Choosing Ideas

The year 2010, and in particular the last couple of months, has been a torrent of activity. I finished the last of the BDSM skeleton paintings in early November, and made great headway on two new skull paintings. I spent two days last week driving down to LA to deliver 30 paintings to Bert Green for the upcoming solo show. On the way back, I came down with a bad cold. So I finally had some mandatory down time, and took it easy for a few days, prior to New Years. Sometimes this down time can be valuable. I ended up consolidating a number of ideas that have been swirling around in my head, and several new ones came to mind. When I'm just laying around, my brain is always rushing around at full speed. I just kept a notebook by my side, and started jotting down ideas as they emerged.

By giving each idea a place on this list, they are less likely to be forgotten . At this point, most of them are "ghosts" of an idea. I can almost visualize them, but not quite.

The procrastinator in me is always unsure of which idea to pursue next, and wallows in indecisiveness. But usually, one idea will speak out in a slightly louder voice, start to emerge from the vagueness of the intangible, and begin to take shape (with a little patience and discipline).

I still have two paintings in process: one nearly complete, and the other 3/4 complete. But at the studio today, rather than paint, I sat at my drawing desk, under a blanket and close to the heater, and just tried to make some of the ideas more tangible by developing rough sketches.

The drawing above is a little more complete than some of the other thumbnail sketches that I did over the last few days. In this drawing, I've depicted little baby snakes emerging from their nest/egg, which is a skull. Snakes are not inherently evil, and are generally beneficial for the environment. But nonetheless, they are a powerful symbol conveying a sense of evil. In this case, because they are coming out of a skull it implies that evil is not from without, but from within.

My initial thought is to have the skull sitting in grass and leaves. The baby snakes (the species blood python Python curtus,) will have a burnt orange/red color that will contrast nicely against the green grass). They will be writhing free of their pre-natal confinement in the skull.

I'm grateful to have a tangible idea coming to fruition that I can begin working on once the other two skull paintings are finished. The studio walls are very bare now, as I've emptied the studio of all recent works and delivered them to Bert. So it feels a little depressing. Having a list of new ideas worthy of pursuing will help offset this emptiness.

Paintings Featured in Magazine-Mental Shoes

Several months ago, the editor of the art e-magazine Mental Shoes contacted me and asked if I would like my works to be featured in an upcoming issue. I gladly accepted the offer. It is a high quality magazine, and the editor has amazing vision and plus is a fantastic writer. (And I found out later he is also a photographer, which explains why he has such a great eye). The issue was published, and I was very happy with the look and feel of the issue. My painting "Lizardbrain" was featured on the cover.

Mental Shoes is based out of Amsterdam and the U.S. It features both American and international artists.

Click here to go to Mental Shoes. Once on the site, click on issue 018 to download the pdf. It's well worth it, and there are other very unique artists featured in this issue. In particular, Stephen Cefalo is a fantastic painter and I found the paintings by Aleksandra Waliszewska to be very fascinating.

I was even more honored to be featured in Mental Shoes, because the previous issue featured an artist that I greatly admire, Laurie Lipton.

Obsessing

I've been working long hours on the lizard skull. I feel like I must be obsessing over every scale that is placed on the lizards. I lay down some paint, then step back to see how the new application relates with other parts of the painting. Then I go back and adjust the value as needed. Large parts of the lizard bodies are done. I still need to put highlights and yellow stripes on their legs.

After hours of staring at the painting, when I try to go to sleep later that night, I can actually see after-images of the scales when my eyes are closed. Kind of like a phantom image, not as defined as when I am actually looking at it.

I also got some work done on the chimps last week. The dark tones are in on the chimp to the left. Made some adjustments to the proportions. I'm happy with how the shattered edges of the skull turned out. I used a shattered gourd as a reference to get an idea of how the light would glance off the rough edges.

I suppose the paintings are like children. Today I'm just a little frustrated with them. Tomorrow when I look at them at the beginning of a new day, maybe I'll be happy with them.

The de Young Museum's No Sketch policy

The SF Chronicle ran a story about a shortsighted policy at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum. The de Young Museum prohibits visitors from sketching when they are in the "special exhibits" such as the current exhibit - "Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond. " Click here to see the SF Chronicle article - http://bit.ly/h1fWqs.

This policy stifles artistic development and is counter to the perception of San Francisco being a cultural haven and friendly to artists.

As all artists know, drawing is not simply an exercise in rote copying. Drawing is about seeing. I always sketch when I go to museums, so that I can really SEE what the artist did when he/she executed an artwork. Drawing the artwork prevents me from glancing over details that I need to really see. Drawing slows down your gaze so that you can really see. Further, many artists gain inspiration from studying the works of masters that they admire. The best way to really study a work is to sketch it.

I have sketched at the some of the world's most revered museums: the Louvre, The National Gallery, The British Museum, The Getty, London's National Portrait Gallery, and of course, the Musee d'Orsay. It is ironic that the artworks now off limits to sketching at the de Young can be freely sketched once the artworks return to their home at the Musee d'Orsay.

I have been to special exhibits at these museums, and not one of them prohibited sketching. I sketched Velázquez and Titian masterpieces at crowded special exhibits in London's National Gallery, and not one guard told me it was prohibited. I sketched from several Michelangelo drawings at a special exhibit at the British Museum, and was never told it was off limits.

I do not believe that the de Young is a world class museum, and unlike the world class museums, they discourage this time honored practice. They are all out for the revenue generated by the tape recorded guided tours. If an artist wants to sketch from the pieces in this exhibit, he will have to go to Paris, if he can afford it. Some would argue you could study a reproduction, but there are subtle details in the actual artwork that you would not be able to perceive in a reproduction.

Above are examples of sketches that I did at the Getty, Louvre, and the Musee d'Orsay several years ago.

PS the SF MOMA, which I consider to be a very fine museum, encourages sketching (in pencil) in its galleries. I enjoyed participating in some of their sketch Friday events a couple of years ago. I have never been prohibited or discouraged from standing in front of a work (even in special exhibitions) and sketching. Thank You SF MOMA.

Figuring out shadows

One of the tricky aspects of the lizard/skull painting is figuring out how the shadows would fall on the skull. I used my lizard models to replicate how shadows would fall inside of the cranium. I used a curved piece of white paper to simulate the curvature of the inner part of the skull, and shot reference photos. The lizard to the right has its tail coming over the front of the skull, so to figure out how that shadow would fall, I placed a clay "tail" over the front of my cast skull.

A long stretch

I've been working every day for 10 straight days. (My last day away from the studio was Thanksgiving). But I did make pretty good progress on the two skull paintings. The skull containing the chimps is practically done except for touches of highlight and the broken edge of the cranium. I will probably start working in earnest on the chimps this week. The skull and lizards have been blocked in on the other panel. This week I will be working on getting the skull finished on that one.

I also got some higher quality photos of the last four BDSM skeleton paintings done for Bert Green.

Today (Monday) will be my day "off" but I'll probably still do some drawing at home.

Progress

I made some good progress on the two skull paintings this weekend. Yesterday, I got the lizard skull transferred to panel and added the acrylic underpainting. Today, I put in the dark prussian blue background. It has a subtle value transition and gets lighter moving towards the top.

I also put down the first layer of reds on the chimps and began establishing their form and major shadows. Any flaws of the original sketch start to become evident during this stage. So I made some adjustments to the chimp on the right, making his left leg more to the side instead of face on to the viewer. I also moved the leg up on the chimp to the left. When I painted it in, the trunk looked too long. I think some of this distortion occurs when the tracing paper stretches when I'm transferring the drawing to panel. The original sketch did not have this distortion.

The next stage for the chimp painting will be very time consuming, as the next layer will add the details of the anatomy for both skull and chimps.

Final study, lizard aggression

The final drawing is looking good. I got more writhing action into the lizard on the right. I like how the lizards are almost bursting out of a skull that cannot contain them. They are overlapping the skull on three sides. I'll transfer this to panel tomorrow.

Lizard Aggression

I already started on a painting portraying a skull with fighting chimps inside. But I decided to go ahead and start another skull /lizard painting. I was looking at internet images of fighting lizards, but all of them seemed rather static and not real dynamic. I then took these images as a starting point and arranged my clay lizards into an arrangement that is much more twisting and interesting to my own eye.

What I intend to do is work simultaneously on the lizard and the chimp paintings. I'll then take the one that i like the best and submit that for the beinArt Surreal exhibit at the Copro Gallery in Santa Monica ... the painting, which ever one is submitted, has to be ready to ship by early February. This will be a challenge because both subjects will require a lot of detail work, and normally would take 1 1-2 to 2 months each to complete. I will be putting in some serious studio time in December.

Got the studies for the lizard painting to a satisfactory point. Unlike some previous paintings, this one came together after only several thumbnails. I blocked in the structure of the skull for the final drawing and shot the reference photos. The day after Thanksgiving, I'll finish the final drawing by putting in the lizards, and transfer it to a 20 x 20 panel. I will also continue working on the chimp painting. The middle tones of the skull are painted in, and I need to get the basic color layer in on the chimps.

I somehow got quite a bit done today at the studio despite a migraine. I took some imitrex, and lay down for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and was able to work a few more hours.

Background

I was a mass of indecision in trying to figure out the color for the background. I wanted it lighter in value than the last skull painting, to allow the chimps arm to show up in the upper right corner.

I went back and forth, tried to mix a gray that I used on a past painting. Couldn't do it for some reason, and of course I had not written down the color mixture that I used. So I tried burnt umber, ultramarine blue and aliz crimson plus white. Used raw sienna as the "yellow" for the lighter gray area at the top. There is a more violet shift in the gray than is shown in the photo above.

This can all go out the window when I start blocking in the skull. It's amazing how the appearance of surrounding color changes when placed next to another. What I will probably do is make sure that some of the shadow in the skull includes some hues from the background, like reflected backlight. That helps to bring a unity to the entire painting.

I told Jude that I was just a mass of indecision working on the painting today. I felt like I was making some kind of decision every five seconds. She then made an interesting remark: "maybe that is why some painters stick to a "formula" and the paintings start to really look uniform. " I told her I couldn't do that for long stretches. Even those little conjoined twins had differences in the background. I suppose I could crank out paintings faster if I stuck with the same background on all the skulls, but I like the differences in each one.

Ready to Transfer to Panel

After numerous thumbnails, sketches, rearranging, and more sketches, the final study is ready to transfer to the panel. The background will be higher in value than the last skull painting. There will be a gradient, with the darkest value at the bottom, lightening as it goes up. If the value is too dark at the top, the left arm of the chimp with arm raised could get lost.

Drawings I made when I was a kid

I have a very old book that my uncle gave to me when I was about 4 years old. I've managed to hang on to this book for years. In it, there are little drawings I made, copying the photos in the book. I must have been around 4 or 5 when these were drawn. What's funny is that even at that age I liked skeletons. I copied an image of an x-ray of a common mole. (you can see the little drawings at the bottom of the photos shown above)

At that age, my mom gave me coloring books. I didn't care for them. I preferred to draw on the blank inside covers of the book.

Struggle

I will admit that I struggled with this painting. I have one failure, an abandoned panel, with the same composition of two figures, but a background that didn't work. And with this stony rock wall background, I struggled with finding the right value to bring out the figures in the front, having enough contrast, but not being so dark as to be uninteresting. The stone looked really neat, like a warm light is glancing off some of the stone edges. But it didn't have enough contrast, so I ended up doing a couple of glazes of ultramarine blue to darken up the value. The trick was to retain the glancing light and shadow on stone.

The St. Andrews cross started out as a red cross, but it just didn't work. It became too prominent. So I reduced the hue so that it receded into the background more. And yes, the perspective drove me crazy too.

In my original sketches, the skeleton is looking straight forward and down. After mulling it over, I turned the skull to the right so that it is viewed in profile. Makes it more interesting.
My favorite thing about this piece is the way the light falls on the skeleton, especially the skull. The extreme side lighting enters through openings in the back of the skull and shines through the front and through the jaw/teeth.

The painting is getting close to done. I need to add the skeleton's left hand, more highlights on both skeleton and human, and little corrections, mainly to the vertebrae. It feels like it has been just a series of difficult decisions. I'll be glad when I can walk away from it. It is even haunting my dreams. Why else would I have a dream about giving some guy a blow job?

Journal versus Blog

When I started this blog I thought it would largely make writing in a journal irrelevant. And in fact, I wrote very few entries in my written journal during the time I've kept a blog. Recently, though, over the last couple of months, I've been writing way more frequently in the journal, and I've realized that blogging does not replace journal writing.

My journal includes quite a bit of material that I could never put out for public consumption. In fact, I don't even reveal some of this to good friends or even my partner. In scanning entries written over the last few years, I also realized that quitting my day job has allowed me to look much more deeply inwards. This is inevitable when you spend long hours working in solitude. This is in contrast to my job at the bank, where I spent a good deal of each day on conference calls or in meetings. I didn't have the time or the luxury of spending large amounts of time being introspective as I do now.

Above is a value/compositional study for the next painting.

Rage

The anatomical skull, enclosing an animal(s) that represents our primitive drives and psychological states, is still of great interest to me. I've done a lot of reflecting on what drives human behavior and desires. I could not help but also do some self-evaluation on my own behavior, desires and mental state.

The next one I want to explore is rage/aggression. It's that feeling where you go into a rage and you don't even understand where it comes from and you feel like smashing something or someone. It is the "fight" from the term "fight or flight" which is almost instinctual. I used to get into rages much more frequently when I was younger. I can understand how it leads to aggression and violence; fortunately I tend to take out my anger on inanimate objects. I've actually gone into such a state of anger that I had the urge to attack a piece of my own art and destroy it. I've done crazy things like topple tables over and fling things across a room. I've done insane things like getting behind the wheel of my car and driving in a rage at 90 mph on a Denver freeway. I don't fully understand how I could allow myself to get into such a mental state and how it got so out of control. (Part of it was being young and stupid. Age has definitely mellowed me out.)

There is a level of rage and aggression that the upper cortex of the brain can't always control. When a human is in this state of rage, we act out like our nearest relative, Pan troglodytes, the chimpanzee. The painting will incorporate flayed chimps battling inside a skull. The skull will be shattered as if struck with a heavy blow. I may have chimp clutching a large rock as a weapon. The musculature of the flayed chimp is so similar to human anatomy - in fact, when I paint chimp musculature, I use human anatomy models for a reference especially for the arms and legs. The line between human/animal can be very blurred.

Above are the very rough small sketches for the concept.

Open Studios and Rambling about Insomnia

I've been trying to work diligently and consistently to get several new paintings done. As usual, i underestimated the amount of time these skeletons take. I'm finishing out the BDSM skeleton series. Above is the skeleton dominaitrix. She's almost done, just needs a little highlights on the boots and the leather of the flogger painted in. BTW, the walls are not vertically challenged - the photo was taken off kilter. Two others are in various stages of development. One of those two will probably be fairly far along, and will be placed on the easel.

I had some beautiful giclee prints made at Electric Works here in San Francisco. I'll have these available at OS, but most likely the major selling effort on these will be through Bert Green in LA. These are very limited editions, 25 -30 per image - including four of the Four Squared hybrid critters, and three of dancing conjoined twins.

On Friday, I'll probably be frantically hanging paintings, trying to tidy up all the clutter (which will be impossible, so visitors will just have to ignore it), and helping South Beach Artists get set up for our guests.

The Mission District Open Studios took place last weekend, so I took a little time to check out the Blue Studios and Red Brick Studios. At Red Brick - visited with Anna Efanova, who had some lovely whimsical animals in painting and sculpture. Also went over to see Hadley Northrup (an artist-neighbor of mine at the old Belcher Studios site) at her studio at Workspace ltd. She had some very nice pieces, including a beautiful painting of a lit alterpiece that fairly glowed.

I went over to Church Street Cafe afterwards, did a little sketching, and developed some ideas for more anatomical paintings. All the art and sketching got me so wired up, my brain was still cranking at 2 in the morning, and I had a very difficult time getting to sleep. I've always had problems with insomnia - it's like my mind just fires up late at night. When I was a kid I used to lay awake listening for planes - a sure sign of impending nuclear attack.

I think if I had a live work art studio, I would do all my painting between 10 pm and 3 am.

Life Drawing

Drawing is like playing a musical instrument... it takes lots and lots of practice, and if you don't do it, you can get rusty very quickly. I try to go to life drawing at least twice a week. On Mondays I go to Noe Valley - 23rd Street Studio. This is really a top notch session, with good lighting, good models, and the host Michael Markowitz serves tea and pastry during the long break. On Tuesday evenings, I go to the Odd Fellows building, hosted by Richard Perri.

At the studio, I'm working on the last set of BDSM skeleton paintings. I'm working on the backgrounds, which for me is tedious but critical stage of the painting process. I'm hoping to get into the more fun part of the process later this week when I can start putting in the skeletons and figures.

Above: 25 minute pose 9-7-2010
7 minute pose 9-13-2010

FourSquared Exhibit at ARC

All 16 little paintings of hybrid creatures are done, except for touch ups. I put in three really long days, Friday through Sunday. Put in 12 hours yesterday. The most difficult task is adding tiny details like whiskers to the rats. It's times like this that make me wish I had painted all 16 creatures onto panel rather than linen. (easier to paint fine details on panel versus canvas/linen). The disadvantage for panel however, is that it generally takes more layers of paint to get the same effect that I'm looking for.

Once the final touches are in, I still need to put on a coat of retouch varnish, and photograph the works for my records.

All 16 paintings will be included in a group show at ARC Studios and Galleries, in an exhibit titled "FourSquared. " This exhibition will feature 16 small square paintings from 16 artists. It is an honor to be included in this line up of well known, amazing artists working in different genres.

The opening reception for the exhibit at ARC will be on August 27, 7-10 pm.

ARC Gallery & Studios is located at 1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA. Here is a link to the exhibition website.

Life returning to normal, sort of

Getting ready for the 4 Squared Exhibit has been a challenge, but it's actually going better than I had hoped. I was able to develop ideas for 16 little 6 x 6 paintings in a week, and after about three weeks, I have finished 12 paintings. Two are almost done, and two remain with just the backgrounds in. Hopefully I will be totally done with painting these by early next week.

So today, I finally took a day off from the studio. (partly due to a migraine and to take my cat to the vet).

Despite the time pressure, this project has been alot of fun. Combining creatures that are compatible colorwise, as well as matching up creatures that could both exist in a similar environment, was a mental challenge. For example, I combined an antelope head on an ostrich. To me, this made sense. I found an antelope with a similar color scheme to a male ostrich. They both are plains animals, and I think this helps create a kind of believability to the creature.

I might end up making larger works based on the ideas developed for these little paintings.

Tiny Paintings and Other Goings On

This has been a very eventful week. Early last week, an artist friend of mine referred me to the Bone Room in Berkeley and they would like to include me in an exhibit at their relatively new gallery/event room (next door to their retail store). It looks like I will be in a show in October 2011. This is really exciting for me - I have shopped at the Bone Room for years and find it to be very inspiring.

Then, I was invited to participate in a prestigious show at ARC Gallery and Studios in San Francisco. The title of the show is Four Squared, will feature 16 artists, who will each have 16 small square paintings no larger than 10 x 10.

And yesterday, I received an e mail from a curator friend in Australia, Jon Beinart (also a talented artist!) who invited me to participate in a group show he is curating in Santa Monica at a very well known gallery in March 2011. This group show will be all surreal/fantastic realism, and will include some very well known artists, so it will be a real honor to be included in this show.

In addition, I had already been working towards putting together a body of work for my show at Bert Green Fine Art scheduled for January 2011.

My immediate priority is to get 16 little paintings done for Four Squared by August 20 . I didn't have many small square paintings on hand, so I realized this was going to require 16 new paintings from scratch. Amazingly, the ideas just came from nowhere for little hybrid animals. I had been wanting to do something like this for quite a while, and I had on hand several half baked sketches that were going nowhere. But within two days, suddenly some rather interesting things started to come together. (see images above). I now have 13 drawings of 6 x 6 done and ready to transfer to panels and canvas. I think I will do around half on panel, reserving the panel for creatures that require more delicate details. The other half will be on stretched prime linen canvas. Afterwards, I will probably mine these ideas/images for larger paintings with more complex backgrounds and themes.

I went to Jeffrey's Toys (I love any excuse to go there!) and found some little replicas of rhinos, ostriches, etc. which will help me with light and shadow as I paint. Also used the internet and nature books to look at animal reference photos.

I know that to complete this project, I will be at the studio 7 days a week for over a month. But this is way more satisfying and fun than the type of pressure I used to be under at the Bank when I had a corporate gig!

So you are probably wondering: how is it she has time to do a blog entry? The studio building's water supply has been shut off this morning until noon. So I am doing a late day/evening stretch at the studio today.