Thee and Thou and then just me

Thee and Thou
pastel, 24x36"

It has occurred to me that I have not posted a painting in awhile. OK. It actually occurred to me that I haven't been on a cool road trip or seen anything not completely waterlogged for awhile. It made for a fine excuse to drag out a painting. I am so lazy. These two paintings are both in pastel medium on sanded paper and I painted them some time ago. Unfortunately now all I can see is what's wrong with them. Of course I always end up seeing what I think is wrong with them after I have them framed up. As a matter of fact the surest way for me to spot what I think isn't working is to have someone buy it. Then I spend the rest of my time trying to figure out how I can get that sucker back off their wall so I can fix it for them. Apparently the police frown on most of my ideas. If I'm lucky I'll catch it just after I finish framing it and attaching the hanging wire. It's funny what an expensive frame job can do for your critical perceptions.

As you can see I am something of a color whore. I seem to lack proper restraint in that area. I am not hopelessly lost however in color overload. I plan to prove it to you in the next post when I will show you a couple of paintings that display my ability to limit my licentious use of color. Today however seemed like a perfectly acceptable excuse to show you these. It has been dark and raining buckets for at least the past two days. There was a brief sun break this afternoon and I thought if I was fast enough I just might make it outside to soak up some of that elusive sunshine. Not fast enough. By the time I got my shoes on I saw the cats waving to me as they drifted by in a row boat. Maybe tomorrow.

For any of you who may be interested in the process I employ in my pastel paintings I'll bore you-- I mean provide you with a quick run down. The surface aka paper I use is Kitty Wallis museum grade sanded paper. It is like a very fine sand paper. I love this paper! You can pretty much do anything to it and it will hold up beautifully. This works well for me because I like to abuse the living daylights out of my pastel paintings. With watercolor I am much more civilised but, pastel is a full contact sport. I have been known to take a hose and scrub brush to this paper and it just laughs and keeps coming back for more.

Like many artists I paint an under-painting first. This is where I probably go off the reservation a tad bit. I use oil pastels directly on the paper. Some poor unsuspecting fool once said within earshot, that you could not mix oil pastels and dry pastels. I didn't make it out of the art store before I had a new mission in life--proving that unimaginative fool entirely wrong. I'm kind of punky that way. Of course no words were exchanged but it was definitely ON.

The way that this reasonable impossibility works has a lot to do with Kitty's fabulous paper. I use painting medium to thin and work the oil pastel into the tooth of the paper. I have to wear those little rubber finger tip things they use for counting money at the bank though or I would sand my fingertips right off. Sure, I could use a tool and sometimes I do but, I like the finger painting approach. It's in keeping with my juvenile nature.

The real reason I use this method and not the more traditional mediums for an under-painting is that the oil pastel quickly covers a lot of space and maintains its much more rich and vibrant color. This in turn means I can get where I am going in a painting a whole lot faster.

The other particular thing I prefer to use in these paintings is my own hand made pastels. I learned this little art form from the famous Kitty Wallis herself and I have been hooked ever since. I love being able to craft and create my own special colors and shades. It's a tactile thing and a little reminiscent of playing with Clay-Dough. Plus, I'm greedy with colors. There's that juvenile nature again. I find something absolutely irresistible about being able to purchase pure pigments and play around with colors and mixing them up as if you might know what you're actually doing. One day I hope to play around with composition as if I know what I'm doing. I have such lofty artistic goals. It's good to have goals. Goals and Play-Dough that's my motto. Well that and a shiny new box of Crayons. The big one!

Summer Afternoon
30x22"

So Now What?

It has been raining here for about 1,600 weeks now. Daylight Savings time came along and stole one entire precious hour of sunlight or perhaps I should say one slightly less dark grey hour of the day. It is now solidly dark by the hour of five PM and if you make the mistake of sleeping in or worse yet, having a day job, you might mistake yourself for a Morlock. Of course they did do some pretty shabby things to those poor Eloi and the worst we did was to inflict Starbucks and Grunge fashion on the rest of the world. Don't get me wrong I am a big fan of Starbucks and have pledged my first grandchild in exchange for daily infusions, though I am a tad less enthusiastic about the whole grunge thing. I suppose under certain comparisons Morlock and Seattleite could be interchangeable. Well, at least in the rainy season anyway.
But really, it’s not our fault! You can see what we’re dealing with here. These things are bound to happen when the only daylight you see is in the snapshot you carry around in your wallet reminding you of that one glorious hour last summer just after the Fourth of July when the rain finally stopped.

Oh fine. I’ll stop whining. But it has been raining pretty darn steady for some time now and I’m feeling like a kid home from school with a slight cold. The dogs don’t want to wear the cute little outfits I made for them and hide when they see me coming. I’m not even trying with the cats after that last doctor bill. Sheesh, what an attitude. So with all this time indoors I’m starting to get a little batty and goodness knows I do not need any help in that direction.

Which brings me to the point of today’s post. Deep breath in, now let it out slowly…

It is time for me to get back to work. I have been stalling and making false starts for months now and so it appears that another approach is needed. I have got to kick myself in the behind and what better place to do that than in public? I am an artist and I haven’t seriously painted or sculpted for longer than I should have. I paint in oil, pastel, watercolor and sculpt with stainless steel mesh. Wow. I feel like I’m at a twelve step meeting and that was a lot tougher than I wanted it to be.

I have been watching a few artists who participate in the “Painting a Day” blogs hoping that it would inspire me to get back to work. Unfortunately I proved to be immune to that therapy. I did start several paintings only to get to the “hump” part and stop. I had plenty of reasons for my distraction and the garden proved a pretty handy excuse most times. Soon blogging was also a handy scapegoat. Now if I keep this up it will be the holidays as an excuse and then it’s spring tulips leading to summer and still no painting. I am ready to admit I have a problem and in that vein I am giving myself an intervention of sorts.

I am showing you a couple pieces of my work today. Then I am going to paint another painting and put it up here again, and so on. I am not a painting a day kind of artist. That just isn’t my creative cycle so there’s no need to worry about that. I am really just hoping that if I can feel that pleasant obligation to stay connected with you through this blog and that it might extend to my art which could be just the jolt I need to get back in the palette again. Did you notice that clever little twist on the old “back in the saddle again?” That’s what staying up past your bedtime and no sunlight for two weeks will do to you. You’d think with all that talent Microsoft would come up with a program called “Stupid Check.” Now there’s a world changing invention just waiting to happen.

And so to conclude this rambling little post I will leave you with this. I have no flowers and no sun and I need to find something to blog about soon. I have no idea what you real gardeners do with your blogs over the winter months. I haven’t been around long enough to find out so I kind of imagine you talking about house plants and stuff like that. I’m a little low on house plants right now so I thought maybe I could paint instead.


I should probably tell you what these pieces are before I close out.
Blue poppies are pastel on sanded paper, 22x30”
Koi are watercolor 22x30” on 300lb hot press
Red poppies are pastel on sanded paper 30x36”
The sculpture is stainless steel mesh hand formed and prized for the shadows it creates

I’m going to fix a bowl of popcorn, put in a stupid movie and forget I posted. The good thing is, I’ve ordered a sun lamp so incidents like this should be less frequent.