I love paintings of glass and pewter and copper and fruits, and have collected quite a few of them, but I was never interested in painting them myself. But painting is painting, so when two fellow plein air artists lured me to play hooky from the law office on a cold winter Friday, I went along for the ride. The ride included a morning spent exploring Trader Joe’s–my first trip to that extraordinary grocery store. When we returned to the hostess’s home, we used some of our recent acquisitions to set up a pretty challenging still life: two ceramic parrots — the easiest; three glass containers — doable; collection of vari-colored miniature tomatoes (from Trader Joe’s) — difficult to distinguish from other possible vari-colored round things; and vari-colored tortilla chips with corn relish (Trader Joe’s again)–impossible. Then we ran out of light since we had spent most of our day shopping and eating. (I’m not sure, but I suspect that most still lifes take a few days to paint.) I made major improvements back at home, after consulting my reference photo. Here is the original painting next to the reference photo:

It was that dark shape in the reference photo that convinced me to darken the entire background, much like I remember the Old Masters’ still lifes.

But wait! There’s more! I am taking a course at the NH Institute of Art with Peter Clive on the subject of drawing in color, and he is starting us off with still life arrangements. Here is Still Life No. 2 done in mixed media, to wit, pen and pencil:

I enjoyed this one very much. Crosshatching is fun. We were limited, in this exercise, to complementary colors, meaning we could use yellow and purple, or green and red, or blue and orange, which last was my choice. My favorite object is the pewter pitcher in the foreground–the others are mere stage dressing. I was astounded by the fact that I could convey the idea of gray metal using blue and orange pencils.

Today I have collected some decent photographs of my furry housemates, and in recognition of my past neglect of one of them, I lead off with his close up. Meet Justice. I did not name him that. A rescue shelter down South picked him up with female puppy on the Fourth of July and named them Justice and Liberty, respectively. We paid to have him shipped up to us via plane, truck and automobile. He is, it appears, mostly border collie and German shepherd, but his black tongue hints at a Chow somewhere in his bloodline. In any event, he is a very agreeable companion, even if a little rough on the cats. Here he is in a typical pose in a typical spot–his corner of the sofa:

You can see that he is ready to spring into action at the drop of a hat. He and Honey are BFFs, and that is Honey’s butt there at the right margin of the photograph.

I had promised photos of Grace, my latest rescue, and of Honey all recovered from her surgical trauma (promises made here and here). Getting a photo of Grace with her eyes open was difficult. Most of them turned out like this:
This was a good angle for viewing her broken jaw. But finally, I snuck up on her and got the eyes open–twice!

These photographs prove that her eyes are green. I think that may be a little unusual for a tabby cat. Look how fluffy she has become! No longer the pitiable creature who hid under the sofa, she has taken over two-thirds of the house and relegated Isis, the white goddess, to the third floor. Female cats can be quite contrary.

Honey’s eyes are as good as they are going to get. The growth on her cornea was successfully removed, but the “face lift” to correct her droopy lids was only partially successful. She seems happier now with her vision improved, and I think she would agree that all that suffering with the cone was worth the result.

The eye showing is the one with the corneal surgery.

Great Danes sleep a lot, and insist on the cushiest spots for the doing of it. But when she goes outside to play, she plays hard, tearing up the yard like a racehorse. (I used to cultivate moss in that yard. Now nothing smaller than a tall bush can survive.) And she digs. For fun! HUGE holes! Justice digs to make a tunnel to escape the yard. Honey digs for the pure joy of it.

Here are two shots of Isis, the white goddess, before she was dethroned by Grace and banished to the upper regions. In the first photo, on the left, she is in full goddess attitude, but the second photo reveals her to be a mortal pussycat after all, vulnerable to a sassy little upstart like Grace.

Back to paintings next time. I have a lot to show you.

Last week I decided to write about planning a painting because I am working on that painting above, which I have planned, sort of. I got started on the blog entry, roughing it in and collecting a few illustrative bits. Then I dropped it. Every day I would think about it, but every day I found more compelling projects to work on. What does this mean? Not only am I averse to planning, but I am also averse to thinking about planning?

If that answer is “yes”, maybe that’s why I enjoy plein air painting. Despite the almost universal recommendation from more experienced artists to make a preliminary value study before beginning a plein air painting, most of the time I dive right in, trying out my choices right there on the canvas. After all, all wrong strokes in oil painting are correctable. Getting the canvas covered as quickly as possible seems important when you know you only have a few hours to capture all the information you need. But I have to admit, the few times that I have taken the time to start with a sketch, the painting has turned out well. Here’s an example.

On the other hand, a few days after I painted the one above, another (the one below) turned out well without any pre-sketching. OK, I have to confess that another painter had admirably captured this scene in the morning, and I decided to try the same scene in the afternoon. Does that amount to using a pre-sketch? No! Inspiration is not the same as a plan, but it comes close enough for me sometimes.

The advantages of pre-sketching, I conclude, lie in my natural reluctance to do something over after I have spend significant time on it. But since pre-sketching is no guaranty of perfection, an oil painter like me must be ready for lots of do-overs anyway.

For painting in the studio, most of the planning has gone into the selection and cropping of a photograph that inspires me. An exact copy of the photo normally does not result. Compare these two photo inspirations on the left and the paintings that resulted, on the right:

The second one is an example of inspiration alone furnishing the plan for a studio painting, somewhat like the plain air painting that was inspired by someone else choosing to paint that particular scene.

But occasionally–well, at least once–I have gone to extreme lengths to plan a painting. (“Extreme” to me is standard operation procedure for many other painters.) In this single example, I wanted to faithfully reproduce the placement of the structures in the photograph. Therefore, I employed a grid to help in the drawing. By the way, the photo on the left is not my original, gridded photograph of the scene; it is a later one that I got when I went back looking for signs of life, i.e., the boat. Thus the angles may look a little different.

2d photo w boat sketch with grid

final painting with boat and boy added

For an earlier and more extensive history of this painting, click here. I added the little boy fishing from the dock after writing that blog entry, which had asked for the readers’ opinion on whether to add a figure.

If the Waterfront painting represents one extreme of planning, the painting below represents its opposite. I started with large smears of dark greens and browns scraped on with a knife, from which I drew out the forms that more or less embodied a piece of forest photo-graphed two days before. You’ll have to take my word for it, because I have lost the photograph, but this painting is way more interesting than the photo.

My current project is the Farmer’s Market, which I mentioned a few weeks ago (here) when it was first getting underway. This is a large painting with lots of figures, and so qualifies, I think, as “ambitious.” I could not grid it like the Waterfront because there exists no single view of the scene that encompasses all of the elements I want to include. I had to piece the composition together from many different photographs. These are a few:

I wisely decided to start with a paper and pencil sketch:

There is a child in the stroller in the foreground whose hands are reaching out to its mother. I decided to make those hands my focal point, so I practiced them in the margin.

Here is where I was last week with it:

I have done some more work on it since capturing this image, and am finding deficiencies that better planning might have protected me from. But that’s OK–I’m not afraid of Do-Overs. Next Monday’s topic may well feature the Do-Overs.