Owls in Kindergarten

That's when I first remember drawing owls. I was five. My owl lived in a hollow in a big, dead tree, in the middle of a flat, open, kindergarten landscape. That drawing was the first time I stopped coloring the sky as a band of bright blue across the very top of the page. I was very proud of it, and I wish I still had it. 

 

37 years later, and I'm working on this piece. It's about 12" high, made of wood and metal and other salvaged items I picked up off the ground. What you see here is the point at which I've got the design figured out, and am about to start applying oil paint. The "house" part, which was a discarded surveyor's stake, will be shades of blue and green. The owl is a barred owl, and I'll paint it fairly realistically. 

When it's finished, I'll post more photos, and tell you why I've loved owls all my life.

Calling the cops at 4:30 a.m.

That's what I had to do this morning. There was a huge fight next door. I lost a lot of sleep and now I do not want to do much.

But artists make art, even (maybe especially) when we don't wanna.

This is often called DISCIPLINE. I hate that word. It's a trip to the principal's office. It means running laps, driving yourself hard, everything soul-sucking and miserable about working. Also I've never been able to maintain it for more than a few days.

Then I would feel like a failure.

Yet here I am, working on Queen Ruby when I don't feel like it. If this isn't discipline, what is it?

I'm calling it MOTIVATION. When I thought I needed discipline, the underlying feeling was, "I suck. I have to work harder and be better because I'm lazy."

Motivation is deciding I'm good, that I deserve to have the life I want, that I'm worth my own effort. It is one big decision followed by thousands of smaller ones, from "Do I bother entering this show?" to "Do I take the trash out before it gets rancid?" And since I deserve to have my work get seen, and to live in a place that smells nice, I do both those things. I'm no longer "lazy." Maybe I never was.

Branching out

Olive Branch, above, 14 x 18" canvas in oil paint and wax medium. This is a commission for the Mount Dora Olive Oil Company in Florida. I'm adding a few shots of the work in progress for those who are curious about how these things take shape. 

 

 Above are two of the four thumbnail sketches I did. These are about 4" wide, and you can see I was trying out some different shapes for the branch and facing or slanting it in different directions. The bottom sketch is more finished because I liked it better and thus continued to work on it. 

 When I put the design on the canvas, I did it originally in a red-clay-colored pastel pencil. I didn't photograph that step because the pencil is a soft color, not very dark, and doesn't show up well in photos at all. You can see that I kept the basics of the design I had in the thumbnail, but made the branch somewhat more graceful, with fewer bare spots or abrupt curves. 

The photo above is of the stage at which I had taken a brush and some dark paint (mostly raw umber) and drawn the graphic-style outline with that.  I then left it to dry before continuing. 

Next, I had to start mixing the greens and browns I wanted. Greens are tricky, and what looked nice and neutral to warmish on my palette, looked really minty-blue on the canvas. I had to keep adjusting it.

The shadow you see on left is mostly cold wax medium, which is this translucent stuff about the consistency of Crisco, and you mix it with oil paint; and in this case I applied it with a palette knife, like skimming a wall with a trowel. Eventually I covered the whole surface in it, making the colors lighter as I moved toward the right. Wax medium lets me build up a lot of transparent to semi-transparent and then opaque layers really quickly.

When you start with a transparent layer and then put opaque layers over it: *poof* instant feeling of depth. It's really fun to do. The rest of the painting process was one of applying layers of transparent, translucent, and opaque paint, with the brightest and most opaque "foreground" or focal area in the lower right quadrant. That's also where I used the coolest, bluest colors in what is otherwise a very warm painting. Had I used the same colors all over, in the same proportions, it would have been pretty but not very interesting -- more like wallpaper.

Art on the Easel ... and on the Floor.

This is a pretty large canvas, 40" h x 30" w.  Based on a snapshot of my Twilight looking rather elegant, short-legged Percheron that she is.  These three shots show the progression from first stages of sketching and very thin washes of solvent/oil paint, to working out some of the "background" composition.

Above, what the painting looks like as I type this post. I've got a good sense of solid form and some depth happening, and from here on out the challenge will be to finish the piece without overworking and killing it. I like the looseness and want to keep that.

Meanwhile, on the floor beside the easel, I've got a composition laid out for a salvage piece in black and white. I have to paint some of these elements, assemble them all, and then create other pieces to add. This is feeling more and more like part of the Crows series, so expect there to be black birds involved.

Fixing a Stretchy-Faced Horse

This is a really common thing in horse photos: the dreaded Lens Distortion. This is Honey, the Christmas Pony I'm working on today. I love her expression in the reference photo at top, but I could tell the camera had made her nose too long! I have to correct that, and here's how I do it. 

 I printed two photos of her and measured both, from the poll behind the ears to the bottom point of her eye, and then from that point to the top edge of her nostril. Those distances were close to identical in the side (un-distorted) view, but in the close-up they differed by 50%!

A bit of quick math: 1.45 divided by 1.25, from the side print, gave me 1.16. On my distorted print, the ear-to-eye length is 2", and 2 x 1.16 was 2.32. I have to guess a little here, but I made the dark line at around 2 and 1/3" -- that's where the top of the nostril would be if the lens hadn't distorted Honey's face.

I measure other things, often less precisely; I will also have to account for her muzzle being too wide, for example, and pare that down as I create the sketch.  The side view won't help a lot with that, but I'm experienced enough to figure it out. 

I already did a post of simple tips for better amateur dog photos, and all of those apply to horses, but if I can find a horse-photography tutorial I'll link it here.

Dalmatian in Progress

Annie, 8 x 10" mixed media on Rives BFK Tan paper.

And I have a dilemma, which is whether to try putting a backdrop (softly drawn in a neutral tone) of avocado branches and leaves behind her. This dog LOVES her avocado tree. And eats avocados whenever possible, too.

But the busy spot pattern on her coat is such that I'm nervous about adding anything busy to the background, lest it compete with her and make the drawing "noisy." So I'm torn, and thinking it over.

In progress today: Winter Squares

Well, more like winter-hinting-at-spring, as it turns out; this happened mostly because I like color and wasn't content to leave these little things without any. They've developed in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, starting with the whim of drawing the little tree on wood with a Micron pen, knowing I couldn't erase and having to be okay with that. It went well, so then I added the coat of wax medium and a bit of oil paint; when that worked out, I took a couple Prismacolor pencils and drew into the wax. Liking that, I repeated the process with the narcissus bulb (which I probably ought to plant, now that it has served its intended art-modeling purpose).

These are not fully finished, though I'd say they're almost there.

Oh, and they are little. 4.5 x 4.75" -- almost square, salvaged from a pile of discarded scraps at the ACVR Warehouse a few months back. I have two more of the same size, so I will have a set of four of them in the next few days.

Making a Dog Portrait Drawing

Here's what's on the easel right now. Hannah, a lovely German Shepherd Dog. She is IN PROGRESS, here -- not finished, and in fact no longer looks quite like the photo below:

Hannah in progress. 14 x 11" mixed media on paper.

This photo was done after I added watercolor washes to much of Hannah's fur. I've already gone back in with my pencils and given a lot more depth and detail to the right side of her ear-base and face (the left side of the picture). But the sun has gone down and I don't like to take photos at night, for reasons you'll see in a moment.

Above, the pre-watercolor stage. At this point what I had was her basic form and some of the darkest dark areas, drawn in with a Wolff's Carbon Pencil (my favorite for detailed black line and shading).

Below, an earlier shot, done at night with a flash. THIS is why I hate taking photos at night, and incidentally, why I try to get my clients to photograph their animals in daylight and without a flash. It's the harsh light from the flash that turns everything icy blue.

Lousy color notwithstanding, if you click this photo to zoom in on it, you'll see what I was up to in the very beginning stages of this drawing. I had worked out the proportions of my image, and printed it at 9 x 7" so that I could translate it easily to 14 x 11" in the drawing. The lines I drew on the print are grid lines which I replicated, to scale (and very lightly) on my drawing paper. The grid is a centuries-old artist tool for ensuring accurate proportions, and while I don't always use it, it can really help reduce the time I spend correcting and re-correcting.

You can also see two other lines if you look closely. One goes from the left to right ear-tips, and the other down the middle of the head in front. Those are directional lines I sketch in to ensure that I'm seeing the correct angle of the head and that my ears aren't wandering off from where they ought to be. It's so easy to get caught up in the intricate details of eyes and ears, and miss seeing (until later) that their size or placement is wrong!

Home For Life fundraiser tonight

I'll be helping out at Home For Life's annual fundraiser tonight. Painting a quick, bold portrait of Audrey Hepburn on site at the event. Here's my beginning sketch on the canvas.

Audrey is a star, as her name suggests. An adorable Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who lost the use of her back legs in an accident years ago. I can't wait to meet her! And of course I am taking my camera.

Progress at International Market Square

 

The same curvature that made this wall ideal for a mural also makes it terribly difficult to photograph. I sure wish I could call in my brother. He'd capture it beautifully, but I don't have the budget to have this particular job photographed. 

Yesterday I got the ruined temple painted in, solidified a lot of the landscape around it, and then did some work on the lower foreground areas to give them a bit of depth and detail. Today I am going to lunch with Julie Dasher of Concept Interiors and some other new friends in the building, and will continue with the process. I expect to finish there tomorrow afternoon.

Raw Poppies

A look at the process for these latest flower studies. This is from today around 6 p.m., in the front yard of my friend Josephine Geiger.

The initial sketch is in a reddish colored pastel pencil. Once I mostly have what I want, I draw over it in waterproof pen. That's what you see here. Next, I'll erase the pastel pencil and then apply the watercolors.

Work in progress: Down Among the Briars

Down Among the Briars, in progress. Oil paint and wax medium on canvas, 40 x 30".

This began as a pattern of cracked concrete where I saw a figure in energetic motion, dancing. As I worked, it shifted; it told me a story about being caught and fighting to get loose, to get to a different and more open place, to rise up.

At this point it is more finished than not, though there are some adjustments to be made, and a few better photos to be taken once that's done.

Study for Angel Number Six

The big 40 x 30" version of this is still in progress, and meanwhile, here's the 10 x 8" canvas I made as a preliminary study.

... and below, the big canvas as it currently is, on the easel. You can see it's becoming more complex; the size of it means it needs more things going on.