First I will explain the inspiration and some thoughts then on to the technical stuff. This painting is 24 x 36 inches in oils. Perhaps I should keep all my thoughts to myself and allow the viewer to make up her or his own story. However, I find patrons and purchasers of my work always ask me to tell the story around its creation. Many ask to have it written and printed for them to put on the back of the canvas when they buy and hang it.












So here it is, as brief as I can make it. The original idea for this came from looking at the work of Klimt and a few others while talking, texting and emailing with a lovely lady who was a sort of muse and inspiration to my work and me. I often thought of her home alone, late at night, dreaming of what could be in the night or maybe just the blessings she has in her life at that moment. The sky, the stars and the moon are as abstract as her imagination yet as golden as I know her heart to be. Her long red hair has always been an inspiration for me, so many colors to paint and setting her on soft flowing drapes seems appropriate for such beauty. It is always interesting to me how just a simple thought or word can bring an image nearly full blown into my head and force itself to a canvas. Those are the best of times. As I painted this I listened to the music of MARCOMÉ (pronounced Mar-ko-may) and old Chicago blues as well as jazz guitar by “Eclectic Dee”. A strange mix but they all seem to get me in the various needed moods for the moment.

I go into the technical part because there seems to be a number of painters who enjoy learning of the how more than the why. After the initial inspiration and the image coming to life in a series of scribbles in a sketch book I took it to a pastel to do the drawing necessary and get the colors and mood as quickly as possible. Pastels allow me to go fast and make many changes on the fly without being intimidated by making mistakes on the canvas. This pastel is, 15 x 22 inches. I already had the canvas prepared and knew I wanted it to end up a 24 x 36.




I then photographed the pastel, put that on the computer and then blew the figure up in pieces to be able to easily get that to the canvas. I like to do this with my drawn figures since it saves a lot of grid work or tedious redrawing. The canvas was linen on standard stretchers and gesso primed at least 6 coats put on with a knife to get a rather smooth surface. I’m not much of a fan of the weave showing. It was then tones with burnt sienna.

After the figure is traced I go over it with a thin line of burnt sienna and then fill in the hair some just for body. Next I put in some rough color for the sky to push it back and then rough in the drapes for composition.




The body is roughed in just enough to give it some sense of form and muscle structure. The hair is given just a quick brush stroked look to start building shape.




The next step is work on the sky. I felt I couldn’t work on the figure until the sky was about done. It was controlling the mood of the whole work. Most of the gold colored paint is what is known as “gold” by Gamblin but is made from powdered bronze. I like the way it handles and looks. It also mixes well with other colors. I then added some to the drapes in the foreground to give them more form.


In the next stage I have darkened the sky and given the figure, hair and drapes more shape. From here I went more to the figure. I added more hair to the right and took out some that was there. I started to work on the figure with more color. I wanted her to be rich in colors, not so realistic as much as to fit the mood of the sky.



In the final version the flesh tones are deeper and more colorful but still kept somewhat realistic.  I have been trying to find a way of painting that was less photographic but still used some of my many years of study of the human form.

More colors used then my usual by the end. Burnt sienna, burnt umber, cadmium red, cadmium vermilion, yellow ochre, that gold, raw sienna, chrome yellow, Naples yellow, alizarin crimson, Windsor violet, phthalo turquoise, Prussian blue, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, titanium white, only medium used was Liquin light gel. (prefer the original)


This is my first attempt at a new direction and there is a lot of loosening up to do in the weeks to come. From a simple conversation about clothing colors a new image has found its way to my sketchbook. Before that gets to a canvas I have a few others I’ve started and need to finish. Working on a moon series.  I am also working on a landscape where I hope to be able to work that type of subject matter into this same relaxed style. I will just have to wait and see what happens. 

Questions or comments are always welcomed, even the bad ones.

Swirling Dancer is 20 x 16 inches on 100% rag illustration board.  It is the first in what I hope to be a series of paintings done with a combination of oil pastels and various mediums. This one is done with the figure as a sort of "pin up" or "cheesecake" with the background done in watercolor in a simple festive look.

What I like about the oil pastels, (which I have always avoided but for some reason just came to  mind one day) is the speed I can work with the sketches and model. I can also be more creative with the colors than I might be with my traditional oils. I feel the speed of execution will give the work a fresher feeling.  I will double mat this and frame it under glass as a pastel or watercolor. I will also make it available in prints.

Please use the comments area to let me know your thougths.

This painting, "Nude with Stop Sign" measuring 36 x 20 inches, came from me sitting at various highway construction sites and watching a very attractive young woman hold up traffic with her sign. NO, she wasn't nude but she was wearing very tight clothing and looked very attractive. I watched other men in everything from pick up trucks to BMW's watching her. I realized at all these different highway stops many if not most men look at the very attractive sign holders and think of them as objects of beauty and sexuality.

They are almost goddesses of a sort who symbolize this soft, tender feminine beauty in the midst of all this ugly mechanical and dirty construction. They aren't fashion models, they aren't wanting anything but to make a living for themselves and perhaps children. Yet there they are being ogled by men from all stations of life as an unattainable object of lust.

So, I liked the double meaning of the sign. On one hand it is what she is to the men who watch her, this beautiful goddess of the highway. Then perhaps she is also a symbol of what women do NOT want to be seen. As nothing but a sexual object when they are out there trying to make a living and doing what they need to do to support life and doing it very well. So, the STOP sign has a double meaning. One the simple sign the goddess in her beauty holds and the other the "STOP seeing us like this" of the whole situation.

Strangely the man who bought it had a very beautiful wife who liked it as much as he did and both for the two different reasons.

 

Not sure why but this seemed appropriate to post today. This painting, "Combing Hair" was done from watching a beautiful and very special woman as she would comb her hair. There seemed to be a sort of silent music surrounding her as I watched. Siting and watching I could feel the softness I knew so well and wanted to capture the motion and feeling it gave me.  The painting is 24 x 30 inches as an oil on canvas.
 

I took a friend on many errands today which left me sitting in the car in various parking lots. I usually take a book and a sketch pad. Today I decided I needed to sketch even if I didn't have a single idea in my head. My head is all too often quite empty.

Since I had no idea I just start scribbling swirling lines hoping something would appear. Sort of like looking at clouds and trying to see images. Eureka, they did and as is most often true for me they were of beautiful women.

The bottom image with the four little roughs was the start, then after moving to a different location and starting again I found myself thinking of some of the "tweets" I had seen earlier today. All these came from a group of very talented women on Twitter who have created a world called, "momoparty" So as I scribbled and an image started to appear I had in my head the idea of a beautiful woman, actually a few of them, in the woods on a spring day dancing and singing. From there it sort of got easy as soon as I saw the head position appear I took  it from there. She is dancing and tossing the drape or whatever you call that in a gentle breeze with music and singing around her.

This I think should be a painting. Now, I just have to make it real as to anatomy and such so I can paint it. I guess this is how most good things start and grow.

Sorry this is so long, you can just look at the painting and skip the tome. I promise there won't be a quiz. I do think the story helps to explain it a bit.

Some time back, a few years now, I had just experienced the breakup and loss of a true love.  During the ruminating over my past I went back over how I became a painter and when did I start working to be a painter. Although I had always been a child that drew constantly it wasn't a career. I went to a small community college more because my mother insisted than any other reason. Since I had always drawn she got me into a program of art and advertising. The art classes there were not much more or even as good as most that are in any high school now.

I graduated and went to work for the New York Library System, as an illustrator, but was really not much more than a printing press operator. I was living at home and had a large bedroom with a sort of studio/office in it. I was there one weekend night, alone in the house. I found some old paints of my mother's that were mostly dried up and an old canvas board about 16 x 20 inches. I had an easel I brought back from college so I decided I should paint something to show I was really an artist. My parents always billed me as this trained painter now with a job in the art industry. Wow, what a stretch.

I remember going through the tubes of paint and finding there were only two tubes, burnt umber and yellow ochre still soft enough to use. The only medium I had was turpentine. I set up the canvas on the easel and stood back to think of what to paint. Remember, this was the 60's. The art world was allover the place, but, it always is. At that age, I was 20; I decided in order to be an artist I must be tragic.

Well, I was, sort of. I wasn't in school any more; I was living at home and working in a boring job making very little money. I was stick in my hometown where the social life was limited to bowling or going to country music bars. Neither of which were something I could bring myself to do. I had no one in my life to really think about and knew I had to get out but didn't know how.

I guess I was tragic after all. I just started painting. What I did was this dark tree on the left with one branch. Below the branch was a big hole in the ground. Standing over this was a figure looking into this hole with complete despair. This was all done in just the deep yellow and the dark brown. All sort of abstract and no very good. No, really bad. That was my one evening as an artist and never did go back to it. It sat on that easel for a very long time and then next thing I knew I was being drafted into the military. Well, things did change.

So, here I was sitting in front of another easel, nearly 40 years later feeling the pain of the loss of a woman I adored. The only difference was I had a lifetime of experiences and I was a better painter. (I hope) I had just finished my painting, "Alone with Thoughts." (see my last post)

I put up a stretched canvas and went to work using my swirly style of painting. I wanted the same basic composition but with a bit more skill and color. What you see here is the result of one long night of painting. I thought of it as nothing more than a release and a sort of tribute to my start as a painter.

A week or so later I had my grandsons over for the night. They were, at the time, 5 and 9 years old. They always liked to see what I had been painting and always had an opinion. My youngest, Evan, sometimes asked why I painted so many naked women. He thought it was disrespectful. Yes, he was only 5! It did make me think. My older, Michael, was the deep thinker both then and now. He is a very sensitive young man. He stood and stared at my new painting and asked me what the name of it was. They always liked to name the paintings. I told him I didn't have a name yet. He took a few more moments and then said, "I think you should name it Strayed Path." Why, I asked. He replied it looked as if the person in the painting had lost his way and didn't know where to go.

From the mouth's of babes. It did make me think and I was amazed he could see that much in there. I don't know if that is a tribute to my painting skills or just darn lucky with a very observant young man. I think the latter is more likely.

I did recover and moved on with my life. The painting is still around and when I look at it now, I don't think so much of my depression at that time or the woman that caused it. I don't even think much of the reason or the origin. I really only think of my grandson now 16 and somehow he is connected to me now and is a part of who I was way back when I was 20 sitting in my room alone and wondering what to do with my life than. I know he will suffer much of the same in time, as we all do.  Still ponder that but I like to think I have learned a great deal of life.

I still paint women and my youngest grandson, now 13, still can't understand why. I have a feeling that is the one thing that will change.

This painting, "Alone with Thoughts" is an oil on canvas measuring, 19 x 38 inches. It was done a while back when things, relationships, were at an ebb in my life. Not a lot of reason to give details. I do think it is one of my paintings where I have said more accurately what I was feeling at the time. Today just seemed a good day to post this one.

 

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This is another of my pen & ink drawings. The original is about 12 x 9 inches but I have been making prints as 10 x 8 inches. I'm thinking about using this basic composition and making it into a large painting as an oil on canvas. I did this using as much "dots" as the traditional cross hatching. I think the dots gives it or at least the figure a little softer and more delicate feel. 

Comments are always welcomed, please use the comment link at the bottom of the post.
 

This painting, "Beaver Pond" is a pen & ink done on board, 14 x 19 inches. It was done as a commission for a trapper's organization. (No, I'm not one of them.) They purchased the right to print it but I kept the original. When I did it I realized I didn't know anywhere enough about beaver ponds so had to study them to draw it. Sort of interesting by the time I was done.

I made prints for myself of the original in small sizes and then I have from time to time hand colored a few using watercolors. (see second image)
 

This painting is called "Mushrooms."  Helps to know what those round things are. It is 16 x 20 inches done in watercolor on rag board. This isn't the traditional watercolor. When this was done I was doing other paintings in traditional egg tempera on board. I read from egg tempera artist, Robert Vickery, how it was possible to use egg yoke mixed with the standard watercolor paints to get some of the feel of tempera.

Well, I did learn it was possible to mix them but the result was NOTHING like traditional egg tempera. However, it was a good feel and look. It gives the watercolor a stronger and more painterly feel. It dries fast and has a sort of slick feel but gives it just enough texture to create a "different" sort of look.

I ended up doing several paintings in this style.