Sunday, June 8, 2014

Painting in Progress

Here is where I am with my latest painting. Don't really have a name for it yet. Any suggestions? 
A lot of steps still but at least I can see the end. Today I've been trying to make the lighting feel believable.  Light and space around the girl is twisted on purpose but  I didn't want that to be a factor distracting the viewer. My paintings are usually narrative driven and I try to eliminate anything that would take away from my story. 
At least I hope the viewer is curious. At the most the viewer is disarmed and puts down their cellphone for a moment to explore.   

Acrylic on board (24x36) WIP

Under Painting




5 comments:

  1. The opacity and lighting of the overall piece makes it feel apparition-like or other worldly-- the young girl's ghost/spirit is breaking apart into bits and floating out the window. Makes me curious to see more...like who is the woman in the pink gown and welder's mask?

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  2. I'm working on the overall lighting right now. Been looking at Rembrandt's work. Don't know why I did that... I feel like a total hack now. Man! He is so amazing just been staring at his work. So brave in his approach.
    I hope capture some of it! Back to crying...

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  3. Wow, dude, you're hard on yourself, but Rembrandt and Caravaggio are par excellent to aim for... yes, he is amazing--well, he's Rembrandt. His work, realist portraits, reminds me of thoughtful and artistic studio photography in the use light and shadow. The light is focused with intention, and the rest is in shadow. Yes, it does create more drama. Reminds me of much like a studio lighting master knows where to direct his lights for contrast in shadow and light. When I was mixing acrylics (painting) for a class at UCLA Extension, I thought mixing contrasting colors to get the dark neutrals (black, brown, gray) rather than using black with titanium white was a far richer aspect of any darker value than just black. It created more depth in the "dark brown" or "black" because the contrasting colors used were made appearances in it. Well, you know, color is light after all. There's a photograph by Albert Watson that really, in my mind, is a good example of drama in light and shadow. I'll link to you from my Pinterest page.

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  4. (Shrug) I don't know why I do some of the stuff I do.
    Rembrandt's lighting is amazing. I could go on for a long time how he uses paint to create some of the lighting effects. If you get a chance go to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena there is a painting there by Rembrandt of his son Titus. Look at the way he applies the paint. It looks like he puts multiple colors on one brush... crazy.
    It's so cool you're taking a painting class. Doesn't it feel amazing to work with tangible paints?
    That photograph by Albert Watson is great! Might do a drawing of it.

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  5. At first I didn't think I would like mixing and working with wet media, but it was such a huge learning experience about color, the entire way color is achieved and perceived. It was actually a color theory class, but the instructor was a working artist and also a specialized color art director for Disney. She required us to mix with real paint (chose acrylics because of ease) to really understand how colors are created, and lessons on value, hue, tint, saturation, shade, neutrals, etc. I remember one light-bulb moment when she said color looks different in the California sun versus Florida sun--which, at the time, I had experience with both--and I said, OMG, that is so true. There were so many times I remember thinking to myself when just driving and being out and about in FL about the sun and it being so much more intensely bright white. She pointed out that sunlight here in CA is more golden. And I said to myself, YES--she articulated my visual experience. So a color you see here in CA in natural daylight/sunlight will be a different color in the FL sunshine. It was fascinating! She had to audition stuff for Disney California and Disney Orlando and create different palettes because the colors would be different in the different natural light.
    I'm going to have to make a trip to NSM and take a special look at the Rembrandt portrait. When you're mixing to get a color with the primaries, don't you often get multiple colors onto a brush? We did a lot of museum hopping in FL too. Salvadore Dali museum was not far from us, and when Dale Chihuly opened up in St. Pete, we immediately went there.

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