trying printing with the computer

I just took a class on Digital Portraiture with W.David Powell in Lebanon, NH at the AVA Gallery. We used Photoshop Elements. I brought a small drawing I made at Borders. A new habit of mine is to go to Borders to draw people. They tend to sit in one position for a longer than short time so I have time to make a drawing. I have been using these to make small paintings I call tronies, after the studies done by Vermeer or Rembrandt, as I learned in Amsterdam, of anonymous people who conveyed an emotion. This drawing was not really right for those studies and had a spontaneous sense of person on its own.
I had hopes I could upload the image here but it is not formatted correctly. I will see what I can do.

I may be able to add some tronies that are paintings. No those are too dark so I will try all this again soon.

Now November

I should add that the drawings appeared in the Concord Monitor ,
many years ago,actually enough time has passed for a child to grow up and set out on his own. I will keep adding a few drawings along with a post. This surely represents my feelings as well as the allergies it was meant to illustrate. There is something delightfully simple about a black and white drawing. No glitter to it.
But I do have a few paintings to add. It was a very hot summer and I was out often.
I find I really like to work on canvas. This little scene by the water is on a panel. When I use a canvas, the oil bar helps create a sense of diffuse light. The tube oil on top solidifies some elements, but much can remain in the uncertain area we are used to when we capture a whole scene. These are on canvas. Then there is this calming scene along the Merrimack.

October 30, 2010

I have been painting though I have posted nothing. I have two to add but there are many more.
A long time ago I lived in the woods and did drawings for the local newspaper. I no longer live in the woods, but still go to the cabin. I had a small studio then, in the woods as well. I illustrated articles that were hard to photograph. I enjoyed translating a written story into a visual image. I saved my many drawings and recently I found myself looking through them. They were in the process of aging, both from time and from animals that passed through the studio. I liked them once again. It took me some trips back and forth to make photographs that were adequate for the web. I selected some I thought withstood the test of time. They are here on the website. Here is an example of one- a dream of a tiger and me. and another I always liked. Doesn't it feel like you are on the bench sometimes?
I add two paintings now too.

a couple in a show

Three paintings at "Twist of Lyme" in a Women's Caucus for Art show. They are at the Long River Studios at 1 Main St, Lyme. Check out www.longriverstudios.net. These three are in. I have been outside painting in the wind and the rain and the sun. I think I feel better for being outside again. I will add those paintings soon.

March 2010

With so much available electronically, I sometimes think I could spend even more time with my computer. Connections are ever expanding and hopeful.
I just saw George Butler's movie Roving Mars about the Voyager and the making of the trip to Mars, or trips, really. Such inventiveness, with team enthusiasm and advancing thoughts about the planets, the Universe and anything else one can extrapolate, was satisfying to watch, even on an afternoon.
The weather has been sunny enough, warm enough and with the extra light in the day, I can get outside. I have a couple paintings I have finished. They languished in the studio as I knew there was something to reconsider but did not see it for some time. I did the Coastal Fall late in the fall when I parked my car next to Odiorne and stood in the sun to paint. Not a lot of time, and a complicated mass of color which took some time to resolve.
Then there was the day I only had enough time to sketch out Beacon St, which is to the left.
I add here two more that have been works in progress. They are related to the black and white drawings I did and the water colors which were derived from those. When the subject is in my mind, it arrives at completion differently than with a subject I have either in front of me or in a sketch.

February 2010

I often think it might be easier to see what I wrote before and add to it rather than this blank index looking card of a blog. February in the basement has been cold and dark but I started something new for me. I have worked on plein air pieces then took to making pen and ink drawings, like Robert Henry, and using charcoal to create darks, depth and distance. You can see them hanging over my work table. Using those drawing to start a painting resulted in pieces like this on the left.

or this on the right. This painting actually has changed since I took the photo.
I added birds in the upper left.



These paintings were hard because the color and the translation from the simple drawing to a representation seemed not to work quite right. I had trouble making the color come right and sometimes I seemed to get stuck on the image before I felt I had fully worked out the drawing. I think that may be the nature of representation. I wanted to escape my own trap so I have started some watercolors which give me the freedom to play with color as I develop or search out an image.
I use the same black and white drawings to start an image and use color and the water to wash around in search of what is buried there. I have found a few interesting starts this way.


The watercolor to the left here I have started as a oil. I again tried sketching the composition in oil pastels and have added tube oil on top. It seems to have a new feel, less restrictive but open to imagination. I have found myself with an intuitive idea about how something should go. I think this is the best way for me to paint. It feels very free and poetic.
I do not always like to show something in progress, but I think it may be interesting in this case for me. This to the left is the oil I started and am working on. Images have come out of what is put down, even beyond the watercolor.

I was in Washington at a conference and saw the artwork of Brian Jungen at the Museum of the American Indian. He does art the way it should be done, with social commentary, humor and imaginative design. Lots of places to see his work but here is a link to an article.

January 2010

I have fallen into the funk of New England when it is cold and dry and dark and we take to the indoors.In this case I mean the basement studio. The basement is cold, maybe only because of the cement floor and the ceiling level windows and the electric radiator. It is dark at the end of the day when I get there. I have worked on some imaginative paintings which are taken from drawings I have done, images I store and emotions that live somewhere nearby. I rely on the techniques I learned from Robert Henry last summer to start with a drawing and develop it. Something pleases me in one part and I can see a beginning. The development of this painting is quite different from stepping outside and capturing fleeting moments of light on objects. I have stacks of drawings I have done of light on objects that have interested me and this gives me meditative time to move them into something else. That sounds a bit grand but the reality is an effort to dredge free floating images out of my head. To simply imagine, not to plan for particular images. This is different from trying to read something into the paint.
Here are some paintings I did from the late fall, and even the beginning of winter. These are a mix of outdoor work in some inside.
I took these pictures in the studio without the flash which means the picture is of limited focus. They show the color and the composition. I am using oil bars on canvas with palette knife and tube oil on top. The tube oil diminishes the airiness of the canvas. The total snow scene of limited color intensity was done inside after drawing the scene outside in a heavy snow. It is a palette knife painting.

The last is from the fall. It is a palette knife painting of the Merrimack as it passes through Bow NH. It is a beautiful spot. It was hard to photograph in the light of the studio as was the snow scene. There are elements of the studio around the edges.
Beware.I got an email from a Salmon Walker inquiring after a painting and its availability. I was flattered though suspicious. The email was written in broken English, implied a need to close the deal with speed. So I answered, and came away wiser. No loss, thankfully, when he said he was sending more than I was asking and would I give the extra to the mover, I knew it was a scam. Vulnerabilities get me. Not every time, but often enough. I hate to develop more wariness than I already have.