I’m not sure what happened to the palette for this painting. I think I pitched it because it was so uninteresting. This abstract is the first of my own that I’ve completed. It doesn’t cohere, but it’s a start. I used yards of painter’s tape in an effort to get the edges as clean as possible.
Well, it started as a storm cloud. Then it turned into a flying pie, and artist Wayne Thiebaud came to mind, and it turned into a killer pie. Consider this as outsider art with an in-joke, perhaps.
Another tight crop. This is a bad habit I’ve fallen into. The painting I’m working on started as an unsuccessful cloud and morphed into a floating meringue-topped pie, which reminded me of Wayne Thiebaud, whose work I dislike. Bleah! If I can successfully paint a big floating fork, I’ll finish it as a joke painting. If not, break out the gesso.
This is the least successful of my three copies of paintings so far. It’s Georgia O’Keefe’s “Church Steeple,” 1930, shown here with two palette crops. I used the dimensions of the postcard image: 3″ wide by 5.5″ tall. That was a mistake, because almost everything ended up as detail work. I need to get away from these miniaturist tendencies and try a much larger painting for a change, no matter how bad it is.
I’m calling this one “Crummy Flower Painting.” I’m still winging it, not working from an actual object or copying someone else’s work. The palette photos continue to be far superior to the actual paintings. That’s all right. I continue to enjoy painting, and it’s worthwhile so that I can photograph the palette results.
This is such a tight crop, I applied a watercolor filter to it. It seems a bit ironic to apply a watercolor filter to a photograph of acrylic paint.
And this is a copy of “The Blue Fox” (1911), by Franz Marc. Here’s another fabulous work by Marc: “Stables.” It’s at the Guggenheim in New York. I can’t even imagine how one goes about painting something so complex and gorgeous.
This is a copy of “Night blue fly” (1982) by Chinese-American artist Walasse Ting. I’m not sure where I acquired a postcard of this work. Upon looking for online images (there are some, under copyright), I was chagrined to see that I’d been holding the card upside-down. It works in both orientations, I think.
Alas, thus far I seem to have a rather lurid style. I began this painting by trying to copy a lovely, delicate watercolor by a contemporary artist named Jane Voorhees. Other than a slight similarity in the landforms, however, this painting bears no resemblance to the watercolor. The title is thanks to Nick Drake, of course, whose fame exploded a number of years ago after VW used snippets of this song in a commercial where two young couples in a convertible forgo a party to go spinning down the road in the magical moonlight. But “Pink Moon” is not about magic; it is, almost certainly, about death. Nick Drake suffered from depression; he either killed himself or overdosed on antidepressants. But even his darkest songs are beautiful. Have a listen.
Work in progress.
VAPOR AND FLOW 