we’re almost to the end of another semester of school…seems like this semester went by so very fast…projects are coming along…i’m almost done with my colored pencil project in freehand drawing…i like drawing in color so much better than in black and white…figure drawing is going great also…we finished up drawing without lines yesterday and will do some charkole/gesso drawings monday…next semester i’m returning to painting…can’t wait! i have to get a new cartridge for my printer so i can print out some pics i found…i’ve been bouncing ideas around like crazy trying to figure out what to do next…i did an image search for domestic violence, which i have some experience with, and found a bunch of pictures that will work very well…one is of a single bruised eye that i feel will make a powerful painting…what i realize is that i can’t just chuck out paintings that have no meaning to me (this espec true for me when it comes to abstract, which i dearly love)…for me painting must have a reason and a meaning…
light bulb…
tonight i had one of those moments when everything becomes clear to me…i have been struggling to come up with next big painting idea, moving between two different ideas…it seemed the more i thought about it the more confused i became…i came downstairs and pulled out a book by Margaret Mead (family) with a bunch of photographs of families…i took it back upstairs and started sketching from it and suddenly i was back in Davis drawing like crazy…it was apparent to me at that moment that my greatest success occurred when i was drawing like a maniac, and with my figurative works that leaned heavily on expressionism…i didn’t get bogged down in details on faces, just mainly scratched in a loose sketch in an H pencil so it wouldn’t smear…i did about 5 sketches in my book and realized that i should be painting from such sketches and creating my own atmospheres and settings like i used to…all i had to do was stop thinking about it and start drawing…sort of opening up my mind…sometimes a light bulb does come on when it’s dark…
catching up…
well, it’s a 4 day weekend for me…was going into painting today, but decided to give my leg a day of rest (of sorts)…planning to break out the paints and get started on my next painting…
i have done A LOT of reading on art this past semester….i think this has only helped me to see better when i am in the process of actually making art…i have looked at all kinds of art, but mainly focused on figurative artists since that is where my heart lies…i love the bay area figurative artists (Olivera, Brown, Diebenkorn…etc)…i have even found a bit of “love” for wayne thiebeaud’s work…mostly his thick paintings of the 60’s…
i have been working on my secrets idea…made a list of all sorts of kid’s games and toys…thinking of using them as the imagery for my painting….coupled with words to guide your thoughts…my first line is “we made a pact not to tell”…now to pull it all together…that’s the hard part!
sick sick sick…
i’m just recovering from being sick as a dog…yesterday is a bleary haze saw through nyquilled eyes and mind…I slept off and on all day and couldn’t even make myself wake up when a neighbor came by to check on me…needless to say i haven’t done any artwork, though today i have been reading a great little book by poet Gary Soto who was raised in Fresno, CA, which is where i also did time as a kid…
there isn’t much information for this post…will be back at it by monday i think…at least i’m able to sit up and not cough today…take it easy and watch out for the sickness…it’s everywhere…
kimmy and felix smith-miller-cat
kimmy and felix in oilwell, i finally finished the painting…i am really happy with it…i think the brokenness of the impasto helps make the painting shine…the light is caught in the crooks and crannies of the paint…i also think i do a much better job of shaping things in thick paint…it’s difficult for me to get thin paintings properly blended…next i’ve got another painting to do…once again in impasto…i had rose pick me up two more tubes of impasto medium when she went on the sf trip today…saves me the 5$ each fire hazard on them if i ordered them…
yesterday i stumbled upon a fantastic book on children in photographs…i’m going to scan a bunch of the images to build up a ‘figure encylopedia” to work from…
nighty night…
school was great today…minimal thinking, and good books found…our model was sick so we watched two movies, one on Edward Hopper and one on crazy old Francis Bacon…then we got into a discussion about the relevency of art that offends…a topic close to my heart…one woman found no redeeming qualities in his artwork…i made the statement that even though it is grotesque in imagery it is still at the same time very beautiful paintings…
when class was over i ambled over to the library to claim my favorite overstuffed chair…i dumped my stuff off in the chair and then went to look at books…found one on Joe Brainard who did these fantastically obsessive (with a capital O) collages…he also did some pretty great small paintings…i remember way back in the 90’s some of his Nancy cartoon paintings being shown in the college art gallery…i love em…evidently he took a lot of methamphetamines and that caused his manic work ethic…
also i got a fantastic book on children through the years…great pictures to draw/paint from…planning to scan a bunch of them after i get my new power strip and can plug my scanner back in…
also, i decided i need to purchase a new camera, a tripod, and a remote for the camera…i want to paint self portraits and it aint easy getting a good shot when you’re taking it yourself…plus, it could be fun…branching out…
well fans it’s time to say nighty night…until next time…ciao!
speak up!
i spent the day reading a great book by Judy Chicago and Edward Lucie-Smith on women and art…then i did a ton of sketching in my sketchbook…i have been bouncing ideas around in my head for where i want my next non kimmy painting to go…i think i have some ideas…one a bit too radical (judging from last year’s reaction of good old ralph and company) for the college, but i’m going to do it here at home…it will show the aftermath of rape…the other is not so radical…or maybe it is…i dunno…but i have an image that i’m going to use and i’m going to paint it, sand it, and repaint/draw it in various forms…i tried to figure out if i wanted words or not…they’re very important to me…and the right combo of words can be like music…they bounce off your lips…but they may belong on their own entirely different painting…one on obsessions…because that’s what they are for me…i collect words…make lists…poems…
richard diebenkorn…painter extrodinaire…
reading a book on richard diebenkorn…i can’t believe i’ve passed him up all these years…since i’ve been looking at art books during my down time at school this year i’ve been reintroduced to a myriad of painters i’ve passed up in the past…diebenkorn, famous for his abstract ocean park series, also did extrodinary still lifes and figure paintings…he allows the painting to show his process as he draws, paints, paints out, and draws again on his canvas…this is something i’m very much interested in…what he ends up with is a very rich painting done in bright, beautiful colors…he also cites cezanne as a big influence, which i can totally understand and relate to…back when i was at uc davis, my painting class was challenged by the instructor (dave hollowell) to find our own personal truth…that set me off on a weekend long search for truth and just what was hollowell talking about? i searched the art section of the library on campus pouring through books trying to see what truth meant…almost ready to give up i opened a book on cezanne at a page with one of his still lifes on it…the orange literally sang against the blue tablecloth…i knew instantly that the answer was in that painting…for me truth was color…color has always been what it’s all about for me…i’ve done black and white paintings, but the ones i really love are the ones with juicy passages of colors singing to one another…it is this that i find in diebenkorn’s paintings that i really love…check him out…worth it totally…
rock and roll and housecleaning…
i need rock and roll to clean house…rock and roll makes everything better…classic rock…not the stuff that passes for it nowadays…old time stuff…
i am looking at the paintings i have and deciding which ones will go in the garbage…and, last week i had to move the computer table since the plug in blew out it was attached to…so i have a bunch of artwork with nowhere to go because it was displaced for said computer…
i am thoroughly in favor of thick painting…i haven’t yet figured out how to apply it to my secrets idea…i wait with sander in hand…
when i was painting while at UC Davis i would paint light rather than worry about painting a nose, or an eye…with kim’s painting that i am working on (almost done) i found that i went back to that method of painting…it makes it lots easier…i struggled with the tv family series to get faces right…
now i have to figure out the next painting…i have one in mind…thick of course!
new appreciation for old favs
i must confess that i previously overlooked impressionism as being fanciful, beautiful, and not worth it’s weight in paint…all that has changed…i was thoroughly entranced with the german expressionists…i still love them…there’s something primal about their work, but i have a new found appreciation for impressionists and pre-impressionists…i am working on kim’s painting and the act of mixing paint on the canvas and watching the blobs of paint wind up looking like something is magical…i think i have found what i have been missing in my works for these past few years…the object of this week’s lesson is that you should never say never…once in the beginning of my art career i deemed i would never 1) paint realistically; 2) paint in watercolor; and 3) follow something as bogus as impressionism…hmmm…does this mean i have to eat my words????
