Thursday, June 23, 2005

Work Avoidance

Jenny G posted a painting by Emily Mason and immediately I knew I had to make a painting today.

I made up my mind that I would get back to trying to paint abstractly again when I returned from teaching at NQA, since weeks ago I had 'invested' in four stretched primed canvases (half price at Joann's). I had put them away under the stairs and that made me feel that I would never actually use them, but eek, after seeing the painting today, I took my fears by the hand and made the start...right after breakfast and a shower and another look at my email.

IN the shower I figured out a plan. I would use a chair as my theme and instead of drawing from life, I would draw it as a quick contour/scribble on paper and rip it out, thus insuring it would not be a perfect shape. I used to be a very tight painter/drawer, and therein lies the rub. I am bored silly by representational painting. Even tho I really like Duane Keiser's A Painting a Day, I just don't want to paint like that. So here's the way I did today's painting.




The drawing, about 27x32"



The ripped out image.


The extremely pristine and scary blank white canvas.

24x36"



I loaded up a Home Depot $3 brush with water and wet down the whole thing.


Then I watered down some acrylics in red, yellow, blue and burnt umber and spread it out all over the perfect whiteness.




The chair shape being used as a mask. I used a huge round bristle brush and just painted any old color around the edges of the torn paper.



Detail of the overlapping paint.


I was holding down the cutout and apparently the base paint wasn't quite dried yet. My hand print was plainly visible when I removed the chair mask..




So slathered on the color and had a wonderful time, not worrying about it being too realistic.




Gooey paint, which some of the underpainting shows through.




Less than a hour later I made myself quit before I gooped it up too much. It dried almost immediately as it is very very hot today.




The Chair sitting on my desk, under a spotlight. Doesn't everything look good under a spotlight?

10 comments:

  1. Great colours! Great picture! I'd like to be able to dye something like this! Val

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  2. This is great! I love the way you show us the process stage by stage. Thank you.

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  3. I just love it. Great job. I really love the graphic image of the shape of the chair. And I especially like how it appears to be rising out of it's delicious spunky foundation.

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  4. Trés bien! Love the colours! Love the technique.

    BTW, I just recently stumbled on Duane's blog myself and was delighted to find that he's right here in Richmond.

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  5. Faboooo against that red wall!!

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  6. That looks like so much fun. couldn't you do that on fabric?

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  7. OOOO. I enjoyed the process as much as the finished painting!

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  8. It's gorgeous...and I, too, love seeing your process. The tearing the shape thing is very cool!

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  9. I am delighted that you were inspired! (and I like the result very much!) Jen

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  10. way to go...you just keep doing great stuff!

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