Painting progress

getting closer...

Little farther

Making progress:

Painting Process Update

New Painting process part 1

 Been a long time - but I will try using this blog again occasionally - this time at the request of some new painting students that were asking about my personal process... Here's a few process photos from recent paintings - beginning with a Utah-based work.

The process here began with a 3x4' raw canvas onto which I projected my photo and sketched in a few of the basic shapes. From there I wet most of the raw canvas and poured/painted very thin washes of acrylic paint into the cotton. This stage works similar to a watercolor as the paint diffuses and stains the raw canvas.

 From there, I sealed the absorbent canvas with many layers of clear gesso and self-leveling clear gel (by Golden).  After it is adequately sealed, I begin building up the acrylic with layers of glazed paint.

After those stages, I switched to oil paint to soften some edges and lay in big tones (mostly blues/grays). The photo below may not be the best representation of the finished work but gives you an idea:

The work on the easel right now is also inspired by the desert as well as a previous work (the tree painting above titled "Lumen Vitae", Acrylic on Canvas, 42x60"). This painting focuses on one of my favorite plants: desert sage.


This painting process is more direct - again starting with simple outlines of the forms, I am laying in a lot of the larger background shapes first:

From there I'm building up the acrylic on the sage in the foreground. This photo shows the daylight coming through the linen in my studio. The process from here will continue filling in the larger shapes and proceed to layer more glazed paint to pronounce the warm glow of the setting sun.

Progress on new painting - at the Denver Art Museum

The next two weekends (October 20, 21 and October 27, 28) I will be painting in the painting studio at the Denver Art Museum. You can see me work on a large new painting from noon until 3 pm each of those days. I would be happy to answer any questions about my work or technique - hope to see you there! Here's the current progress on the work I will be bringing to the museum:

Eric LoPresti: Studio Visit / New Exhibition

While in New York, I had the opportunity to meet with Eric LoPresti in his studio in Brooklyn. I took some photos and talked with him about his upcoming show, "Different Country", running April 8th - May 8th 2011. The opening reception is at Like the Spice gallery on Friday, April 8th from 6:30-9:00pm. Eric was a guest on this blog back in 2009 - you can read that post here. He was also featured in the part of "Natural Causes" that I curated at Rule gallery last year.

Eric sketching out some of the graphic lines on a recent work with black tape - to be drawn in with black ink for the finished work.

tape

process

more process - the finished work below:

Rattlesnake (with Vectors), Oil and India ink on linen, 2011. 40" x 60"

A corner of the studio where Eric was working on drawings - in the frame is, "Sky Drawing B",
Graphite and India ink on paper, 2011. 11" x 14" - this drawing will be a part of the new exhibition.

on the wall of the studio (left):

Halo (Nez Perce), Oil on linen, 2011. 60" x 40"

From Like the Spice blog, "In his newest body of work, Eric creates beautiful American landscapes in his oil paintings and graphite drawings with; they feature soft hues and color gradients that outline test sites, wastelands, and wide open spaces. 'Maintaining his established focus on the physical and psychological aftermath of the Cold War, LoPresti renders landscapes bearing the scars of nuclear testing and subsequent environmental clean-up campaigns, especially those near where he grew up, in the desert steppe of eastern Washington state, near the Hanford plutonium production site.' His third solo show here at Like the Spice, in "Different Country," Eric pairs spectral color gradients with dark linear elements suggesting a division of territory within each work."

And finally, the view from Eric's studio building roof:

How it is looking

the blues really helped.

Studio Update

small detail of in-progress painting (still pretty rough)

I'm still working on the tree painting along with three other smaller works. My current studio listening includes:

A fantastic podcast live set by Deerhunter (free download)



Barn Owl's new album Ancestral Star



and the new album Lisbon by the Walkmen (easily one of the best albums of the year)

continued

This painting is going to be a tricky balancing act of hard and soft edges.

At work

update on the new painting

More progress

New Painting Progress

It has been a while since I've worked on a large painting -this new one is 2'x7' and based on the same series of photos that inspired "Reverberation". Here are three stages of the process that has taken place over the last couple of weeks. The right side is more done than the left side so far but there is still a lot of work to do.

Current Work in Progress

The painting looks better now (more glow/white sparkles), but here's a photo from a few days ago. It goes well with a quote from this date in Henry David Thoreau's journal:

"The most valuable communication or news consists of hints and suggestions."
Henry David Thoreau- July 29, 1857

Currently on the Easel

This is a corner of my new studio- cleaned up for a recent studio visit. Although it is hard to see in the view above, the branch along the top of the image I'm painting reminded me of the one seen in this Steichen painting from 1905:

Eduard Steichen, "Cooper's Bluff - Moonlight Strollers", Oil on Canvas

Current Progress

My main focus the last couple of weeks has been getting my new studio in order (pictured above). I'm doing a lot of drawing at the desk right now too. Have a great weekend everyone!

Things are falling into place

Here's a photo of things as they were on Saturday. As of yesterday, Mindy Bray's site specific work directly on the wall of the gallery is nearing completion (you can see her working in the background of the above photo) and nine out of ten of my works are installed. We will be laying out the group exhibition for installation this afternoon. It is a real honor to present my work with such a talented and inspiring group of artists.

Natural Selection

Part of being an artist is knowing when to say "when" and learning how to edit. Not every work "works". There are pieces of mine that didn't seem to grow with time - they festered. There are also pieces that are missing something. I usually refer to that something as the "punch" (as in, "it doesn't have any punch"). Here are a few recent examples of works that have been sanded down and now only exist as digital images:

This fog painting was going ok as of last night but it won't do for the current show and I needed to make the tough decision to paint over it and re-use a good panel for something more powerful.

This was a brief sidetrack of several attempted drawings of sinkholes. I painted over this work and the next piece also was a failure. I think this piece of paper will end up with my pizza box in the dumpster.
These six lackluster works were also recently sanded down and one was painted over to be this:

New Couch, etc.

Here's what our living room looked like with the old couch:
We got a new couch yesterday and moved a lot of the room around. Having a couch that sits higher off the ground really opens up the room. Where the wildfire painting hangs in the photo above we've re-hung the eight foot long highway painting. We moved the credenza (and tv) underneath it instead of on the opposite wall. What we're still planning on changing is the rug, the lampshades and the curtains. Changing the rug to something larger and more neutral will make a big difference - I'm dreaming of these rugs. We're even considering re-covering the side chairs with a softer fabric. For now, we'll just have to imagine those changes because shipping and back-orders mean we won't have this room quite how we want it for another couple of months.

Process

Last Sunday I showed you all of the canvases I've been preparing. It seems that was a bit of a distraction because right now I'd like to plan on my next show being made up of just panels. So Thursday after work I built three more sizeable panels:

(I don't love the logos on the back, but it is better plywood)

I'm going to be painting at least one of the fog images that I took in City Park recently, but in order to do so I had to have new references. To clairify - when I tried a foggy image for my last show I found that it was easier to obscure it if I could better see what I was painting in the first place. The same was true with the waterfall image I recently completed. In short, I painted both works mostly from better-lit or daylight images and then added fog or darkness over it - rather than painting directly from a foggy or night time image.

Here is the reference image I used for a work I did last year- I painted this pretty directly (including most of the tree branches and far off mountains) before adding a layer of semi-transparent blue/white over it for the final painting:Here are the references for my next work:
Above is the image that I will be portraying in the painting and below is the day-light image that I took yesterday to have a better idea of what I'm painting:

(hope this all makes sense)

Recycled

These six panels were just taking up space in my basement and I didn't really care for them any more so I sanded them down this afternoon and stretched canvas over the smaller ones. While sanding I noticed that the painting on the far left in this image actually had another painting underneath. So after re-priming that one I'll start the third painting on the same panel.

Four gone.

Six gone.