Hey, let me drunkenly animate your photos in about 25 to 60 days!

https://i.imgur.com/27by4Nq.png
https://i.imgur.com/Fd40nOq.jpg

i've been doing nothing but figure drawing/paintings the last few months, but did something more abstract tonight on my own, with no reference.
i'm not sure if anything meaningful comes through but i can feel a change in how i see things, compared to a relatively recent time, and in a year or two or five of really despondent times it feels like a bright spot that if nothing else, when i try, i see things differently now

https://i.imgur.com/zNE94nF.jpg

love that plant, something about the lines make it very action packed

thanks corrs! i did that one at my friend's house - she has a wonderful sun room and lots of beautiful plants. my place, in contrast, is very dark and has zero living organisms other than me, my dog, and whatever tiny invisible creatures are crawling around the surfaces.

in the year 2023 i resolve to paint more plants

year 2023, more plants!

https://i.imgur.com/uB8pZIk.jpg

love it!

how big is it?

yeah, that's gorgeous

thanks! it's 11"x14"

one of my favorite things about this workshop i'm taking is the range of ages and experience among our smallish group. there's a young college oil painter who is very skilled, and his mother, who is just a phenomenal watercolorist (and amazing at charcoal as well). there's me, i'm hanging in there. a few others. then there's an 18-year-old who is talented and applying/getting accepted into some well known undergrad art programs, but is also extreeeeemely opinionated, and usually in the negative direction.

that is the context for my favorite quote from today, which was "I hate Mark Rothko", me: "whoa, really? I love Rothko", them: "Rothko is so...passé"

:-o

lol classic 18 year old stuff

there was also the usual "duchamp sucks" thing, but that was the whole room. i am always willing to stand up for Fountain. but total dismissal of a readymade is to be expected, especially among people who are really into figurative art.

they didn't realize he painted nude descending a staircase, though. people seem to be more forgiving of shenanigans if you can paint something cool first

i remember when i could get angry about art

xp Étant Donnés often startles Duchamp skeptics too.

first oil painting in forever (a few months)

https://i.imgur.com/cIyTM7r.jpg

i'd really like to try a figure painting (of a person) in oil, using some of what i've learned recently, but it's tough because i'd have to do it from a photo

it felt satisfying to finish this one though, because i painted on top of an extremely bad figure painting i did last year at this time. i hope to keep improving, but it felt good to literally paint over something that was disappointing!

xp Étant Donnés often startles Duchamp skeptics too.

i'm not sure i've seen that before, thanks! and also, i'm not sure i've seen a composition that is blocked in that way before, so completely black with the bricks...it really does make you feel like you're peeking out of a dwelling dug into the side of a hill, hobbit style

baller painting, that

thank you! i've gotten some good feedback on this one and it was heartening because i was afraid that it was in an uncanny valley between realism and abstraction. not that it resembles any of his work, but i recently picked up a big book of matisse paintings (the '92 moma retrospective book) and was really enjoying all of interiors which featured paintings within paintings. The Red Studio is better known, but i really like The Pink Studio as well

uncanny valley between realism and abstraction

haha, thanks! glad it strikes the right balance for you. there's also the balance between what is more or less 'finished" and what is quickly sketched. i guess those two things map are highly related to realism and abstraction, except that every once in a while a very sketchy flick of the brush creates something that reads as more realistic, while another part that comes off as an abstraction of what should be there takes a bunch of work and color adjusting. it is very confusing and, for me, easy to land in a weird space! haha. ok, time for bed lol

love those colors on the wall to the right, around the lamp

i learned how to do monotypes this weekend! probably a familiar term to most people reading this, but to me it was new. in short, it just means taking a painting that is still wet and pressing it against a dampened piece of paper to transfer the painting. "mono" in this case refers to it only being possible to make one unique print - as you can imagine, after smooshing two pieces of paper together, the original painting is altered and so it wouldn't look the same if you made a second monotype out of it. (if you do make additional monotypes, those are called "ghost prints".) it's also one-of-a-kind/unique in that the transfer of the paint or ink from one surface to another with this method is inherently unpredictable, since it depends on the thickness of the paint, how wet the original painting surface is, how damp the target surface, how you press the two surfaces together, stuff like that.

i wish i would have taken more photos of my original paintings, because after you make a monotype the original is forever altered. but here is one that worked out ok:

https://i.imgur.com/xeutK1u.jpg

and here's what the monotype looked like:

https://i.imgur.com/K8GqRKD.jpg

there was also another version (i didn't take a photo of the original) that produced a very uneven transfer, and i ended up liking that result the best of all:

https://i.imgur.com/oITuC68.png

er oops, the second image was supposed to be this

https://i.imgur.com/g4epoqk.jpg

most confusing post ever, sorry. all of this was with gouache on a fiberglass plate. lemme know if you're reading this and have tried other materials (like ink) or other methods!

interesting!

fun, quick, and a bit experimental too! I’m going to pick up a couple pieces of fiberglass next time I’m at the art store so I can make some at home. I like the dada aspect of having to destroy the original as part of the process

https://i.imgur.com/67rT0BP.jpg

added the figure in later on copying this https://www.famsf.org/artworks/seated-girl-ii-bather

did not mean to make baseball reference

https://i.imgur.com/MwLJyvv.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/DaKoX4j.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ZA0YgD4.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/nBcprIs.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ToaBaLJ.jpg

changed the face for the millionth time

https://i.imgur.com/bV18W1K.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/yxiSRYu.jpg

i have been trying and failing to "zoom in" more on figures rather than always getting the whole body. i accidentally did it with this one this morning, but only because the legs and feet and the bottom half in general were all so terrible that it immensely improved the composition as a whole to tear it off completely. what was left was "zoomed in".

*logrolls to finish line*

not sure I understand the zoom process but that is a great frame

oops, sorry corrs, didn't see that! by "zooming" i guess i just mean is that when you're painting from life you have to choose what's going to fit into the canvas. from the same perspective, you could paint an entire person from head to toe, with space all around them, or you could choose to paint only their torso and shoulders (or their face, or whatever).

i started with some charcoal today. the oil pastels are quick and fun but i feel like they are hard to mix so you just end up with the product palette instead of your own.

https://i.imgur.com/25hx4EK.png

these were meant to be dancers but i may have accidentally made a dunker! dancer slams it home. i like what charcoal does but the physical sensation of putting it on is very similar to chalk on a chalkboard.

https://i.imgur.com/vPDgGJH.png

https://i.imgur.com/pEFTDzP.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/SbKjSrG.jpg

wauw, great sunset vibes

thank you corrs! i wasn't thinking about it at the time but i have been looking at a lot of David Park paintings, maybe that is kind of filtering through

https://i.imgur.com/D6tMv8X.jpg

in tribute to my friend's new puppy walter

https://i.imgur.com/2jLzp10.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/2jLzp10.jpg

damn boy you are getting skilled as fuk

<3 aw, thank you cat. i'll show you something funny though. i reworked it a bit

https://i.imgur.com/1QT1s7c.jpg

and then realized how badly i had fucked up the arms of the chair. so i'm going to rework it again upsidedownsmileyface

https://i.imgur.com/qK3RXY6.jpg

i feel like i can undermine it all with the word pizza!

did someone order a deepdish pepperoni with cheese .jpg

kept going and glad i did

https://i.imgur.com/lQ1P9ci.jpg

yep yep yep

https://i.imgur.com/zlRoZod.jpg

still more to go on this one but it's looking better than the version that's been in my living room the last few months

https://i.imgur.com/CQo0HU2.jpg