7/11 the AM, The green today

...is cool enough to make me want ice cream.  Grasshopper ice cream that is.  The perils of being a painter - dietary cravings.  The morning was spent again at the State Capitol.  I am feeling uncertain as to the affects of the Yupo paper on my linear marks.  The synthetic paper suspends material and transforms the materials - thus making each edge smoother.  It has made me question artist intention and chance - how much of the marks are mine?  or are they now the residue of a "filter" which is an inherent property of the support, the Yupo?

State Capitol painting, acrylic ink on Yupo, 11" x 14"

Life is like a landscape.  You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.  - Charles Lindbergh

7/10, More Certain Times

Sometimes it is important to remember when a drawing is just a drawing, and let it go.  When color comes into the mix, there is the urge to make it a painting.  However today, I decided that this is as far as I want and should go with this drawing.  Keeping it loose - the lines, the forms and the features.  It is based on one of my favorite maquettes, and I think that maquette deserves more exploration through other drawings before proceeding to a more long term work.

Don't wait for ideas, they come with production. If you prepare yourself too much, you might never be ready. Creation is itself a preparation. I have been producing like a madman ever since I was 16. Don't be afraid to do inferior things, the first fruits are always small & sour. You must work a lot, it clears the brain.  - Chagall

7/9, Uncertain lines

This drawing progressed today (see previous 6/21 post) with a radical addition of more color, particularly green and yellow and a radical change in the outer shape.  It is almost complete and more linear work will be added later this week.

Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.  
- Pablo Picasso

7/8, the PM: Almost

This is finished, or I should say almost.  It is finished, but as with all of my works, I will leave it hanging in my studio for a bit as there may be an area or color for me to revisit.  The State Capitol sketchbook drawing (posted below) helped to resolve the blue light on the right side of the work.

State Capitol painting, acrylic on canvas, 30" x 40"

ALMOST!

Within my reach!

I could have touched
I might have chanced that way!

Soft sauntered through the village,

Sauntered as soft away!

So unsuspected violets

Within the fields lie low,

Too late for striving fingers

That passed, an hour ago.

by Emily Dickinson

7/8, the AM: Pragmatic and practical

The morning was spent outdoors, onsite making practical sketchbook choices that will facilitate a finishing of some long term studio work - a landscape painting and the large, long term drawing.  Back to the indoors to apply the insight.

Sketchbook page, State Capitol drawing, marker, 

watercolor, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, State Capitol, foliage study for long term drawing #11, 

marker, watercolor, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Live to paint, don't paint to live.  - Darby Bannard 

7/5, Indoors, resolving and hopefully completing...

...two studio paintings.  With only one drawing completed, the rain has disrupted my work out of doors, so I must retreat to the studio for the remainder of the day.

Sketchbook page, Riverbanks Zoo for long term drawing #10, marker, 

watercolor, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

- Walt Whitman, from the preface of Leaves of Grass. 

7/4, Its in Plein Sight, Plein Air Sight...

Morning spent drawing in the sketchbook, and I survived the mugginess long enough to complete two drawings...I think that there is some good stuff which can be incorporated in long term works.

Sketchbook page, Riverbanks Zoo for long term drawing #8, marker, 

watercolor, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, Riverbanks Zoo for long term drawing #9, marker, 

watercolor, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

- John Ruskin

7/3, Starting at the bottom

Today begins with working out details of the embellishments in the foliage at the bottom of the drawing.  During college, Richard Mattson reminded me to think about each painting's outer edges, and Lester Goldman reminded me to think of the bottom of the composition.  Frequently Lester would have me raise the bottom edge of my paintings to my eye level while I worked on them.  He was right, of course, and the composition and cohesion in each work benefited greatly as a result.  I will be following Lester's advice again today, and jump start the day's work with a sketchbook study of that area.

Sketchbook page, for long term drawing #7, marker, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Long term drawing sketchbook drawings are based on.  Area of pictorial study is highlighted.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward 
significance.  - Aristotle