"Cots in a Bowl," 6x8, oil on canvas board

More apricots. I'm afraid the bowl might actually be a spa-style soapdish, but the fruit fit in it so nicely! I did this last week, shortly after my prior post, and in between I sacrificed two of the 'cots to appetite. Below is the painting in process. I still think I'm covering up too much of the underpainting. And sometimes I like the underpainting more than the final. Maybe there's something about the spontaneity. Hmm.

Last weekend I was in LA and got to visit the Irvine Museum. It features work of the California Impressionists, whom I am only now coming to appreciate. I especially liked the work of Franz Bischoff. There's just something about the way he puts the colors down that I love. Maybe it's his background in painting ceramics that gives his work a graphic feel. I don't know. But I get breathless when I look through the book I bought of his paintings. I'm finding other artists like that, too: Euan Uglow, John O'Shea.

One fun thing about the California Impressionists is that I live where a lot of these painters worked, and there's scenery across the street that looks like their paintings. It's giving my hikes a whole new experience. Must. Get into. Plein air painting. . .

"Scattered Apricots," 6x8, oil on canvas board

I seem to be into hot colors right now. Maybe it's the season, or maybe it's the color of what I'm painting: fruit available in the season. Is spring fruit yellow-orange? I'm seeing a lot of that color and blue in recent paintings. Whatever! Apricots do that lovely blush thing, and I thought these would look good on an intense blue.

I shall wax philosophical for a nonce. I'm noticing an interesting factor in my painting: I'm having to use my emotions instead of logic to figure out what I want to do. And if I don't do what appeals to me -- what I want -- I lose the desire to paint. It becomes drudgery. And I refuse to let that happen.

I think that, in this society, using our emotions is not that natural. We're used to figuring things out with our brains, mostly, while using emotions for energy or validation. And the working world certainly is brain based. So this is an area of growth for me that I had not anticipated. That's actually kinda cool.

"Orange Reflection," 6x8, oil on canvas board

I'm still playing with the reflections. It's an interesting challenge. Now, I have a lot of colors of construction paper, and when I create my setup, I often use sheets of it behind or underneath the item. In this case I used a sheet of aqua paper behind the orange and ultramarine paper under it beneath a sheet of glass. The reason I'm explaining this is that the backdrop sheet reflects in the glass and the colors go catawhumpus. It can make your eyes go wacky trying to figure out what the colors are, not to say values (as I mentioned in an earlier post). I have one of those neutral gray viewfinders with the slider that lets you change the aspect ratio. The viewfinder also has a couple of holes, and you can look at colors (or values) through them. This has proven very helpful.

Another funny thing I noticed about this piece is that the size of the items painted makes it look like this might be a much larger work. I think that in the smaller works we tend to do close-ups; it gives the work more punch. This works well in something small, but might be too much in something big. Depends. Many artists have made it work.

One thing I'm pleased with here, though, is that I let the orange underpainting show through more than I usually do. I like doing that, but often go overboard on covering the canvas. When I do that, another favorite tool is my little pencil squeegee.

"Floating in Glass," 6x8, oil on canvas board

These are the same tomatoes I posted yesterday. I really liked their color, and was remembering how I enjoyed the combination of reflection and shadow from a recent post. That painting is leaning on some books in a bookshelf across the room, and even from here I like the depth, and the way that where the reflection and shadow overlap you get the darkest colors. So I used the same tomatoes as yesterday and set up another reflection+shadow. But apparently that wasn't complicated enough for me. I had to add a colored glass bowl, which introduced transparency. Then, while I was playing with the setup, what I fell for was the color combination.

But working this one out was pretty tough. As with the prior work I linked to, I really, really had to pay attention to values. Yes, they're darkest where shadows and reflections overlap, but other areas are more complicated. I also found that there was a shadow that reflected the red background, and in the setup the red was really bright. But that was terribly distracting, so I darkened it.

It was also fun how the tomatoes seemed to float in the glass. So I used that for the name.

Here's the piece with the underpainting in place.

It looked awful on my easel, but here it looks kind of geometric and decorative.

I have to say, this one looks like it would be interesting if I painted it big. These small pieces are often used as studies. I blew up another one recently. I'll post it soon, and think about this one.

"On the Vine," 6x8, oil on canvas board

This is a great time of year for lots of painters. For those who paint outdoors, it's just gorgeous. For those of us who do still lifes, there's wonderful produce in the markets. Me, I found these tomatoes that were an amazing color. I put them on a complementary background then had at it. I'd still like to loosen up more, but I'm feeling in the mood for hot colors and this qualifies.

One part of painting that's always difficult for me is the drafting. I know it's a good idea to spend a half hour every day just drawing, but I can't seem to make myself do that. So recently I've been taking a picture of my set-up, cropping it to the composition I wanted, printing it, then drawing a grid on it. I divide each side in half, then divide each half again, so it's 4x4. That gives me the center for the entire canvas, as well as a center for each quadrant, if that makes sense. Eventually I assume I'll learn to just do this by eye, or with my view catcher. But I just looked at something I considered finished, and there are size problems, so even with the grid my eyes fool me.

"Pas de Deux," 6x8, oil on canvas board

As long as Becca's lemon was still ripe, I thought I'd paint it again. I love this little pitcher, and the two together made me think of making tea. Then I decided that they were dancing, hence the title. The process of coming up with a title can be pretty bogus, really. Maybe I should try harder to figure out what I want the painting to be about, then reflect that in the title. See this prior post.

Interestingly, I've also read that it's best to have an odd number of objects in a picture (and, personally, I think things like shadows are objects in a painting). Here, there are two, so I tried adding a tea bag on the right, but it wasn't happy about it.

In the prior painting I was also intrigued with what you can do with underpainting. And I've noticed that when I see a painting in process (think YouTube), I often like it better before it's finished. In the prior painting I really liked the block-in. It has something electric about it. So, for this one, I tried blocking it in with hot colors:

Maybe this is too much like 60s psychedelic posters. I'm not sure, but there's definitely something interesting about it. I may have to play with it some more.

Becca's Lemon, 6x8, oil on canvas board

My niece just bought a house, and she has a lemon tree in her yard. So I took a lemon before heading home. When I was playing with the setup, I got intrigued with the intersection of shadow and reflection. It's almost like a Venn diagram; where they intersect it's the darkest.

And I'm kind of excited about this painting. Once in awhile I get the right balance of realistic and abstract, and this was one such time.

I took a couple of pictures in process. I worked on a red basecoat, in acrylic. In the picture below I was part way through, and I really like how the yellows came out. Maybe I should have stopped there. You know how there are times you're not sure you're done? Maybe I should have considered the the lemon to be done.

This was earlier, and shows how I blocked in the image. You'll read that many artists like to block in the dark parts first. My problem with that is that I often end up with mud when I add the lighter colors. So I blocked it in in acrylic and switched to oils once the foundation was the way I wanted it.
These photos actually make it look more neon than it was.

I think I'll have to paint this lemon again while it's still reasonably fresh.

"Almost Breakfast (blue)", 6x8, oil on canvas board

This is my next bowl painting. My attempt on this one was to have a warm white on a cool background.

I'm remembering how hard it is to paint white pottery (and if you've tried this, you know). The issue is how bright the white is. Now, the brightest white in a painting such as this is not the crockery, but the reflections. However, white paint does not get as bright as a reflected light. This means that you need to darken the rest of the whites so you can get a reasonable difference between the bowl and the reflection. The bowl ends up being kind of dark, as it is here. And yet I want it to look like a white bowl. It's the same as if you paint a portrait; the brightest white will be reflections in the eyes, and the artist might need to make the whites of the eyes bluish to allow for the difference.

I think the fun part of doing this bowl series (and maybe I'll continue it one or two more) is going to be when I use up all the standard combinations. I'll have to figure out something different to do.

I'm also reminded of this interesting bit from Conversations in Paint, by Charles Dunn:

The Campbell's soup can is a recurring visual theme throughout these pages. A while back, I decided to work on my drawing. The combination of curves and straight lines in the soup can appealed to me as a good starting place.

As it turned out, the familiar red-and-white can proved to be a remarkable object with which to study the underlying ideas in painting. For instance, it has darks and lights as well as darks within the light area and lights contained in the dark area. Because the Campbell's can is familiar to the point of being mundane, it presents the fundamental artistic challenge of trying to make the ordinary extraordinary, and permitted me to experiment and to explore the larger issues of painting.

It's not a new thing to take one object and do it over and over again. Think of Kevin MacPherson and his lake series. In February my friend Silvina Day did a series on a street person she met; her write-up is wonderfully emotional and charged.

We'll see what I learn from this. Could be dreck. Could be good. Probably won't last a year; it's not a pond or a human. It's a simple bowl and spoon.

Almost Breakfast (red), 6x8, oil on canvas board

I'm frustrated with myself these days. I started to paint again because it was time. But then I lost track of moving to my own desires for expression, for learning, for play or rest or whatever. Instead, I've felt compelled to create for the blog, or for what would sell on eBay, or to not miss a day of daily painting. As a results, I've been enjoying it less.

So I'm shifting gears. I'm going to to pay more attention to what's inside and wants to come out, be it in my painting or elsewhere in my life.

And, strangely, I don't really know where I want to go with the art. I have inklings, but I haven't given them space. I know I like still lifes and some abstraction and color play. I know I want to improve my skills. I think I'd like to expand my media. And I haven't done nearly enough plein air painting.

So this painting is for working on skills. I'm going to do a series of this white bowl on different colored backgrounds, and play with elements. This one is a cool white on a hot background. I have another variant in the works, too, and will post that later.

Meanwhile, if you have time to spare, hover your cursor over any of my paintings from the last few month. Heehee.

"Gears," 12x16, oil on stretched canvas

Sold.

This was a commission for a friend. I posted it in progress last month, but now I deem it finished! Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Lessons learned? Lots, but two main ones:

• If you are painting something that's precisely engineered, it really helps to have good drafting skills. Or use the grid method, perhaps. I got into some major accuracy issues on this.
• Color temperatures can be a bear. I toned my canvas in blue (kind of loud) since it seemed to go with metal. But I worked from a picture I took of a picture of a family bike against a wall, in a patch of morning warm morning sunlight. Warm colors come towards you, and cool colors recede. I had to cool down the sunlit colors a lot.
  

I shouldn't admit this, but I keep seeing a shape like an arctic fox in the upper right corner.