Citizen Sketcher

Day 19:

There’s a reliable pattern to a painting marathon. You start out tentative, maybe a little rusty. You push through some bad ones, some exercises, and suddenly there’s a peak – (a little too close to the middle for my liking) – when you hit your stride. You’re doing things you never expected.

Making breakthroughs!

Or at least, taking risks – based on new-found confidence.

This is the point where you have enough good work in the bag you won’t be ashamed of yourself, but you haven’t beaten your personal-best yet either.

It’s a public performance after all – so you find yourself willing to bang out a piece you’d frankly have been scared to try previously.

It’s time to go big, or go home.

If I had to put a finger on it, I’d say what’s changing is my use of brushstrokes, versus shapes.

In the past I might have emphasized fusing all the strokes within a silhouette. So every wet shape is solidly melted together. (If you’re a regular reader, I’m sure you’ve heard me say that.)

Right now, I’m willing to leave things broken up. It’s turning into individual brush-marks floating and layering over each other – building up a mosaic.

Maybe this is coming from my last two years of oil painting?

I don’t know, but I’m open to where it’s going.

Day 16: A side street in Cortona, Italy.

This one is intersting – because I can show you the painting I made on location, back in 2015.

Fascinating how different the color is eh? Is that due to working from a photo? Or just my sensibility changing?

I’m not sure – but I can say, the new foliage looks like it’s transmitting sunlight – where the old plants look plastic, despite the intense sun.

The old painting has this rusty orange sense of heat. The light is bleached out and high-key. It was brutal – painting out in the sun. (Crazy tourists!)

In the new painting, the drawing of the street is better – the perspective is less cheated – Because of the reference? I don’t see why, because I could have measured just as easily in real life. Just new skills I guess. Maybe because it’s easier to slow down and check things when you’re working in the comfort of home.

Either way – there’s more depth and subtlety now. I can see myself improving!

Here by the way, is the photoshop-tweaked-photo I worked from.

The weird angles on the sides are an effect left over after perspective correction. I’ve removed the wide-angle distortion of the lens, so it’s closer to how the human eye sees it. But then I just add back in my own wonky perspective :)

I guess that’s how I roll.

You’re welcome by the way to use any of these photographs on the blog for your own sketches. Or even copy the paintings if you want.

Take care – and see you tomorrow with new videos!

We’ll have part three of our critique going up – discussing the last few days paintings, and – two more big surprises!

[ The North Remembers, 10×10″ Oil on Panel ]

Didn’t Paint Today! Here’s an old one!

I initially thought what I was doing with my impasto oil paintings was completely different than my watercolors. But – the more I look at them, the more I realize – I can only paint the way I paint. The medium might change the look, but the thinking, or the ‘way of seeing’ is the same.

I painted this alley in Havana because of that guy carrying the fridge.

At the time Laurel took this photo, I was drawing the dome in the distance. We’ve had this urban sketching photo in the archives for probably ten years, and I’d never seen that guy before. I used to be so laser-focused on drawing old buildings.

Weird hey?

So there you go, Day 13!

I’ll leave you with some more abstract brushwork.

Day 12:

What can I say about this one hey?

I like it!

I mean – I’m back in my happy place.

It took a week of pushing paint, but I’m feeling the flow. The return to fluency with the brush. And the ability to visualize the painting I want, when I’m looking at a ‘random’ street scene.

There’s a lot of mental corrections to reality going on – when you compare the painting to the photo below.

Besides removing the city, (returning us to 1910) and inventing an expressive sky, I’m subtly distorting the perspective and spacing to make the architecture more – I guess more elegant – more ‘rising above the street’. And simplified – into the almost orthographic perspective I enjoy.

I’ve also established a strangely dominant ground plane, and used the brush work everywhere around the focus to make a kind of frothy, windblown movement. And I’m trying to reduce all the street-life to brushwork abstractions that imply people. You feel their presence, but none of them are portraits. (Similar I suppose to the little people in Mr. Tram (Day 06)).

This one has the freedom that I would expect out of my own plein-air paintings. Which is about time – here on day 12!

Here’s the reference – Laurel’s photo of the opera house in Rio di Janerio.

I should say – I’ve messed up this image in Photoshop. Mainly to reduce values into silhouettes. I’ve squashed all the detail in the trees, and clamped out many of the specular highlights. (Glints). This is all just curves control layers. It’s only a few minutes work in photoshop, and it’s ‘non-destructive’. You can’t ruin your photo.

I know this might sound like a daunting step if you’ve never tried – but anyone who paints from photos should experiment with Photoshop – or an app like ProCreate on the ipad. It’ll only take an afternoon of trying out adjustments and color corrections and you’ll be on your way.

Funny story – I was told this theater in Rio is an exact copy of the opera house in Paris. I’ve been going around repeating that story to everyone. But I did a little research, and I don’t think that’s the case. In fact, the Theatro Municipal in Sao Paulo looks much closer to the Opera Garnier in Paris. There’s some kind of historical game of telephone going on there that I’m not going to bother untangling.

Ok – I’ll leave you with some close ups of brush work!

~m

Day Nine: Quebec City

Nothing to see here except some sketches that aren’t as good as yesterday!

Tomorrow we’ll start posting our second video critique! Looking back right now, I have no idea why I wanted to paint these. Maybe I’ll have something of an explanation?

~m