Homage to Surf and Turf / with close ups

That was fun and I think it worked out. I’ll try another pointillist painting next year.

If you eat enough crabs you find a claw gripping a leg sometimes. PETA would tell you this is why not to eat crabs. They think their death is a violent struggle. It’s not. When the crab hits the boiling water it’s dead instantly and cooking. They jump and snap their claws but that’s a reflex. When you cut the head off a chicken it can still run. Could the chicken be alive without a head? I don’t think so. The same thing with a snake. They keep moving without a head. The crab has similar nerves but if it got out of the pot and back into the bay it would be dead in the bay.

The legs come off easy in nature. When a predator tries to catch a crab the leg comes off and the crab doesn’t die. It escapes from the predator and grows a new leg! Some sea critters can direct stem cells in their bodies to replace a lost limb. Scientists are trying to learn how they do it so humans can grow new limbs or organs or what they need to live longer.

I had to buy more crabs so I could mix the right colors. I like the colors of nature and try to match them most of the time. When I started dotting this crab I had one on the table as a model and I noticed that my sketch in the underpainting stage wasn’t finished. The crab has a face from this perspective and I dotted it in. He looks happy. The crab mouth isn’t a horizontal slit. It’s more like two vertical slits from what I could see feeding ghost crabs last year.

This is a focal point on the far right, a black dot close to white dots.

This is another reason I’m glad I didn’t skip the color rough stage. When I did the rough I wasn’t sure about how to paint the table top. Checked tablecloth or no checks? And where to draw the edge of the table so one crab can be falling off. I didn’t do the checks and the painting doesn’t need them. I lowered the edge of the table and now I like the way that one leg breaks the line.

The subject falling off the edge of the table is an old master trick to make the art viewer want to be in the picture. You want to push it back from the edge. The masters often had fabric or plates or grapes or something going off the edge. It also represents “we all fall down”.

I wasn’t originally planning to have the horse step on the crabs but when I drew it on the canvas with charcoal I made corrections on the sketch and the hoof was on the crabs. I decided not to redraw it, just let it be.

The horse was really hard to do. It’s a view where you see down onto the horse’s back which foreshortens the neck and legs. Also the right front hoof is closer to you than the right rear hoof. Since you’re looking at it on an angle instead of directly from the side the body is slightly foreshortened. I drew it and redrew it so many times all freehand. I knew if I kept at it I’d get something close to visually realistic. This was good drawing practice.

I leave you with some flowers.

flowers in the background of my still life

This is a close up shot.

I’m almost finished with the painting! All I have to do now is the horse today or tomorrow!

The plant died weeks ago. They don’t live long in my apartment. Lucky I did that color rough when I saw it wouldn’t last because I needed it yesterday to mix the colors and arrange them.

A closer close up

pointillist painting debriefing

close up of finished crabs with horse hooves showing on the top left that are still in the underpainting stage

I took this photo in my dining room light so the colors are a little too warm. I’m excited because one more difficult step is done and I’m almost finished with the painting. The crabs, they kind of sparkle or shimmer to my naked eye. I’m not sure the effect is working on the computer screen.

This project has taken me months with all the sketches I did and all the planning. A few hours at a time and not every day is how I’m getting it done. The flowers and horse are still in the underpainting stage and will need two coats of dots because the background plant and the crabs needed two coats, The horse looks like the most difficult part and I’ll probably do it last.

The reason the crabs are shimmering is because tiny dots of the underpainting are showing through. The underpainting for the crabs was in cool grays and the dots on the crabs are warm orange and red, so the complimentary tints are close to the same value but opposite causing the shimmery look.

The shimmer is a thing I like about pointillism so I’m excited because I think all the hard work I put into it is going to pay off.

Some unplanned things happened with this. I’ll show more close ups with some weird happenings when it’s all done.

pointillist painting progress report and plan

close up photo with horse hoof still showing up in the underpainting stage on top

I got a start on my 5 crabs and 1 crab claw. I’ll have to go over the crabs again when this dries. You can see a lot of the underpainting gray showing through the dots. If I fill that in with more dots the crabs will be brighter and more solid looking. It took hours to dot the first crab colors but the second layer of paint will be a little faster and easier.

On Oct. 1 I’m leaving for my vacation in Maine. I’m counting down the days. Art camp is Oct. 6 to the 13th. I’m driving so I think I’ll get to Acadia on the 3rd and I’ll have a couple days to scout for the best locations to paint and maybe get a sketch. One week isn’t much time for me to do a painting since I go through a slow process ( I won’t try to do pointillism ) but I got 2 paintings done at the Ghost Ranch in one week and if I don’t finish a painting in 1 week I can stay a few extra nights in Bar Harbor if I want to. There’s no reason I’d have to rush home.

The thing I really like about art camp is that they advertise it as “no drama” which means no pressure, no contest, no judgement, etc. All the Plein air painters there will be knocking out a painting every day, some will be doing more than 2 a day. But I’m free to do whatever I want to and I won’t hear anything about it if I don’t put my painting up for display every night. Because I don’t really want to paint like that.

Also, the food will be great if the Ghost Ranch was any indication of future food plans. I’m a big fan of Eric for putting these great art vacations together, I’ve wanted to go to Acadia for 20 years. 20 years ago I entered an art show in Kennebunkport and got accepted so I shipped my painting and my daughter went with me to the opening. Acadia is North of Kennebunkport but I wanted to see more of Maine and when we got to Acadia it was cold. It was warm in VA. and she didn’t bring her coat so we just drove around the loop but didn’t hike.

Phone reception and internet access might be spotty up there but I’ll take my camera and lap top so I can do a blog post from art camp if possible. And I hope I can finish this still life before I go.

pointillist painting update

OMG!! This is fun!

I’m so excited about my pearly shadows! It’s not even boring painting dots! I could do it for hours! I’d call it a zen way to paint, but I don’t know if a real zen person would agree.

The way to make pearly shadows is to use warm gray next to cool gray. The art viewer’s eye will mix the dots for you and you get a lively gray not a dead gray. This is an old trick that a lot of artists know in theory but they don’t like gray so they don’t do it.

In this photo you can see the leg of the horse on the left and the crab in shadow on the right both still in the underpainting stage, and the flower stem crossing over the crab.

I made a lot of progress on the painting but I want to work on the green leaves and stems more. So far I’m doing the background, table top and flower, all cool colors on top of warm underpainting colors. I haven’t started on the crab colors or the horse or the flowers. I might have to wait for this to dry a little so I don’t smear it.

This is how I prepare the paint for dotting. Mix terpenoid in a little at a time with the palette knife until it’s smooth and soft then pick up a blob with the palette knife and mix more terpenoid into the paint with a paintbrush. Be careful not to have a blob of paint on the bottom of the palette knife because it might drip onto the painting causing a bad blip. With a good brush and runny paint you can get 20 or more dots if the paint is flowing off the brush nicely, without going back to reload the brush with paint. I’m using #3 round brushes. I’ve seen pointillist paintings with smaller dots but I think this is working.

If you hold the brush in one hand and the palette knife in the other hand you don’t have to keep reaching back to the palette for more paint. It’s a slow process but less wasted movement is a little more efficient over the course of the painting.

underpainting for Homage to Surf and Turf

This will be my new pointillism experiment. I wish I knew how the pointillism masters did it because I like the visual effect. It’s kind of a color experiment. I tried to do a dot painting before and I’m still trying to figure out what works best. Do they draw an outline on a white canvas and start dotting on white or do they do and underpainting? I did the underpainting because this is complicated. I’m guessing Seurat did an underpainting.

My underpainting is in warm and cool gray. The areas showing up in warm gray will be dotted on top with cool colors and the crabs, horse and flowers will be warm colors so they are the blue gray in the underpainting. The underpainting colors might show through or even if they don’t show they will have some effect on the finished dot colors.

Some times I try a color experiment using complimentary colors in the underpainting and I don’t always like the finished look. These crabs, if I used green that is the compliment of red, or blue is the compliment of orange, the two main colors in the crab being shades of red and orange, the color contrast would be very strong. In fact it might look psychedelic which is not my favorite look in a painting. So this time I used grays instead of pure blue or green for this part. I hope you can see what I’m trying to do, make color contrast but not so contrasty that it looks psychedelic.

This is a big painting for dotting all over it. What if I have to go over it twice?! OH NO!! hahaha Then what if it looks stupid finished?! OH H-LL NO!! It could happen. That’s how it is with art experiments. I’ll give it my best shot but it could take a couple more weeks so don’t worry, I’ll post it and let you decide, either way.

pointillism experiment finished

The artist that invented pointillism, Seurat, had his color theory down to a science. I wish I knew how he did it but I see so many variations of pointillism I guess most artists put their own spin on it.

close up

Last week when I got to Back Bay the clouds were so pretty I couldn’t resist trying to paint them. It was windy and the clouds were moving fast. I got some general shapes dotted in for the cloud shadows and when I wanted to puff them up with more volume they were all different so I decided to wing it when I got home.

I can’t tell if this experiment is working or not. If it’s not, and you can tell me how to improve next time, please don’t be afraid to advise me. I’m not sensitive about a critique and I don’t feel emotionally attached to my paintings, so my feelings don’t get hurt easily if it’s a flop.

cloud close up

The thing about painting at home is there are too many distractions here. When I go out to paint in plein air I’m leaving everything behind and concentrating on the drawing and painting. It might seem like people out in public would be a worse distraction but the people don’t bug me. I like when someone is interested in what I’m doing. Most of the time I’m alone out there except for walkers passing through.

zen painting experience

water in the bay

You know that funny feeling when you walk out on a wooden pier and you can see down between the boards and the water is moving under your feet? That happened to me yesterday at Back Bay.

There was a nice breeze and the water was moving pretty fast and so were the clouds. It made me feel a little dizzy but I’m a landlubber. I got used to the movement. It was beautiful out there, sunny windy and not too hot. I hung around for hours dotting my pointillist painting and mixing colors so I could continue dotting at home.

Some people were there but not too many, which I was glad for because dotting paint would look weird to the average tourist and I didn’t feel like explaining that I’m trying to do a pointillist painting.

I enjoyed the experience even more than my ordinary plein air experiences, and that feeling stayed with me for the rest of the day. It was real zen.

painting experiments with oils in progress

There are two experiments happening here, pointillism and masking fluid on oil paint.

I can’t find much technical advice on pointillism, like did the pointillists do an underpainting? Did they mix colors or use paint straight out of the tube? Are the dots supposed to touch, overlap or should there be space between all the dots? I’m going to have to guess. I know the rules of the academy. If I knew the rules of pointillism I’d try to stick to them for the learning process. Maybe there are no rules.

There’s an app for making dots if you like to do digital paintings, but I’m not into apps and it might be better for me to just wing it so I can improve my painting skill.

In this close up you can see the masking fluid dots which are covered by ultramarine blue.

I want to save some bright orange dots to represent shiny reflections of the sky on the water. It would be easier to have bright orange dots showing ( if this works) than if I paint the orange on top of the water when I’m finished with painting the water dots because the orange is a transparent color and if I want to put orange on top of blue and gray dots I’d have to underpaint them with white like I did with my azaleas, which are a transparent pink. I need to put water colored gray dots on top of the blue and that will make a thicker layer of paint on top of the masking fluid and also take over a week to dry before I can try to take the masking fluid off the painting to show the orange dots. It might not work out or it might work. Either way, I’ll post the results.

This is a color experiment in more than one way. I under painted my paper with orange because it’s the complimentary color of blue. The sky isn’t really blue but kind of hazy when I go to Back Bay lately. And the water isn’t really blue but kind of a mixture of two different grays.

You can see the underpainting of the foliage on the opposite shore. I did it with a red gray because it’s mainly a greenish gray and the red gray would be the complimentary color.

This was a real no no at the academy, tinting the painting with an unnatural color to start. They would call this “forcing color”. It might take away any depth and the academy was into creating the illusion of depth. Modern art doesn’t care about aerial perspective which is the illusion of depth. Pointillists were modern.

I often see a landscape with a bright tint showing that isn’t there in nature. Some artists like violet or red and will tint their canvas with a bright color because the landscape around here doesn’t have any bright colors and the artist doesn’t like to paint mostly grays. You can see spots of violet or red or some color showing through between brush strokes. It’s a modern look and it does take away any aerial perspective. When I see a bright tint showing through I say to myself, “forced color is weak.” Now I’m doing it.

This is 18 x 12. Dotting the whole paper will take some time. That’s ok. Patience is my super power! hahahah

Mums / a pointillism experiment / oil paint

Pointillism is a scientific style of painting. I never saw a class offered on it but I wanted to try. I read a few articles and they don’t give much information so I had to make my best guess. I’ll give you my questions and if I got it wrong please tell me.

The first thing I could get from my research was that Seurat used the paint straight out of the tube without mixing colors on the pallet. Did he thin the paint with turp or not? I guessed not. Then I saw my dots forming peaks. Did Seurat have peaks on his dots? How large are the dots supposed to be? Can the dots overlap? Can the paint mix  on the canvas when the dots overlap?

One article said Seurat had 11 colors and white. It didn’t say what the colors were. I bought a tube of veridian green  for this painting. I never buy tubes of green because I have a few yellows and a few blues so I can mix the green I need. But to try to stay true to the no mixing colors on the pallet rule, I bought the green. Then I broke the no mixing  rule when I added white to cobalt blue and then I added white to the green. I didn’t use gray because I know modern artists don’t like gray and Seurat probably never used it.

One of the articles said there should be an underpainting. I usually tint my canvas before I do my underpainting, but this time I did my underpainting on a white canvas.

It’s important to keep color theory in mind in pointillism. I took a class long ago in color theory and remember some things like using complimentary colors and using tints of equal value to create the visual mix of gray or the visual mixing of colors that vibrate, and how colors look different on top of other colors.

Is this experiment a success or a failure? I don’t know, but this is my first attempt at pointillism and I’ll try again some time in the future.