Halloween Special Edition

Bat Boy on the Loose!

BOO! 

Sorry to scare you like that.  A couple weeks back, in Salon deWinchester we all painted the theme "something scary".  I think the original discussion was "the thing that scares you the most".

But I said to myself, no way am I deliberately going to give myself the willies all morning painting a spider.  And I've already painted David Koch and Dick Cheney  (refer to My Gallery, in the Faces of Evil series).  Talk about a gruesome twosome.

Then, I remembered an iconic image...  scary while concurrently amusing.  Many times did I see this image looking back at me while I stood in the checkout line at the supermarket.

You have to give credit to the now defunct Weekly World News...  it takes some effort to make the National Enquirer look cerebral.

Anyhoo, without further ado may I present — perhaps for the very first time in living-dead color — our beloved impish friend Bat Boy.  Happy Halloween!

Palette versus Palette 2012-W43

I begin by observing that today's title got me to reminiscing about the awesome "Spy vs Spy" cartoons.  So take a moment for your mind to drift away on that topic if you like, and then come on back...  What palettes I aim to contrast today are the tangible paint-holder object with the abstract limited array of pigments from which one constructs a painting.

Last week I wrote about the absorbing task of rearranging and revising my palette of four dozen pigments.  Or paints, if you prefer.  Very occasionally I will dip my brush all over the [tangible] palette while making one painting.  The Autumn Bucolic (below or in My Gallery) is an example:  I used many analogous paints along the gold-orange-red-maroon section.  But more typically, I restrict my [abstract] palette to three, maybe five pigments for a painting.   

Rollin' the Hay only uses gold, blue, and purple.  You can see the blue and gold, but most people could guess green (wrong) and probably never think of purple.  So why restrict the [abstract] palette?  Harmony.  When hues arise from a limited selection of pigments, they will harmonize— lively browns made out of gold + purple, and greens from blue + those golds & browns.  By proceeding thusly, the viewing eye is not jarred by off-tones from additional pigments.  Harmony reigns and tranquility ensues.  There is a lesson here.

In life, we feel pressured to accomplish much.  We deal with the urgent and we strive to address what is important.  The rest gets whatever attention is left.  Some people like to brag that they are great multitaskers.  Wrong!  Science has discovered there is no such thing.  Much better results come when you focus your brain on one thing, do it well, and move on to the next.  This philosophy parallels the palettes.

Li'l Plumeria

First, from all the things you could do in your lifetime (i.e. every paint made), select
a number that you should or could reasonably do in the next few days.  This is your [tangible] palette of short-term tasks from which you will pick a few for today.

Start and finish one.  Move on.  Or perhaps start one (e.g. laundry) that features long interludes between action and fill those gaps meaningfully.  Technically multitasking, but punctuated by predictable interruptions.

"Plan your Work, and Work your Plan!" as one of my bosses used to say.  Pretty corny but...  when you thereby limit the [abstract] palette of your day, you enjoy harmony along the way and tranquility when you later reflect on all you accomplished.

And please enjoy this week's miniature painting from a tiny birthday card.

The Godly Palette 2012-W42

My studio palette has been without yellow for some time now, forcing a handful of auxillary palettes into rotation.  Frankly, blue, green, and magenta were about empty too.  So why did I let them run down?  I was reluctant to refill wells because I had known this day was coming.  No choice but to grit my teeth and slog through a Big Palette Makeover.

A couple slots are doubled up, so roughly three dozen paints in this dirty palette's 34 wells.  The physical work of cleaning out wells is a little messy but fairly mindless.  Even as I type this, I have paint-dirt under a couple of fingernails from the red family while others sport a green or blue.  Hard to tell in this light.  I'm past the midpoint on cleaning and refilling, which must mean I'm halfway next to Godliness.  But there is an hour or more of cleaning yet to be done.  While you savor today's painting, you can be partly entertained by knowing I designed it to empty out a couple paint wells.

Cleaning is easy breezy next to the grueling slog of revising the paint selections.  It is like American Paint Idol but without an English smart-ass to entertain you.  Who will win?  With a half-dozen major manufacturers and a couple hundred pigments, there are easily 1,000 choices that could be evaluated.  So I did my research —and made some selections —and gave myself things to investigate further —and mulled and tinkered around with how to lay the paints out on the palette under the new regime.  Enough already!

Right now it seems like I will cull about 1/3 of my palette, shift around another 1/3, and double up on a few more wells (plus keep a couple paints handy in tubes or pans), making for a net gain of a dozen pigments in my studio palette.  Perhaps now the "triads" and "auxillary" and "tester" and "plein air" palettes can spend more time in the cabinet where they belong.

Upon reflection, it occurs to me that the last time I undertook a palette makeover was during the 2008 election frenzy.  I'm not sure which is more hateful...  enduring the non-stop political yak or performing the tedious duties of researching pigments and cleaning that dirty palette.  But I'm glad both only happen once every four years.  My name is David and I approve that thought.

Maples Lakeside

Mister Toad's Wild Ride 2012-W41

When I was a young boy, we lived tantalizing close to Disneyland — where, once the Tea Cup ride became boring one could move up to the slightly more thrilling Wild Ride of Mister Toad.  (Nowhere near as exciting as riding passenger during my late night speeds through lower Wacker Drive.  But I digress.)

Taking a similarly tame sort of "wild ride", I and my fellow member-artists in the Salon deWinchester have kept together for two years running as of today, and with excellent prospects for more "salonniversaries" as we like to call them.  And I think such togetherness of purpose over time is a pretty solid achievement.  Compare Salon to a book club:  less book-related conversation, somewhat less food, no liquor, but many more meetings to arrange and attend.  There's the hard part when you get right down to it.  Congratulations pending but first...

In the same vein of commitment, our Salon deWinchester blog posted its 100th installment today, with a posting every week since Saturday, January 1, 2011.  Now, going forward, the Salon blog will appear when Salon meets whereas the Painterly Thoughts blog takes over as the weekly blog.  I hope you will continue to patronize both blogs and perhaps check out some of the other links featured in the Awesome Links list.

Below is my Salon painting from today.  And with that said, on with the congratulations! to Eileen, Marge, Jacquelinia, Molly, Glen, Steve, our Guest Artists (and me), for two years of art and fun and fellowship at the Salon deWinchester.  Here's to many more!

The Autumn Bucolic

Fear of Art, episode one 2012-W40

More precisely, fear of making art.  Many if not most artists at times struggle with the question "what next"?  Or possibly, "which next"?  Famine or feast; too many ideas or none at all.  I like to do series of paintings, whether thematic or in a particular genre, so my problem is normally "which" not "what".

Lately, which portrait?  But however, I feel I'm at a point where I should stop doing portraits for a while.  Maybe change genres to work on some landscapes.  Is that feeling down to the influence of Autumn's spectacular array of fleeting color?  Or merely a diversion?  Another way to avoid the vague and scary prospect of wading into non-representational art.  Could be a little of both.

While I sort through that, I have a few pent up landscapes in my "which" pile, including a pastel over watercolor effort I started in March of 2011.  Egad.  I'll target that one for the first "independent" Painterly Thoughts blog on October 27th — by which time the Salon deWinchester blog postings will have become occasional.

Meanwhile, here is the landscape I made in Salon today while having fun with friends.  Enjoy!

Rollin' the Hay