a little out-of-round: this was done with a #8 round brush and, as with the other non-PBN paintings I've been doing, working with other than the now-teeny-feeling #2 round has been a revelationary experience in and of itself. Scary and exhilarating.

This is the final result of the work, displayed next to the book (thoughtfully laid out so that you can do your work against the book and compare as you go):

Not too terribly bad, hey?

This gives some important experiences. Not only those mentioned, working with the paint, applying it, experience mixing (the final dark gray was lighter than the original dark gray, so I got experience in adjusting as I go) and dashing in lines with a paint brush to fill in, but a truly singular one I really felt for the first time: the experience of actually completing a real originally-created painting.

I've done it two times since. Those results will be up presently.

But, if being an artist hinges at all on completing the works one attempts, having a serious accomplished painting looking back at you, then I have graduated to actually, at long last being an artist in a positive way.

And I've done it two times since, three in total, and am about to embark on a fourth.

I can't recommend Mark Daniel Nelson's book highly enough just on that alone.