Watching the Boats With Dad Projection

In an effort to provide more frequent posts and updates, I plan on blogging each day's work on my current painting.  This work is another landscape based on Montgomery's River Front Park and I was able to capture this image on the morning of the Dragon Boat Festival.  The painting is actually a composite of two photos I took of the same basic composition, I just needed to shift the father and son over a little on the sidewalk to better organize the elements, which is why they're drawn in pencil.  In another month or so when I theoretically finish this painting, I intend on restarting and completing the Tintype Commission portrait I began about two years ago.

L'aube au Double Deuce (Le pire cauchemar de Dalton)

After finishing River Front Park Walkway, I set out to complete two more personal paintings before I dove back into restarting my Tintype Commission from so long ago.  The first of these paintings is a Surrealist 'landscape' in the manner of French painter Yves Tanguy, and converting the title to French is an homage to this.

River Front Park Walkway

The weekend before this past one I participated in the Annual Dragon Boat Festival as an art vendor.  The event took place at the River Front Park in downtown Montgomery and I took this opportunity to not only expand my artistic network but also to begin an on-site landscape of the venue.  I started with a sketch of the composition on the canvas and also took a photo of the view with my phone for future reference.  Due to patron traffic, I was only able to get a very rough layout painted during the event and finished the painting over the weekend.  I also took a couple of other photos of the area for possible future paintings.  

Allie Commission Final

After a year of off and on attempted progress on this commission I finally finished.  Not long ago I actually restarted the work to tweak some details and completed the entire painting in acrylics.

Day 2 of Allie Modell Commission

On my second day of work for this portrait I applied a layer of Viridian Hue to deepen and darken the shadows.

After I get a little further along with this portrait I intend on resuming work on my previous commission and alternating work between the two paintings until they are completed.  Once I've finished the commissions, I'd like to resume and complete the four oil portraits I started almost two years ago and the acrylic slot canyon paintings I began last fall.  Well, that is if everything goes as planned...

Day 1 of Allie Modell Commission

For the first day of real work on my latest commission I applied a layer of oil Alizarin Crimson over my projection to help establish the shadows and shapes. 

Allie Modell Commission Projection

After far too long of a break caused by moving back to Montgomery and an endless stream of housework, I began a new piece recently, but I lack a reliable internet connection and haven't been able to post about it until now.  Hopefully, I'll be able to break free of my affliction of starting pieces then having to take time away from art, then starting new ones to help get back in the swing before resuming half-done works, since I now have seven previous in-progress paintings already waiting at the moment.  My newest work comes to me as a commission and like my previous one is based off of a simple black and white photograph. 

I started the painting by constructing the canvas and giving it half a dozen coats of gesso before doing my preliminary projection in acrylic Ultramarine Blue.

Day 6 of Tintype Commission

I started the day with a focus on getting the background wall and shadow better established.  I did this by applying Yellow Ochre to the upper left corner and blended that out in the shape of the shadow.  I then worked in a little Burnt Umber mixed with Paynes Gray into the shadow area and finally blended it all together.  Next, I began working on the floor with Titanium White followed by Mars Black.  I then did a minute amount of work on the legs and shoes, followed by a quick layer of flesh tone to the face and hands, and finished with working on the dress in Alizarin Crimson and Yellow Ochre.

Here's the day's video:

Day 5 of Tintype Commission

I started the day by applying some Yellow Ochre to the upper left corner of the background to begin the establishment of a wall and cast shadow, which should add to the desired Baroque appearance.  I blended that out with some Burnt Umber, repeated the process for a while, but there's much work to be done.  Next,  began to reform the hair using Yellow Ochre and moved to working on the table a little after that.  I finished my work by filling the blank areas of the dress with Yellow Ochre.  I still have probably another day or so of general light work where my focus is just getting paint on the blank areas before I move to a more detailed and focused process.

The video for the day...

I only got around 45 minutes of work in today so when I was editing the video I only sped it up by a factor of 8 and not 16.  So instead of a time lapse appearance, the action appears more super speed.

Day 4 of Tintype Commission

I began the day's work by applying a thin layer of Burnt Umber to the top left corner of the background and slowly bled that out around the left side of the girl's head with a Burnt Umber and Paynes Gray mix and then finished the remainder of the background with Paynes Gray mixed with only a hint of Burnt Umber.  I then turned my focus to the table by reestablishing the main form and highlights with a light layer of Yellow Ochre.  I then finished my work with a layer of Alizarin Crimson over the red parts of the dress.

Here's the video for today's work:

In case any of you readers were curious as to my process for the production of these videos, let my give a brief run down of all that goes into making one.  Before I begin filming each day, I first devise a 'plan of attack' for what I intend on working on and then I get all my paints and brushes ready to best fit that plan.  Because I know my camera has only a 70 minute capacity I set a timer for about an hour and then get to work.  After I the timer goes off I work to get to a good stopping point and cease my work for the day and then upload the video from my camera to my computer.   To edit and make the videos I use Windows Live Movie Maker.  I begin the editing process by first speeding up the video by a factor of 16, which creates the time lapse effect. I then add in my three title screens, ie. the actual title, the 'On Palette,' and the 'Music.'  By this point I have the general length of the video established so I open up my iTunes and sort my music by track length.  Next is a simple matter of finding a desirable track of the appropriate length to add to the video and then I'm done.  

Day 3 of Tintype Commission

I started today's work by applying a transparent layer of a 2:1 Ultramarine Blue/Burnt Umber mix to the background.  I think painted in a layer of Burnt Umber over the shadow parts of the table, the hair, the shoes and socks, and  finally the dark floor squares.  I finished my work with a little Titanium White on the book paper, the pantaloons, and light floor squares.

Here's the video for today's work:

Day 2 of Tintype Commission

Today was a basic day of work on  Tintype Commission.  It was mostly a repeat of Day 1 but with Viridian Hue instead of Alizarin Crimson.  I started with a light transparent layer of Viridian Hue over the entire background and then mixed Viridian Hue and Alizarin Crimson together to paint in a layer over the dark parts of the table and over the hair, socks and shoes.

Here's the video for today's work.

Day 1 of Tintype Commission

With the holiday season now over, it's time for me to get back to work on my pieces in progress.  I spent about an hour last week working on the color patterning for the dress in Tintype Commission and finally reached an ideal design so the only thing holding me back from working was the cold.  I've been hoping to get some work done at night after work, but my studio, which is a patio turned sunroom with no central heat, has simply been too cold but hopefully that trend will soon be ending.  In other art related news, I finally renewed my Flickr subscription and the entirety of my photo collection is again available for viewing at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wyndawson.  The majority of the photos are from my personal travels throughout the country and many have provided source material for my art works.

Today was an off day so I was able to get a little work in on Tintype Commission while the sun was providing heat.  My work today consisted of what I have called 'Stage 1' in previous oil works.  I simply applied a thin transparent layer of Alizarin Crimson over the entire piece to help darken the shadows and better establish the forms.

I decided to also film my progress for this piece and edit it like I have been for my work on Phoenix Rising, and thanks to my experiences with those videos nothing went wrong with today's filming. 

Tintype Commission Projection

This past week I've spent my time after work constructing, wrapping, and gessoing a canvas for a commission that I received.  The commission is an oil portrait of the patron's grandmother's grandmother and the source image is a 19th century tintype of which I was provided a scanned print.

After I believe 8 coats of gesso, a final wash of gesso/Burnt Sienna tint, and a little light sanding, my canvas was ready for projection.  I used my standard projection pigment of acrylic Ultramarine Blue to establish the composition's forms and values and applied a final dark wash to the background to create a more Baroque light quality.

Day 5 of Phoenix Rising

I had a day off from work this X-Mas Eve and have spent some of it working on Phoenix Rising.  I used most of my time working on getting many of the forms back to their correct shapes and reestablishing rock edges.  I also filled in the main surfaces with some more basic washes to better their tones and forms.

I experienced the glare problem again during today's progress video even with all the shades closed, so I might try to hang an extra sheet up next time.  On the plus side, my new computer's updated MovieMaker program recognizes my camera's output file type so I no longer have to spend the extra few hours converting the files in order to edit them.  This also means that instead of purchasing a simple video camera in the near future, I'm going to hold off until I can afford a new dSLR camera with HD video functions.

Day 4 of Phoenix Rising

I didn't realize until after I had posted it, but my last post was my 100th for this blog!  And that would make this post my 101st...

It seems for now and until my work schedule becomes more consistent that I'll only be getting art work in during my days off from my "real" job (that's just a job for the bills, art is still my "profession").  So yesterday I was able to get a good bit of work in on Phoenix Rising. It was another "big brush" day for the most part and was again spent building up the forms and textures with various washes.  The piece is now at the point where I should be able to begin working on specific areas in more detail, but there's also a few areas that still need a few more basic washes.

The progress video for the day's work went smoothly for once, though I am seriously considering purchasing a camera that is primarily designed for video and not just using my digital still camera with a video function.  Not only will the video quality substantially improve, hopefully I could bypass the file conversion step which takes twice as long as the filming...

Day 3 of Phoenix Rising

I had a off day from work yesterday and was able to get some work done on Phoenix Rising.  It was another basic day of simply applying color washes throughout to help build up forms and hues.  I probably have one more day of working like this before I can begin to focus on establishing details, but things are certainly heading in the right direction so far.

My only concern is how the piece is gonna look once I'm finished and separate the canvases and get everything matted and framed.  I made some preliminary computer altered images to test my aesthetic theory before I began and they looked good but maybe after another few days of work I'll take the joining brackets off the canvases just to see if I need to alter my plans to make it appear as a single canvas and not two separate ones.

I produced a progress video for the day's work and like the previous videos, this one also provided a lesson through misfortune.  It was actually more like one and a half lessons.  The half lesson is a continuation from the last time dealing with the glare, which I made an effort to lessen by closing the set of blinds that lets direct sun in but there was still a fare amount of glare so I'll close even more blinds next time.  The main lesson was that my camera has only a 74 minute limit on its memory card, so the last 10-20 minutes of my work were not filmed.  For the last video, which is longer than this one, I filmed two 45-55 minute segments and combined them to make the full day's video.  I didn't want to go with that process because it more than doubles the conversion time it takes to convert my camera's output files into a Movie Maker friendly file type, but now I know it's the only way to reliably film more than an hour's worth of work.  

Day 2 Phoenix Rising

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Yesterday marked my first day off from my new job and I was able to get some work done on Phoenix Rising.  The more acclimated I get to my very early morning schedule and the more stable my overall schedule becomes, the more consistently I should be able to get work in.

I started my work with a semi repeat of Day 1, but instead of doing separate washes of Ultramarine Blue followed by Burnt Sienna, I used a mix of those two paints in an overall wash to help darken the shadows and give more substance to the forms.  I then moved to applying color throughout the canvas in an effort to establish base color tones.  I finished with washing in highlights with Titanium White.

I experienced another technical mishap in the day's progress video when a large amount of glare came in during the first half of my work causing the right side of the canvas to get repeatedly washed out with light.  Now that I know of its existence, I think I can adjust the curtains to eliminate the problem in the future.

Shine Over Mountains Final

I finished Shine Over Mountains yesterday afternoon, but there was not enough natural light left to get a good slide image for the final image (which will be later used for printing purposes).  Those with keen eyes may notice that this final image has a slight blue tint in some spots that all the previous progression images lacked.  This is a result of two things.  First, although I was only using Bone Black and Titanium White as my pigments, both of those have traces of blue in them and when you severely dilute the paint like I did, then those small traces become more apparent. In general, black pigments are composed of many dark pigments, which when diluted break apart and reveal their true colors.  It's kinda like how I used a black marker that turns purple for my watercolor marker paintings or the black pen that turns blue for the watercolor pen paintings.    The second reason for the blue tint, or rather why it isn't visible in the progression images, is because all of those where shot with unnatural light in a room at night, which made the blue tint way too exaggerated, so I simply converted them to black and white.  However, for this final image I wanted it to be as true to life as possible, so I waited until this morning to use sunlight and chose not to convert the image to black and white.

Day 1 of Phoenix Rising

I spent the majority of my day yesterday finishing up Shine Over Mountains and got it complete, but due to light inadequacies for the final image I've put posting it off until later today.  I was able to get an hour of work in on Phoenix Rising yesterday evening and spent it building up the shadows and forms.  First, with a wash of Ultramarine Blue, then followed by a wash of Burnt Sienna.  I finished it off with washing in some Titanium White mainly in the light glare areas, but also on a few  rock edges to help define them more.  Now with things a little darker, the piece's namesake is more apparent.

Keeping with my plan, I filmed the day's work and compressed its length to make another short movie.  Unfortunately, I forgot to turn off my camera's continuous auto-focus setting, so things occasionally go out of focus for a second or two.  I will try not to repeat this mistake for future videos.