A week of freewheeling

Last week was a bad painting week. The whole week was spent on a 40x36 "disaster" (a good title...:=) Momentous disasters often lead to good things, like moving on quickly as a way to shake-off the bad. My way is slapping paint with absolutely no-care........ like freewheeling. 

Freewheeling kinda started Thursday with a workshop demo (below granny) followed up by a "DUMB" move Friday, another full day on the "Disaster"!! 

THURSDAY- DEMO

 Happy Enough 24x24 oil on linen (2-15-18 canvas 1210)

The weekend, SIP demo! Yikes!

I had an idea that probably needed to be worked out in the studio without interruption. Monday up early, patched it up a bit with the hope it might make a good colour chip.

Not Now  24x24 oil on linen (2-19-18 canvas 1211)

Happy with some of the details..:=)

FREEWHEELING!

Unfinished 24x24 SIP demo - (waste not!)

Feeling Better Monday 24x24 oil on linen (2-19-18 canvas 1212)

Closeup, abstract, at a distance quite the opposite......... good start! 

TUESDAY

Tuesday 24x24 oil on linen (2-20-18 canvas 1213)

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday 24x24 oil on linen (2-21-18 canvas 1214)

THURSDAY

Thursday 24x24 oil on linen (2-22-18 canvas 1215)

FRIDAY

 Friday 24x24 oil on linen (2-23-18 canvas 1216)

My little trip is evolving rather nicely. No question turning out to be a fun project. Tuesday night I made a new landscape by cutting up multiple black and white references, scanned it as a jpg so I could also modify it in Photoshop. It gave up a stunning landscape composition. Currently it has some wild horses, could have pond lilies or flocks of birds.... but its prime use, a setting for quick studies of the sky and sun and it's effects.  It can be nowhere or anywhere is what I like about it most.

CUT & PASTE

 or 

REVERSED

SIP starts up bright and early in the morning....more demos with my new anywhere landscape reference:=)

Monet Slideshow + others

Learn from Masters slideshows (HD)

This link will lead to 1540 high resolution paintings by Monet. Best viewed in full screen. The side bar menu has many other artists formed up the same way.

Description: "Claude Oscar Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840. Soon after, his family moved to Le Havre, where he spent his youth. His acquaintance with Eugène Boudin lead to Monet seriously pursueing his education as a painter in 1858. Boudin and Jongkind taught Monet to always work in the field in front of his motif. The following year Monet went to Paris anyway to begin academic training. He joined the "Akademie Suisse" and joined his later fellow painters from the Impressionist group, especially when painting together "en plen air" in the forest of Fontainebleau. Their constant struggle was to have their pictures exhibited at the official "Salon de Paris", where the conservative jury mostly declined their paintings. Because of the lack of acceptance of his artwork, Claude Monet and his small family had to live in dire poverty for many years. In 1879 his first wife Camille, with whom he had two children, died. Monet's art had meanwhile developed from withdrawn color paintings to form an independent Impressionist style. With his famous painting "Impression: soleil levant", Claude Monet named one of the most important genres of Avant-garde art. Some art lovers, especially the art dealer Durand-Ruel, supported him financially. Very gradually, a market developed for his pictures. In 1883 Claude Monet managed to earn enough money to move to Giverny, west of Paris, where he managed to buy the house he had been renting in 1890. He now had a place to return to after his frequent travels and the garden of his property, which he later managed to extend, provided constant inspiration for his work at home. In 1891 Monet painted the first of his famous series: the "meules" (haystacks) were followed by pictures of poplars and the river Seine, the cathedral of Rouen, the river Thames in London and many more. His exhibitions were great successes and Monet became a celebrated artist. In 1892 he married Alice Hoschedé, who brought more children into the family. From the turn of the century, the water lilies on the specially designed pond in Giverny and the picturesque wooden bridge in Japanese style became Monet's favorite motifs. In 1911 Alice died. In 1916, at the age of 76, Monet started his largest project: the creation of the famous wall decoration depicting the pond with the water lillies (now in Paris). In the 1920s his eyesight deteriorated and he had to have surgery, but he still did his utmost to continue painting. Shortly before his death on December 5, 1926 Claude Monet finished his water lilly paintings. Today Claude Monet is regarded as the most well known Impressionist artist. His late work is increasingly considered to be the precursor for the abstraction of the 20th century." 

Grey days, doom and gloom

Yesterday it rained so hard during SIP it made me grouchy enough to wipe out a demo! Well, truth of the matter it was doomed from the start....after awhile you just know. Some days are like that and rain doesn't help.....grey days doom and gloom! 

Enough whining...and oh yea lost (2) keys off my key ring????  (found later later in my bag). We've all been there....

SUNDAY WIPE-OUT!

Today it's still raining so there you have it! Yet all is not lost....I have google search to entertain myself:=)

DOODLES

I doodle, and when I do, it's always along this line. I love developing rhythms with lines and shapes.... Doodling or painting actually. Not sure I ever did doodles with colour other than a gold pen as a fill detail..... Things you do when bored, lately lost deep in the mind and time. Then it recently resurfaced in a big way and I get it!

Eden's origins are clearly influenced by the Art Nouveau movement - never cared for the furniture but loved the composition and line of the period. And, I always thought Deco was my big thing and it is, because it led in real time to mid-century Modern.... The exact opposite of the French Sun King! My first attraction, the Rococo Period. How time fly's and how past artisan's influence our future and thinking is amazing. We artists are lucky today, we have it all at our fingertips with a few simple search words.

Sargent must have drooled over this little morsel because he successfully applied his own spin on the full length Rococo portrait and he did it over and over again.

Where is this all leading.........wish I knew.

Visible Light - fun project

A big shout-out to SIP team member Karen's homework. I don't think much about colour or even how my palette is arranged. It's second nature and actually never thought much about it either. If anything, I'm playing colour against each other like a chess game looking for the third colour that completes the picture.

So, as a recent painting coach for me colour is simple, I paint light and connect that with a prism....case closed! Not so much for the team.... they often struggle with piles of premixed colour trying to reference match or on a bad day, producing dirt in the process. Basically floundering with a palette that has no relationship to one another than visual chaos.

Karen brought it to the forefront for me with a simple palette "map" placed under her glass palette.  What that meant to me was a New Google Search!

GLASS PALETTE 

(split layout - warm left, cool right) 

Thank you Karen!

 (colour bar should be reversed)

From bottom left to bottom right: (1) Neo Megilp, (2) Titanium White, (3) Naples yellow/Jaune Brilliant, (4) Cadmium Lemon Yellow, (5) Cadmium Yellow medium/dark, (6) Alizarin Orange, (7) Cadmium Vermillion, (8) Alizarin Crimson, (9) Permanent Rose, (10) Persian Rose, (11) Sap Green, (12) Chromium Oxide green, (13) Permanent Green lite, (14) Sevres Blue, (15) Cerulean Blue, (16) Ultramarine Blue, (17) French Ultramarine Blue, (18) Provence Violet (bluish), (19) Dioxazine Purple.

WOW! Lots of colours! But, I don't use all of them at the same time, if I were to, this would always be my arrangement. Warm Left with green separating cool right.
  

RAINBOW

 PRISM

GREY SCALE/COLOUR

SAME VALUE

Okay! Fun graphic project about "Visible Light". Gotta love google! But the most interesting thing I found were these colour chips below. They showed clearly how related tonal colour will "POP" clean colour. There is no mud..... one of my favorite comments. As long as you have a decisive tone, the eye can compare to another colour, there is no such thing as mud.

I mix all colour from a single pile and when it spreads out a bit too far or into thin patches of different mixtures I use a paint scraper to bring it back into one single toned pile and start the process over. It's a great work process because everything on the canvas will be colour related....plus no paint waste! Better to blend paint on the canvas than the palette. Also why a constant palette layout is beneficial...it becomes intuitive (less thinking). Often we are cooling or warming up a colour so it makes sense to group cool and warm colours separately, as in a split palette.

RELATED COLOUR TONED - COLOUR POPS!

(mix from a single pile = colour relationship)

TRIAD COLOUR SCHEME 

(third colour)

My "third colour" comment revolves around a triad colour scheme typical in my work as a designer and a painter. I never really know what or when that "POP" colour will reveal itself but it always does! The basics of colour are learned in kindergarten and grade school painting/art classes....yellow and blue makes green and so on. The triad is shown clearly on the wheel below. We most likely have every colour shown below on our palette as a norm. Note: I use no earth colours like umber tones and no reason to have them on my palette. During the mixing process there will be more than enough neutral tones available without the premixed burnt umber's or even black. If I remember right, Yellow, Blue and Red make Black! My personal favorite black is Prussian and Alizarin Crimson and a more recent one added, Dioxin and sap green.

• A colour scheme that includes any (3) colours equally spaced on the colour wheel.
• One dominate colour, a secondary colour and one to POP! (The third colour)

JAX'S PLAYROOM