Fifth Pass

Shelter in the studio

It rained and hailed all afternoon while I was painting and during the workshop call. I started playing on a new canvas (left/first), getting inspired by our group call. The painting in the right is in the process of being wrecked, and wrecked again…

It’s still raining as I write this, but it rained all day since around 11 am. I went out to the studio to start working on the series and managed to add and subtract elements of each painting, which I’ll show below. Our group call today featured a Insa as the guest speaker and have I mentioned I love her work…?

After CVP is over I’m going to go back to Insa’s teachings and focus on making paintings from those- I feel like my work improved so much when I was working by what she taught. Her way of painting is so gestural and free…I love moving paint on the board or canvas. You can see in the first painting I started above how relaxed my marks and brushstrokes are, compared to what I’ve been messing with on the right above, and in most of my series.

Not much to say before I share the progress photos on the series. I’m continually disgusted with each passing day when I catch a glimpse of the latest abominations of Pendejo and his band of bozos. I had an angry evening last night after reading some social media crap, reminds me why I stay off of it so much now.

On to the series. Today was really my fifth pass, even though I did work a little more on just a few of them in between the fourth pass and today. Here it is, the first photo I show will be the fourth pass, and the second will be the fifth pass, where they all are as of this evening, starting with my throwaway board and working from least favorite to most favorite as of today.

The arrows looked messy so I took most of them out, and I drew the black line with a brush. Not my favorite.

I didn’t like this one either so I added the stripes, but I’ll have to clarify the values on them. Not thrilled with this one either.

I’m calling this the duck. It will need a lot of glazing and layers but I think it has potential to be interesting.

It needed quieting down so I covered some of the busyness with green. I think I will do more of that next. I can’t decide if I like this one beyond the colors.

I added some marks to give it depth, and pushed others back. I need to push back those pink marks even more. I like it a little more now.

This is the one I was calling a piñata. I added size to the piñata shape and added a baseball bat shape for a stick. I like some of it but it needs work.

I thought the green areas were too saturated so I covered them with a more neutral color, and I needed some dark values near the bottom, so I added some big dark shapes, that will have to be adjusted in size. I also added some small marks and a couple of creatures to balance out the big red butterfly-like shape. This is still my favorite but it’s not done.

Just as I was finishing up this post, the sun came out. In the morning I’m getting up early and going for a hike on one of my favorite trails on the way up to Estes Park. If my friend Mel can join me, she will. I want to see if the snow has melted at 10,000 feet. I might not be able to go as far as I want to because the thunderstorms are starting early, I’ll want to be off the trail no later than noon.

Have a good night, everyone. Thanks for reading.