The never ending painting:

I thought I would never finish this work this past year.  After leaving it for a couple of months, I returned to it today to finish it.  Is a painting ever finished?  Some would argue "No."  Perhaps ones day in the coming months I will add or change a few things that I thought should be different while photographing it this afternoon, however for today I will proclaim that it is done.  There are several posts on this blog in the months of June, July and August that feature this works progress.

The thing is complete when you can let it be.

- Gita Bellin

Morning Battles - painting completed...

I teach color theory. I have decided to paint all color principles I ask my students to paint. I believe in the color principles defined by Johannes Itten. I am a convert to my belief. I thought his color principles were dated and old fashioned. After teaching color theory, I started seeing the principles defined by Itten everywhere, every day in movies, advertisements, clothing, etc. I realized his ideas about color are alive and well. This is a still life of my daughter's toys. In the work, I am interested in painting a subject I can approach in a straight forward manner. I am at my best as a painter when I have a direct perceptual reference. Morning Battles takes on Itten's Contrast of Hue. I thought that color contrast would be the best for my idea. Conflict is a form of abrupt communication and hard transitions. Light/dark contrasting colors exemplifies dual, conflicting feelings of joy & exasperation I experience in the early mornings while trying feed and dress a toddler.

In the final stretch...

...and hoping to be done with this painting today.  Below are photos from my progress yesterday.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

- Henry Ward Beecher

Paint, paint, paint

I paint each day as to finish the painting, and I am always disappointed when it is not.  Made some strides to day in color and structure.  I believe I will finish this work this week.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

- Vincent Van Gogh

A day spent advancing the art.

Title of in progress painting:  Morning Battles, acrylic on canvas.

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

- Edgar Degas

A morning and afternoon well spent...

...beginning a new painting!

The greatest temptation and danger is to rely on previous solutions and thus paint the same picture for the rest of your life.  - Charles Movalli

It can't look like you've worked hard and long, even if you have. A painting should be done quickly with both your intellect and your nerves. When they give out, stop. 

- Charles Movalli

Some days...

...I really feel like a painter.  Continuing to make progress in the studio...

The first two things to study are form and values. For me, these are the bases of what is serious art. Color and finish put charm into one’s work… …it seems to me very important to begin by an indication of the darkest values (assuming that the canvas is white), and to continue in order to the lightest value. From the darkest to the lightest I would establish twenty shades… …Never lose sight of that first impression by which you were moved. Begin by determining your composition. Then the values – the relation of the forms to the values. These are the basis. Then the color, and finally the finish. (ca. 1828)

- Camille Corot

Things are just coming right along in the studio this week...

...with help from some Contrast of Saturation in a Color Harmony complement tetrad.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to...the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.  

-Vincent Van Gogh

Identifying the commonalities of my new subject...

...for my forthcoming project.  My new subject has many of the same interests in nature as I, therefore I am exploring the common interests by repurposing a previous composition that blend and represents my new subject with some of my previous aesthetic concerns.  Below is an in progress work and two details from that work comprised of ink on Yupo, 30" x 40".

A working country is hardly ever a landscape. The very idea of landscape implies separation and observation. It is possible and useful to trace the internal histories of landscape painting, landscape writing, landscape gardening and landscape architecture, but in any final analysis we must relate these histories to the common history of a land and its society. We have many excellent internal histories, but in their implicit and sometimes explicit points of view they are ordinarily part of that social composition of ht land - its distribution, its uses, and its control - which has been uncritically received and sustained, even into our own century, where the celebration of its achievements is characteristically part of an elegy for a lost way of life.


- Pauline Fletcher, Gardens and Grim Ravines: The Language of Landscape in Victorian Poetry (1983)

Sketchbook Drawing of Cockroaches and Hay

Below:  An intersection of experience and memory...The cockroaches of the stray and hay that frightened him while incarcerated as a youth during the 19th century, informed his scientific research as a man.

Forthcoming project study #8, ink on paper, 5.5" x 13," 2013

Forthcoming project study #9, ink on paper, 5.5" x 13," 2013

Sketchbook Drawing of an Over the Top May Day Birth Announcement

Forthcoming project study #7, pencil and ink on board, 10" x 11," 2013

Forthcoming project study #10, ink on paper, 5.5" x 13," 2013

The world’s favorite season is the spring.

All things seem possible in May.

-  Edwin Way Teale

Another and another sketchbook study for an un-announced, forthcoming project

An over the top May Day birth announcement, take 2:

Forthcoming project study #5, pencil and ink on board, 9" x 12," 2013

Below: trying to visualize what a 19th century boy would draw in the margins of his latin book while distracted:

Forthcoming project study #6, digital study, 2013

He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor. - Menander of Ephesus 

Another sketchbook study for an un-announced, forthcoming project

An over the top May Day birth announcement:

Forthcoming project study #4, ink on board, 9" x 12," 2013

May's exquisite fragrance
of lilacs in my room;
Has brought me joy and 
pleasure and kept my
heart in tune.

The lilies-of-the-valley
strike up their notes of cheer.
For Mother's Day and May Day
are at this time of year. 

Florence Weaver

Sketchbook study for an un-announced, forthcoming project

Forthcoming project study #3, ink on board, 9" x 12," 2013

It was still early, and the sun's lower limb was just free of the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the touch as yet. 

- Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Sketchbook studies for an un-announced, forthcoming project

I will be posting during the next few months studies and sketches from an un-announced, forthcoming project.  Regular studio work will be mixed in with the posts as well.

Forthcoming project study #1, ink on board, 9" x 12," 2013

Forthcoming project study #2, ink on board, 9" x 12," 2013

It is a pity indeed to travel and not get this essential sense of landscape values.  You do not need a sixth sense for it.  It is there if you just close your eyes and breathe softly through your nose;  you will hear the whispered message,  for all landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper.  'I am watching you -- are you watching yourself in me?'  Most travelers hurry too much...the great thing is to try and travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open, and not to much factual information.  To tune in, without reverence, idly -- but with real inward attention.  It is to be had for the feeling...you can extract the essence of a place once you know how.  If you just get as still as a needle, you'll be there.

- Lawerence Durrell, Spirit of Place:  Letters and Essays on Travel

9/13 - 9/15/2013, Part II

Continuing to work out that long term painting from the summer.  Lots of textures in the surface and color relationships to resolve.  To further that goal, spent time working out ideas with marker on vellum paper. Progress is posted below.

detail of weekend vellum drawing

marker drawing on vellum

detail of long term painting

detail of long term painting

detail of long term painting

We get used to a certain kind of color of form or format, and it's acceptable. And to puncture that is sticking your neck out a bit. And then pretty soon, that's very acceptable.

- Lee Krasner

9/13 - 9/15/2013, Part I

A weekend exploring the relationship of color.  This post is part one, color and landscape studies.  Indoor studio time forthcoming...

Sketchbook page, Finlay Park #5, 9/14/2013, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, Finlay Park #6, 9/14/2013, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, color relationships, 9/14/2013, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.  - Albert Einstein