Snow Day: Painting Dragonflies
This is from a photo I took a few months ago. My colors aren’t true but the values are good. Unless “values” is the wrong word.
16″ x 20″
My favorite ex-bass student and one of my favorite people once gave me a hemp dragonfly necklace that I really liked. And ultimately broke/lost.
Dragonflies symbolize seeing through illusion to truth.
Dragonflies, if you are the size of a mouse, can act as an outboard motor for your leaf boat, a la “The Rescuers”.
Given that I’ve been cloistered within the confines of my apartment for days, I figured I needed to attempt to be constructive. Been working on music and getting up to speed on Cakewalk’s Sonar 8.5 Producer. Oh man. Powerful mojo but that’s another blog.
On the way home from work Friday I bought art supplies: easel, better painting knife, 2″ blending brush, a few canvases, more paint. And I realized that I don’t have to be in a painting class to paint, although I do miss having other people in the room with me. Kind of got used to that.
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Tags: art, painting
Ring My Bell
Screw calories. It’s that kind of day. Pumpkin spice latte and pumpkin bread. I can feel the endorphines.
It is the gustatory pleasure to tomorrow’s workout pain.
Rain rain on my face
It hasn’t stopped
Raining for days
My world is a flood
Slowly I become
One with the mud
Arlingtonian Women
That sounds like a Ken Burns documentary. Camera slowly pans around yellowed-with-age black and white photo of women on their way to the gym in scanty workout clothes despite the sub-freezing temperatures. Continue reading ‘Ring My Bell’
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Oof. Look at those colors.
I was supposed to make the highlights warmer and the shadows cooler. I was instructed to mix colors on the palette before putting any paint on the canvas. It made a big difference.
I’ve been thinking about color mixing all week. Bought the Pantone app for the iPhone. Very cool.
And I bought this book, which I find fascinating for some reason. The section about mixing complementary colors to achieve more realistic and life-like gray tones was very helpful.
My yellow was too tinted, though. Tinted? Is that the right word? The yellow wasn’t intense enough because I added too much white. Oh well.
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Tags: art, painting, youtube
Torpedo Factory #3: Colors
I should have known that this was going to be harder than I thought it would be.
The lightest value is the red thing with the warm spotlight on it. You’ll notice in my painting — I was in a hurry and obsessed with the darn cloth — that the ceramic bowl is the lightest thing. In theory, the lightest thing in this painting should be the red thing. That’s what made this so difficult. The darkest object in this painting is the white ceramic bowl. Oy.
In order for the top of the red cube to have the lightest value, though, some decisions have to be made. How are you going to make it the lightest? We were instructed to let cadmium red straight out of the tube be the lightest, which meant that everything else has to be lowered in value.
And thus, my butt was kicked once again. If I would have had more time — say, 4 hours instead of 3 — I could have really pulled things together and got the cloth color more accurate and brought down that bowl a bit. Lots of interesting reflections, shadows, highlights and backlight to to capture that I just glossed over.
Paint! For you. Is good!
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Tags: art, painting
Oh! Did I mention that the company I work for was bought the other week? Apparently I’m now an employee of one of the biggest defense contractors in existence. Every time I try to join a small company for all of the small company perks it gets bought by a big corporation.
Huh. Interesting.
I have suddenly become a fan of hummus. It’s going to be my all-purpose spread and dip. Kalamata olives aren’t bad either. A little salty but good.
Even guys with two left feet
Come out okay if the girl is sweet
If by chance their cheeks should meet while dancing
Proving that the best things happen while you dance
Debt free in 2010 Continue reading ‘LGN 11: And other themes for 2010′
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Tags: diet, health, LGN
Torpedo Factory 2: Black & White
More color value work today. White hexagon thing with paper against black or charcoal gray cloth. My cloth doesn’t seem black. Hmm. Here’s a quote from a handout:
“Under ordinary conditions pure white paint is about fifty times brighter than black paint, but light-colored objects in sunshine are often several hundred times brighter than deep shadows. Of course the specular reflection of sun on water or on polished objects is still brighter. All that the painter can do in representing nature’s intervals of light and shadow is to make his intervals between the narrower range of black and white, proportionate to nature’s greater steps between the illumination of sunlight and the gloom of shadow.”
-Walter Sargent
The thing about this painting is that the highlights on the black cloth are lighter in value than the shadow on the white plaster geometric shape thingy. My black cloth isn’t dark enough. If I didn’t tell you what color it was you probably wouldn’t have guessed. But overall I managed to capture a range of values.
Still, you should see some of the other people’s paintings. Good grief. Next time I’m cheating.
And here’s another quote for you: “The camera on the iPhone 3G sucks ____.”
Thus spake Zarathustra.
Uh, anyhow. Next week we’re going to be using colors in our Color class.
I know you’re thinking about painting. I know you’ve got some around and you’ve been meaning to do it or meaning to more of it or to take a class. Do it. Then take a picture and let’s compare notes.
Get your pigments on.
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Tags: art, painting
Torpedo Factory
Shimay, take me away.
Ladies and gentlemen, I got my butt handed to me today in the first class of the “Color: Achieve What You Envision” class at the Torpedo Factory.
I haven’t painted since, like, I don’t know when. Last time I tried was with alkyds and that was a mess. I wish they would have mentioned that buying everything on the supplies list is expensive. $350 for art supplies. I was told that’s a good deal but it’s been a long time since I purchased art supplies en masse.
First, we had to paint a still life. White bowls on white cloth in front of black cloth with a bright red cloth accent, BUT we had to paint it using only raw sienna and burnt umber. In other words, brown and dark brown. Then we had to paint the same still life using only white and raw sienna.
I started to get a feel for it on the second one. Then again, white and raw sienna is much easier to deal with than the raw sienna and burnt umber. Apparently, burnt umber is a translucent color, just to make things more interesting. It’s dark but you really have to lay it down for it to take hold. Good grief.
Everyone else — it’s a small class — seems to know what they’re doing. I’m wingin’ it. I was stressing for a while there. Like, maybe I missed a prerequisite. Which, apparently, I did.
The Lesson Continue reading ‘Torpedo Factory’
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Tags: art
Molcajete & The Temptations
Here’s a story about a bowl.
Molcajete
I’ve got this mortar and pestle type thing. The molcajete and tejolote. Volcanic stone. Tough as hell. Heavy as hell. It’s one of those things that feels substantial. It feels indestructible. Something you could pass from generation to generation and it would get better with age. It’s the kind of thing that becomes indispensable. Archetypal, even. Stoneware.
So here it is. All stoic, rugged, tactile stone. And somehow — don’t ask me how — I managed to let it come to harm. There’s a big crack in it. A big, jagged crack. Heartbreaking. It’s still in one piece but you know it’s the kind of thing where it just won’t be the same. It’s going to be a mess now. No more guacamole for you!
What do you do? I could throw it out but that seems like a waste. I could just put it away somewhere but what’s the point of that. So I figure that maybe I can re-purpose it. Put another bowl or container inside it and use it as a plant pot maybe.
Take something broken and use it to grow something new. Give it a new life. That’s downright poetic. I think I like it.
Super Hero Fetish Continue reading ‘Molcajete & The Temptations’
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Tags: lyrics, music
Social Isms 4 = LGN 10
I’ve had the iPhone music on shuffle for the past day or two. Some good stuff on there and some things popping up that I didn’t realize that I miss. One of them that I used to listen to nearly constantly is Kurt Elling’s “Ballad of the Sad Young Men”. Poignant is an understatement.
There’ s so much music out there. There’s feel-good music, dance music, toe tapping or head nodding, slow dancing, thrashing. Something for every mood, y’know. And then there’s a song for every experience, emotion, stage or phase. Amazing.
Anywho, without further ado (in my head) here’s Mr. Kurt Elling performing “Ballad of the Sad Young Men“.
Sing a song of sad young men
Glasses full of rye
LGN 10
Continue reading ‘Social Isms 4 = LGN 10′
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Tags: LGN, lyrics, music
I haven’t had any egg nog this year. I’m not sure what to think of that.
Mambo number five!!!
A little bit of Monika in my life
A little bit of Erica by my side
A little bit of Rita is all I need
A little bit of Tina is what I see
A little bit of Sandra in the sun
A little bit of Mary all night long
A little bit of Jessica here I am
A little bit of you makes me your man
On the Prowl
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