I noodled around with the underpainting a little more, and then I roughly glazed a blue into the background. I actually just painted the stripes to illustrate the power of the underpainting with a glaze of color over it. Ordinarily, I would have painted this area in one "shot" and would have worked a little more opaquely. Notice how the glaze is really affected by how dark the underpainting is. I really mix a lot of medium into the paint for a nice gloss. I've been using the Studio Products mediums, but I also like Galkyd or the generic traditional old master recipe ( 1/3 linseed, 1/3 turpentine, and 1/3 Damar ).
Next, it's time to really get into the color. The real beauty of this method for me is that it is VERY forgiving. Right now, you've basically got a monochromatic version of your painting. You could continue to paint in a more direct and expressive style, or you can reign in those German roots and tighten things up a little. Also, this is really where color harmony and balance come into play. You're interacting with the temperature of the background, and you're glazing colors on top of one another in order to create a tertiary level of depth.
At this point, I play with this thing forever through adding and "lifting" color until it feels done. I'll probably sand this thing off and use this board again due to the fairly sloppy way in which I executed this painting ( not to mention the fact that "a pair of pears"... may... not be my zenith of creative intensity). I hope this is helpful to the people taking my workshop next week.
Hey, I've really got only one more important thing to add:
"When Karate and gymnastics are fused, the combustion becomes an explosion, and a new kind of martial arts superhero is born...Gymkata!"
At this point, I'll monkey around with my drawing a little, but for the most part I'll make "real" corrections in my painting. After the drawing, I'll make a wash of some sort of earth tone ( usually Burnt or Raw Umber diluted with a little mineral spirits or turpentine ).
Okay, let's talk about turpentine. Turpentine is nasty. Turpentine evaporates into the air quickly and it can get into your bloodstream even through healthy, unbroken skin. Odorless mineral spirits are a safer alternative ( Gamblin's Gamsol is good), but they are also a petroleum product and are by no means "safe". So, here's what I do and why I do it. I use OMS for brush cleaning. It's cheap and works well. I use judicious (i.e. very, very small ) amounts of turp for my actual painting, and usually only in the early stages for underpainting. Turpentine doesn't cloud like OMS, and quite frankly, I like a little hint of the sweet smell of it in my workplace. I also encourage you to use pure gum spirits of turpentine, and not just some crap from the "Home Store" ( they always say that on This Old House even though Lowe's is a sponsor ).
You also don't really have to use solvents with your painting if you're concerned about safety or you have allergies. You can use M.Graham's Walnut Oil Medium which is fairly safe ( it's basically a cooking oil) for your medium and you can use just about any kind of natural oil to clean your brushes with.
So, if you want to use turpentine, open a window and be careful with it. If you tend to handle hazardous materials in a Jerry Lewis-like fashion, then use something else. Okay, enough of this.
After my underpainting is dry, I "build" my underpainting with a monochromatic ( one color) foundation or grisaille. I'm really only concerned about values here, and I try to use the warm earth tone to guide the temperature of the composition. This example is fairly quick and dirty, but I usually spend most of my time in this stage. One point to remember is that you'll be glazing layers of color over this underpainting, so be mindful of the fact that you want this too be slightly brighter so that the colors don't effectively diminish the light when you apply them.
I used a grisaille set from Studio Products that has the greyscale values pre-mixed in accordance to the Munsell Tonal Chart for this tutorial. This set is fantastic if you want to make subtle variations in the background that will "shape" the colors when you glaze. I made up a little striped wallpaper backdrop to illustrate how precisely mixed greys can accelerate this process.
Okay, let's talk about neutrals and greys. I like to mix neutrals myself from color relative to the composition with the primary focus being on simultaneous contrast. I really believe that employing this in your painting makes it come to life . Take away any silly little joke that might be the thrust of my painting and you'll still have this operating on a subconscious level and effectively engaging your viewer. See? You can wash my mouth out with soap and I'll still have a little something to say, baby!
So what I'm trying to say is DON'T just use black and white. It robs your painting of significant depth and it's lazy.
Here's the grisaille. I'll leave this alone for five or more days to dry. The next step is adding color.
While I'm waiting for my painting to dry, I like to watch trailers for really bad movies. Here's one right now:
My favorite line here includes the phrase "caught between a dangerous loser... and a girl... they both love".
I'm doing a two-day workshop in May, and I'd like to post a little demo of my process for the people in my class. I'm sticking to a simple subject in this demonstration, but we'll do something a little more involved in the workshop.
Here are a couple of pears ( or, a pair of pears, I guess) that I played around with on my table and arranged for my drawing.
I typically use Wolff's Carbon Pencils for drawing just about everything. They are super black and they handle really nicely relative to a General's ( which I also use, but they're a little more crumbly... for me).
I'm using a gessoed panel ( from my pals at realgesso.com ) that I made an oak edge banding for. I like these with a thicker band for a couple of reasons: they are easy to handle when you paint ( as opposed to a regular panel), they are ready to hang, and... if you dare... they can sit on a mantle or a bookshelf.
I loosely sketch my composition and then I'll glaze an earth tone with a little turpentine ( or mineral spirits). This will give me a nice "tooth" to start my Grisaille monochromatic underpainting.
My next post will show the progression of the underpainting and balancing tones for the glazes of color
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. There are times when I find inspiration for painting through the carefully crafted work of others. The subtle nuanced layers of certain films inspire me to reach higher and push my medium as far as I can. This "film" is one such example:
Hey, is it me, or does Ed Lauter got some kind of neck-thing going on here?
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My work is in the March issue of Poets and Artists ( Oranges & Sardines) magazine along with some really wonderful painters. I'm thankful that Didi Menendez included me in such a talented group of contemporary artists. The online version has a pretty slick display that allows you to "flip through the pages".
Actually, I've been corrected. It should have been "shoe antlers". Sorry about that.
Okay, I found these things that stick out of a deer's head at our local flea market for $1.00. Yeah, some redneck was clearly judicious in his selection of "game" to have acquired this trophy specimen for his wall. Actually, I'm pretty sure these wouldn't have even made the cut for antlers on those Jackalope things.
I say this one a lot, but it's so good that it really needs to be repeated often. Growing up in the south, there's a thing that avid hunters say in defense of their "sport".
"Hey!" ( in a really slow partially-intelligible drawl)...
"Hey!" ( sometimes "Hey" is often repeated here. I'm not really sure why )
"if you don't like huntin', then don't tawk with yor mouth full".
Yep! That's it. That's the argument for deer hunting. It's not the deep-seated fulfillment of primitive urges from 100,000 years ago. It's also not the necessity to "control" the deer population due to food shortages ( which, they eat leaves and live in the woods, and I'm pretty sure there's no leaf shortage, but...). Nope, It's "weer providin' food for y'all, and you better be grateful!!". Actually, here's an excellent essay ( and by "essay", I mean poorly written ramblings of the type of guy I mean).
Okay, let's get something straight. In the 21st century, we don't "hunt" our food. Nobody is going out and hunting the elusive "wild cow". We don't hunt cattle, or fish, or fowl. We herd them into a place, and then we kill them with hammers and/or electricity. That's not hunting... AT ALL!
My dad ( now defunct ), used to say, "if God wanted us to hunt, He wouldn't have created the meat department". And listen, I love a good steak as much as the next guy, but I am pretty sure that if I had to wrestle the damn thing to the ground with a spear in order to get one that I would eat fewer of them.
Actually, I'm not particularly passionate about the hunting thing. Without hunting, we might lose all of those "accidents" which, incidentally, has a very positive effect on the gene pool.
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I've been a busy bee getting work ready for the Holiday Show ( Size Matters) at the Miller Gallery in Cincinnati and for a small works show at the Swan Coach House in Atlanta. Here are some of the paintings:
I'm starting a new series of paintings for shows coming up next year. This means it's time to pull out my Christmas music to accompany me through my holiday work. I like to listen to Bing and Bob radio shows where the dates fall around the Christmas season. Typically, there will be a little banter, a song or two, and then a nice little Christmas message from Bing at the end. It's nice and it gets me in the mood.
Another good one I like to listen to is the Dragnet Christmas episode .22 rifle for Christmas. Does the title give you ANY indication as to what happens in this story? Okay, honestly, this one is pretty depressing, and they ran this show EVERY YEAR at Christmas time. This tells me that either they ( Jack Webb ) were too lazy to record another show for the holidays, or they ( Jack Webb ) really had an axe to grind against "Daddy" giving his little boy a rifle. At the time, Dragnet was pretty much the only game in town, so Jack could rip the beard right off of Santa ( not the "real" Santa, but the fat drunken slob in red sitting in a chair at the local shopping mall ) to drive his point home.
Of course today we all realize that giving a gun to a little kid isn't only a "good thing" to do, but it would also be the "American" thing to do. Please note that at no point did I ever say it would be the smart thing to do.
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I've been thinking about why I consume so much bad pop culture while I paint. The best I can come up with is that I need a little "comfort food" while I'm nurturing a painting. The meticulous nature of how I paint diminishes some of the immediate energy found in other styles of painting. I like painting Alla Prima , but for me I feel that its like a playful prelude to the real work. My thinking is that anything that I can pop-off in a couple of hours doesn't have any real intrinsic value other than the experience of doing it . I get more fulfillment out of the painting process by "building" in layers. Maybe there's some sort of psychological component that won't allow me to fully immerse myself in something as immediate as painting in one sitting.
Or... maybe it's more fun to paint with Elvis.
Anyway, I listened to a lot of Elvis music ( all pre-'62 and post '68) while I painted stitches, glazed layers of umbers and crimsons, and noodled around with roses. I also played Blue Hawaii a few times ( I didn't want to miss any of that clever Presley subtext the first time around). In Blue Hawaii, "E" returns from the Army to Hawaii ( yeah, he's Hawaiian ... you know its an authentic native Hawaiian when the main character says "Wa-heen-eh" with a southern accent) to assume the role of heir to his father's pineapple plant. Here we see another classic Elvis movie theme involving conflict with his "Daddy" ( I love it when I hear a grown man refer to his father as "Daddy").
We saw Elvis attempt to overcome the embarrassment of his loser father ( Dean Jagger from White Christmas ) in King Creole ( "you go to school Daddy!! I'm going out to make a buck!!"). In Clambake, we watched him "go underground" as a water skiing instructor in attempt to evade his responsibility of taking over his father's oil company. Oh, and Clambake also includes one of the greatest musical scenes EVER! This would be the scene where he restores a speedboat in 4 minutes with the aid of Will Hutchins, a bunch of hot girls, and Gary Merrill ( the cross-dressing / child beating drunk who married Betty Davis) with the aid of a chemical compound ( that Elvis invented) that improves the strength of speedboat hulls.
The "Dr." really knows how to make a pair of boots. You can walk in acid in these suckers.
Note: Always check on the bottom to see the words "Made in England" before you buy them. The ones made in Japan fall apart and are meant for fashion ( not action).
I'm sending this painting out with a batch of smaller ones that I'm getting ready for a show in November at the Miller Gallery in Cincinnati. I'm also working on some things for a group show ( also in November ) at the Swan Coach House in Atlanta.
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I still can't get over the fact that some of the finest oil paint available is made a mile from my house at the Howard Daniel company. I got to see my pal Max Howard make a batch, and I have to say, It's WAY MORE WORK than I ever imagined. The Ralph Mayer handbook shows you how to mix up a batch of your own paint from scratch, but it's really an involved process if you want any level of consistency in your materials.
First, The finely ground pigment is mixed with a carefully measured and balanced amount of linseed and safflower oils. Next, a "test run" is made by sending a small amount through a special milling machine that mixes the compound into paint.
Once, the paint comes out with the perfect blend of sheen and body then you run the properly balanced mixture through the mill.
This is actually a blue, and is so rich in pigment that it actually looks black. The finished oil paint is then ready to be shipped by the gallon...
or "tubed".
I'm getting started on some new paintings this week. I've spent the last couple of weeks preparing surfaces and I'm ready to get working.
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Here's a painting that I finished just in the nick of time for the Robots, Donuts, and other Madness show featuring Eric Joyner, Jessica Hess, and me at the Miller Gallery on June 26. When I got to the opening, a bowl of popcorn was there, but I wasn't sure if it was a sculpture or something to accompany the painting. I have to say this turned out to be more of a vacation than an opening. First of all, I went with my pal Walter because my pretty little wife had to stay home with our epileptic dog. This turned out to be great in that we were able to spend many, many hours discussing important topics such as:
-Red West: Great American actor or Elvis Presley flunky loser?
-Would Dack Rambo have made a great villain on The Incredible Hulk television show?
-Arguing about driving directions for a path that was essentially staying on the same road (I75 north) in a straight line
-Should I use my Popeye voice or my James Mason voice for the duration of the weekend.
-Should I use the "hybrid" Popeye-Mason voice?
I'll let the pictures do the talking, but I have to say this was a great weekend:
The lovely Gallery Director Rosemary Seidner took this picture
Swingin' hepcat Hugh McMantis offering up a few Eric, Jessica, and Otto t-shirts posed in an incredibly natural way
Owner , Gary Gleason ( looking pretty cool slinking around the corner ) "pre-show"
My new pal, Eric Joyner, next to one of his paintings
Jessica Hess and Walter sharing a laugh undoubtedly brought on by my comedy stylings including an extensive Popeye-Mason routine
The front entrance to the Miller Gallery with Rosemary, Gary and some ladies with a little dog
That's actually William Shatner posing as Eric Joyner
Oil painting by Jessica Hess ( she doesn't really have an "X" on her face)
After show dinner with owners Gary and Laura Miller Gleason and all of the wonderful people I met this weekend. Note the bald guy with the big mouth. He might be saying something really clever and intelligent, or... he might be yelling something that only he thinks is funny. Oh, and what's up with that palsied-hand-gang-sign-thing?
I didn't end up with any pics during the actual opening. This is due to the fact that I was actually enjoying myself meeting all of the cool people that night. I cannot thank Gary, Laura, Rosemary enough for making the show a wonderful experience and for extending their hospitality to me. I also want to thank Rosemary's daughters for making the Margarita's WAAY too strong, for Hugh helping out with the cool t-shirts the gallery had made, and for Becca letting me sleep in her room. I swear I didn't steal anything ... that you'd miss.
I would also like to thank the city of Cincinnati for the $50.00 parking ticket that I received within the first 10 minutes of arriving in town. This penalty has taught me an incredibly valuable lesson about the extreme "dangers" of parallel parking a vehicle the wrong way on a quiet side-street.
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Actually, "Cherry Lifesaver" is her name. Kinda like when you name some action beefcake guy "Chuck Steak". I've been a busy bee this week finishing up work for the upcoming show Robot, Donuts and other Madness at the Miller Gallery in Cincinnati on June 26.
Admittedly, the last eleven months has been a real emotional roller-coaster ride with all of the "fun" that canine epilepsy has brought into my world. Needless to say, it has been difficult to get as many paintings completed as I had been before all of the random incidents of uncontrollable shaking. At the moment, my little Peanut has been responding to the medicine a little better, and it has helped me pick up the pace a little ( Thank you, Dr. Dodd). Gee, I'm glad that I didn't take the advice of a certain local college veterinary hospital who repeatedly suggested euthanasia ( a.k.a killing her with poison) as a viable alternative ( F**k you, local university hospital lady).
Had I followed her course of "treatment", I wouldn't have gotten to play "destroy the rubber ducky" in my back yard:
Ah, I'm not bitter.
Another cool thing is my Love Gun painting on the cover of the summer 2009 issue of the Indiana Review.
Doesn't that pink look awesome?
I'm kind of hoping that the people from the Indiana Review don't actually read my blog and ultimately figure out that Otto may... Hmmm, shall we say, fall a little short in the "literary arts" department.
I think it was James Tiberius Kirk who once said "fortune favors the foolish" in the epic masterpiece Star Trek IV: The voyage home ( the one where they have to go back to the 20th century to get a humpback whale in order to save humanity).
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My Mom and I went to the Freshblood show at the Mason Murer gallery on Friday ( my wife had to stay at home with our favorite epileptic dog). Okay, you know when someone describes a particular thing to you and they say, "it's big!"? Well, this would be the first time that the description actually fits the thing the person is describing. This place was HUGE, and filled with great work.
FUN FACT: My Mom is actually 27 inches tall!
I gave this guy seven dollars to pose for this picture. His only instructions were to "look natural" and to "appear to have a deep interest in my work...in a natural sort of way". He totally nailed it!
Actually, his name is Jeff and I graduated from UGA with him, but I totally could have gotten that response from a complete stranger.
My Mom and I drove back to join my wife and epileptic dog to catch an episode of Mannix.
Judo, jumping out of a dune buggy and shooting at someone, burning your fingers on hot toast, driving ( while shaving), swimming in shark infested waters, and playing it cool with your wool blazer ( in California) over your shoulder. All in a day's work for Joe Mannix.
The episode we watched was called "Deathrun", and involved Joe meeting up with an old marine buddy ( Joe apparently was in every branch of the armed services at some point) who served with him in Korea. The comment was made, "we were just kids" comes up referring to their time in Korea. This would make Joe a 28 year old "kid" in 1953.
Either way, at the end of the episode his buddy dies ( falls off a mountain cliff-this happens often on Mannix) and Joe is standing there attempting to cry. My mom looks at me and says,"you know, he's kind of a shitty actor".
I consider it to be a perfect evening.
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Here are a couple more paintings for the Freshblood show at the Mason Murer gallery in Atlanta, GA on May 29.
blueberry rambler, 2009
8" x 6", oil on panel
black and blue, 2009
8" x 6" , oil on panel
Armenian superhero Mike Connors ( aka "Touch" Connors) has invaded my studio space with the second season of Mannix. Mannix is so cool that he introduces himself only as..."Mannix". I'd try to be convincing, but there's nothing I could ever write that would be as convincing as this picture:
The proportions of the above picture are accuratePin It Now!
Here's some new work for the upcoming show Freshblood at Mason Murer Gallery on May 29 in Atlanta, GA.
While I've been logging in a lot of hours painting for the shows in the coming months, I've been reunited with my old friend Mr. Bill Bixby (a.k.a Dr. David Bruce Banner). Hulu has the first three seasons of The Incredible Hulk available and its FANTASTIC!
I have to say that The Incredible Hulk television show is a gold-mine of comedic riches. It's like The Fugitive only where the protagonist actually looks for trouble. Bixby's problem on the show isn't the fact that he turns into a giant retarded green man, but it's his inability to avoid meddling in the affairs of strangers.
Here's my favorite episode from the series titled "The Slam". This one has everything! Robert Davi as an evil prison guard, and my favorite character actor Charles Napier ( as an inmate who has been in the county jail for FIVE YEARS) . Do they give prison sentences that long in county jail? We also have David ( Bixby) "hulking out", escaping, and then... getting re-captured.
Here's a nice review of the Fresh Faces 2009 show in Artslant New York called Three Artists and a Two-Eyed Cat by Robyn Farrell Roulo.
Rene Magritte
L'homme au chapeau melon , 1964
25.6" x 19.7", oil
Oh, and I keep wanting to mention this, but Paul McCartney and Wings song With a Little Luck from the 1978 album London Town has the better version ( 5:45 minutes in length). The single or DJ Edit ( 3:13) for the radio cuts out the cool little bass / keyboard solo ( it kind of builds up to sort of a musical arch which unifies the whole song and seems a little disjointed without it). Songs are usually "edited" ( aka butchered ) in order to keep them around three minutes long. Also, I've always thought Paul's bass playing was totally underrated ( for example, the intro on Silly Love Songs).
