More Rain, More Paint!

Iris studies and the series, second pass

Second pass, workshop series. Five panels plus the throwaway board (pictured last). Today I simply painted some shapes and scratched some marks into the boards. Nothing serious yet, just playing. The next pass or two will reveal where each is going. I’m looking for the best one to see what is working there so I can bring the others up to the same level.

It rained again today! I am loving this rain. It reminds me of the way summers used to be in Colorado, with the daily afternoon thunderstorm. I love that it’s overcast and the sun only peeks out for a short time every so often. I love not having to water the garden and flowers, too.

I spent much of the day in the studio, I worked on my series boards (above] during the workshop group call. We had a fascinating speaker, an artist in her 80s who is into all kinds of creative pursuits. She showed us the progression of some of her work that spans decades.

On the series, I didn’t feel like getting into it too much so I just added some shapes and scrapings. I’m just trying to see what I like in these early passes. After this I will work on bringing them all into focus, to make more sense of them, and to clarify the values. I think the first two boards pictured are the best ones so far, but that could change.

I was mostly excited about a little breakthrough I had this morning while working on the notan and studies for the pink irises I saw on a run last week. As soon as I worked through these, I got excited about starting a painting based on them, and I grabbed a medium sized canvas, 18 x 24, and took it out to the studio. I did a sort of alla prima version of it on the canvas, I painted for about an hour and then I figured I should stop, put an isolation coat on it, and wait a few days to come back and do layers of glaze and to clarify the values. Here is the progression that took me two hours:

Notan and upside down light study, quick abstract version on paper with leftover paint, and the one hour of painting on the canvas that followed the studies.

The breakthrough was about seeing the shapes that I could turn into an abstract version. The middle photo above. I don’t know why I’ve had such a hard time painting loosely and gesturally with the landscape and floral paintings lately, but today it worked. When I come back to it I need to clarify the values- too much midvalue gray. Some of the background can be glazed to be lighter.

I made a little progress on some of the other paintings in progress. Including the series, I have 20 paintings in various stages of completion now. Most of them are small. I’m looking forward to stretching my arms out into some larger sized canvas to start preparing for the Avon (Vail) show.

A colorful one with big shapes, it needs a lot of work, but I’m having fun with the floral aspects of it, Gypsy the supervisor sleeping on the job, and a very early in the process painting with a bunch of white paint covering up previous marks. Not very exciting, I know, but this is the process.

Tomorrow morning I will be running with my friend Mel and then I have a Zoom call with my artist friend in Oregon to paint together and discuss each other’s work. I’ll see how my motivation is, I think I need to get away from the series for a day to let it soak in. Plenty of other things to work on. It’s supposed to continue being rainy and cool the rest of the week, until Saturday.

On the National Chaos front, more incompetence and no surprises. Just more outrageous and unethical behavior from the demented Orange Pendejo. I saw a hilarious post on Threads today calling Karoline Leavitt “Taco Belle”. Gotta take the humor whenever you can get it. Joe Walsh joined the Democratic Party. Did hell freeze?

More good news, Ukraine blew up a bridge in Crimea, and I hope they keep up these attacks one after another. I never thought I’d be cheering on a war like it’s a sporting event, but I want to see Putin put in his place. The best place for him would be Siberia, but outdoors. And preferably about six feet into the permafrost. Maybe if they drop him out the window of a tall enough building…I have run out of any humanity to extend to these horrible human-looking creatures.

I feel like all the mistakes and incompetence will be catching up to the Pendejo administration soon. There seems to a be a murmur, hard to hear but if you listen closely, there is a growing recognition of something being very wrong in Washington, even among those people who don’t think much about it. I hope to see record numbers for the June 14th event. Ruin the North Korea style parade. Maybe Taco Belle will sponsor it.

That’s all I have for now. Have a peaceful mid-week, as much as possible. Thanks for reading.