November..

Yup, it's here already. Where did the rest of the year go? That's the problem with getting old, relative time moves faster! When we're 10, a year is one tenth of our entire life. At fifty, five years is one tenth. That's sixty months instead of twelve, but good gosh, I think the last five years feels to me pretty much like what a year felt like at age ten. It's rather horrifying to contemplate how fast the next twenty years could feel, presuming I have that future...

I don't have a finished oil painting to show, so here's some leaves off of my tree I snapped with my Canon and popped into PhotoShop to add a quick personal touch. Gotta get down in the dungeon and PAINT! Bye!

Oct OH! ber! A work in progress...

No pics yet but I'm working on an oil portrait commission and have small paintings to put up for auction. I have not been inspired so much to sit in front of the easel lately, but I have been making progress in other areas that are important to me. It will all circle back around soon enough. I have been putting a lot of time into my favorite project though, which is my pup! I groom him myself, which is a way to practice the sculpture I did for 25 years. He is full of ocean and beach in the photos, which made his coat curl, but he is a lot of fun to fuss with. He had a blast on this day! His joy is always contagious. I love seeing the fire of youth in him, and sometimes wish I had more of it left in myself, but I wouldn't trade my hard earned wisdom for it.

Making A Living and Fixing Mistakes

I dunno how I could lose 6 weeks to raising a puppy and taking care of family and making a living without turning out a new canvas. I have managed to paint the edges on all my canvases that were literally hanging around so that they can be hung without a frame, which is my minimalist preference, so at least I got to practice mixing. I also finally learned that I absolutely MUST wear my nifty "painting shirt" or I WILL get paint on my good shirts and possibly my jeans as well, no matter how careful I think I am! I honestly don't think it's a lack of motor skills on my part, but more the confined area in which I work. I place most of the blame on my brush caddy, which mounts precariously onto my small box easel. It wants to position my long handled brushes across the air space in front of my small canvases, because the work space is so narrow that the brush handles hit the side of a bookcase. Many of the brushes I favor for their quality and paint handling are long handled oil brushes, made for standing back from the canvas, not so much for sitting closer to a small sized study. I sometimes leave color on them when I am working different colors or textures at one time. (Note that the photo of my shirt includes three of my favorite makes and models of brushes mentioned in my previous posts on bushes below.) I didn't have so much trouble with wayward paint when I had a bigger studio, though I'm honestly quite grateful for the space I do have now.

Thus recently I have gone back to practicing my old trick of taking the stained "good" shirt and touching up the stain with even more paint (after cleaning it up as much as possible with turps and laundering it), in effect practicing my skills by painting out the marks of my carelessness. I did that years ago in my youth in college when finances dictated that I wear my clothes completely out, and then later on when I was doing my own paintings and commissioned portraits in acrylics, and didn't really think anything about it. A few months ago I came across a thread on Wet Canvas! on the actual subject of painting out accidents on one's clothing, so it seems fairly common.

My own advice if you are using oils (as I am currently), is to mix the exact color with just a tiny touch of a quick flash point thinner if necessary for discreet handling (oil of spike is good, or English turps), and to put your dabs of perfectly matched mixed paint on a paper towel or paper plate first to take out as much oil as possible. This is because the carrier oil in your pigments can spread the paint beyond where you want it through the fabric's absorption, and may leave a yellow halo around the colored area. Then do the touch up with a fine pointed brush or toothpick or q-tip, whatever gives you the most control. Keep the paint rich but the application thin, you don't want blobs. Let it dry in a safe place, then wash. If you are using acrylics, remember that they dry DARKER! So compensate by mixing a bit lighter color, and mix under good bright light if possible. This is actually an extremely good practice in training your eye to mix color accurately, so consider it time well spent in studying your craft and improving your skills. BUT, it's better to keep paint off of your person wherever possible, especially your skin, as many pigments and thinners and mediums contain toxic elements, and you do NOT want that stuff on your skin, where it can be absorbed into your system.

Holy Mole', It's August Already!

I am trying to type a post one handed with a six month old puppy on my lap. I can't believe it's August already, over halfway through the year, where did it all go so fast?!
I planned to have this month to paint, but my to do list is juuust soooo loooong. I need to delete the word "but" from my life regarding painting and just get down to the dungeon and do it. Sidetracked by life is a constant, so all that other stuff will have to wait. I have two commissions to do this month, plus said pup is supposed to be a model. The only problem is that he is black, which reads in the camera like all shadow with just eyes and teeth showing (his nickname is "Mr. Mouth", as he is all mouth right now), and moves so fast that my only hope is good photos as a starting point.


I took that pic showing baby teeth last month, and they are all gone now (I have most of them in a little plastic box, the lot looks like some gruesome pocket piece of a bone collector). No, he's not growling, he's teething, and is a big smiler! I never saw a dog with his teeth always hanging out as much as this pup does. I think it's just the teething process in general. He has lots of chew stuff of different materials to soothe his gums, and gets ice cubes when he wants one. He is the sweetest thing, and currently is so proud of all his new big boy teeth! He is always smiling. Also, he has double upper canines: the permanents came in behind instead of on top of the milk teeth, so right now he has six fangs! I laughed myself silly when I heard about people putting braces on their pooches, but that was before this! He has a perfect bite, I'd hate to see it ruined, but his vet says when they get yanked in a week it will be okay. Whew, I thought I'd be trekking up to Brentwood to a doggy dentist there who does braces...



Sorry, I can't find the macro function, I did once before but already forgot how...
He will also be singing soprano after the teeth operation, better to do everything at once. And he gets an ID chip. DO chip your pets if they do not have this device already. If they are found and taken to a vet or the pound, the scanners there will get them back to you. Keep your info updated with the chip company as well.

Sadly for me, since that photo was taken I dropped my old Nikon digital on the bricks. So I went online to research new digitals, and finally jumped the brand ship a couple weeks after and got a nice Canon, an S3 IS. Quite nice actually, with excellent features, and a heckuva lot cheaper than another Nikon CP 4500. It takes fab photos, far superior video, and has an endless number of potential settings. I am afraid that it is much smarter than I am! My first real camera thirty years ago was a Canon, and it's been all Nikons since, but it's good to shop around, however much I love my old F4. Someday I will get the D80 or D200 so I can use the 8 or so lenses that belong to the F4.

The zoom is fabulous; I was able to get a decent but still not good enough to paint shot of the shadow puppy in low inside light and far across the room.


A striking study in black.

The Other Brush

Wow, I last posted on the brushes I like to use for oil painting, to 1) get back to posting about art if I'm not actually posting my paintings at the moment, 2) provide some useful feedback for other artists, and 3) to get the google ads back to art oriented stuff from the previous d-o-g stuff. So now it's all about b-l-o-g-s. Yeah, that makes sense! ;D
So continuing from my last posting, my other favorite brush is the Langnickel Royal Sable. I love these for fine detail or soft brushwork and glazing. I only have a few that I got from a friend who's brother was no longer painting, but I have hopes of getting a bigger set. Right now I just have smaller sizes, 0-2, in a short red handled brush that looks like a short headed standard filbert, which I don't see at the Jerry's link above. The filberts offered now are more like a cat's tongue style, with a sharper point. Mine are probably older.
One other thought I would like to add regarding brushes is to buy the best you can afford! More and cheaper is not as good as having less brushes and better quality. Take it from a compulsive brush buyer! I fondle brushes in the store, test the spring and shape, then buy one with a coupon to try it, and if I like it, I go buy more of them online in a small range of sizes. But I'll start with just that one, and only add a few at a time if it works well. I'd say you will absolutely feel the difference if you are painting with any finesse and need for control, and even if you are painting big abstract areas of color on big canvases rather than fine fussy realism, you will still feel a difference between quality bristle and the cheap stuff in the way the paint goes on the surface, and will appreciate a brush that doesn't shed, splay or lose it's edge after one painting. It's better to clean the brush to change colors and use a good brush, than have a lot of cheap ones that don't put color where you want it, in my opinion. In good technique, a brush should be wiped well if not cleaned in mineral spirits or Turpenoid after several strokes anyway whenever more than one color is used, or when applying one color over another wet in wet, to keep color clean. One brush can do a lot of work.
Yes, I know that really talented painters can paint with sticks, but I'd rather not!

"Friesian Afternoon" now for sale

SOLD

I've decided to start putting stuff up on auction on eBay. I've been painting on and off, mostly off since the puppy's arrival, but that's okay! He's the light of my life right now. He's settling in just fine, so I'll be getting back to painting full time when I get a break from work in August. In the meantime I'll be reposting some of my earlier work as it will be going on auction. This is a 6" x 8" oil on gallery wrap canvas with the sides painted in a matching sand color to the background, so that it doesn't need a frame, and is ready to hang. Click on the title to go to the auction page!

The Puppy Has Landed!

I have sitting on my lap as I type a most charming, delightful and stunning little black Miniature Poodle puppy. (The flash makes him look like a silver, but he is black.) I am delighted with him; actually, I am falling madly in love! So are his Papa and Grandma. He is four months and one week old, 11 inches at the shoulder, and has a lovely regal classic Poodle head and face, and the unique "Poodley" persona. He came home later this afternoon, and rode like a champ from way up in the San Bernardino mountains all the way home, with several stops. He is well bred from good healthy lineage, and wonderfully socialized, and he already sits (mostly), retrieves (superbly), walks on a leash (pretty much), and comes when called. He is friendly and very well mannered, and inquisitive and quite brilliant! His dam's call name is Jasmine, same as the dog I lost. His sire's call name is Toad, a nickname of someone I love dearly. It looks like his name is going to be Bogart, and he's simply beautiful. I'll have to paint him. We saw the dam and grandsire and other relatives, all wonderful dogs, all raised in a home environment. There are more puppies from this breeder if anyone is looking for a very fine Poodle. There is no other dog (in my own opinion of course) in this world like a good Poodle. Check out all the "Poodle" links in this post to find out just how versatile and intelligent these dogs truly are.

"Hen And Chick"

I love the images this group of huge rock formations in the Jumbo Rocks area of Joshua Tree National Park made in my camera's image finder. I remarked in an earlier post about these marvellous geologic formations how the human mind is wired to look for symbols. At first I just saw a rooster lying stretched out along the skyline, and to myself called it "Dead Rooster Rock", which though morbid was nicely alliterative. Then I looked a little longer at the formation to the right, and there was a nicely stylized profile of a chick's head. So it had to be a hen and her chick, which is a much more heart warming image overall, don't you think? Trying to capture it in oil paint was a bit elusive for me however. I'm posting this 6x8 inch oil on canvas, even though I don't really see it as fully finished. I may, however, be done with it.

I Miss My Dog

I am painting again for a few days this week. I have a portrait of a Golden Retriever to finish, and when I'm done doing some antique glass ink well and bottle studies I will be working on "Gary" for his owner, and on Jazz, the dog I gave my heart to below. She lives on deep in my heart, and is still my comfort; I still feel her presence once in awhile now, though not as often. Her toy basket is still where she left it, neatly arranged; and her box of ashes is in a tonsu next to my bed, where she always slept, with her collar and kerchief and the silly but stylish muffler I knitted for her a year ago for cold days, all inside her memory box. Her pink piggy stuffed toy is safe on top of her box. That was her favorite.

I am looking for a Poodle. I said I would get one when Jazzie was no longer here, but I certainly didn't expect one for years yet, and was never in any hurry. I will know if it's right, I asked Jazzie to help pick. She inherited her lifestyle and a lot of good things from a wonderful Poodle, so the circle is going back around, and she will pass along some of her good stuff to another deserving dog.

"Crocodile Rock"

I went to Joshua Tree National Park last weekend for a quick camping trip with my best buddy. We camped at Jumbo Rocks and did some bouldering and general hiking around the west end of the park. I did a small plein air study the first evening from the camp site, and it was a lot of fun, but it was mostly color notation. But I did take lots of photos, as the park has some magnificent geologic formations. I think it's really fascinating how the human brain is hardwired to see symbols and objects, like saints in tortillas, and animals in clouds, for example. I found I started seeing some neat things in the rocks when I really began to look. It's an interesting exercise to just pay attention, and then to see how the mind can make the boulders "become" symbols which are visible at certain angles, and as one moves around or away from them, disappear as the contours and light and shadow change one's perspective. I was charmed, and I thought it would be fun to use the effect to do a series of studies of the rock and boulder formations. All the paintings are of actual formations, and though the colors are tweaked just a bit for more visual interest, they are all there to some extent. If you go to Joshua Tree you may stumble upon these "creatures" yourself. I'm sure they aren't going anywhere for another few hundred thousand years or so at least.
This is the second study I did since I got back, the first needs a bit more work. This is a 6"x8" oil on canvas.

Queensland Native

This is the Queensland, Australia varietal native Eucalyptus tree painting shown below in process, done. Usually I sign a painting when I believe it's finished, then find a few more tweaks later. As it's a gallery wrap canvas, I still need to paint the bottom edge, but, it's a wrap!