"Pair of Pears No. 1" Work in Progress Painting.

"Pair of pears No. 1", oil on panel, 6" x 6"

Fresh off the easel. Finished this Saturday morning. Still tweaking the highlights and some cleanup but 95% done. I love painting the skin of the pears and the textures of the wood. I struggled with the skin but I found that by stepping back to arms length and painting the skin helped a lot.

You have really focus on the highlights and try to ignore everything else around them. You have to shut off that part of your brain that is telling you that you're painting a highlight on a pair and listen to the right half of your brain that's telling you that your painting a light gray shape with pinkish shapes in the middle.

I did an initial lay in of colors with a wash of paint and Turpenoid and let that dry. I came back to it on Saturday morning and finished up painting wet into wet. I'm still touching up the highlights and cleaning up brushwork but it's almost there.

Fried Egg Painting

"Fried Egg" Oil on board 6" x 6"

Here's another one I did the other day. I decided to try it after watching a documentary on YouTube entitled, "Getting Close" about megarealist painter Tjalf Sparnaay. In the documentary they show one of his paintings of a fried egg that is about 3 feet by 3 feet. 

It turned out to be pretty fun and I learned a lot about painting subtle shades, values and blending. I didn't get any where near as detailed as Tjalf did but it was fun exercise. As with any painting, you can get a crazy as you want with the details and spend hours rendering it but I wasn't feeling it that much.

Here's the link to the documentary, there's a lot of subtitles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQa4BmCCAu0

Joseph Lorusso & Peregrine Heathcote Opening Reception

I attended the Opening Reception for Joseph Lorusso and Peregrine Heathcote at Newbury Fine Arts and I was not disppointed.  I had a chance to speak with both artists for well over a half hour each and both of them were very pleasant and also very forthcoming in giving advice and sharing their working techniques. 

I spoke with Peregrine at the very beginning of the night and he was very nice.  He has just arrived in from England the day before and I explained how to get to the Museum of Fine Arts and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museums and also supplied my advice on which paintings he had to see if he visited them.  His son was also accompanying him and was very pleasant.  For some reason the English accent is more impressive in person if that makes any sense and I have to admit I was amused when he made a referral to the television as the "tellie".

Peregrine was kind enough to share with me his working process and gave me some really strong encouragement to keep plugging away at my art and to never stop painting.

I waited patiently for Joseph Lurusso to finish talking with collectors.  After all they pay the bills and I'm just a lowly admiring artist.  When Joe seemed to be free I introduced myself and explained that I and expressed how much I love his painting style.  He asked me my name and if I was collector (I hate when I have to explain that I'm not) and I explained that was not a collector but that I painted as well.

 Joe immediately seem to warm up to me and asked me if there was any questions I had for him.  I of course asked him about his working process and how achieves the warm and loose feelings to his paintings.  He explained that most of his work is in the beginning stages; composing the painting and a great deal of time is in the creation of the underpainting.  He then provided me his business card and explained that on his web page there is a time-lapsed slideshow of his painting process which I had already seen prior. He then explained that he then goes back after the underpainting is dried and then works mostly in thin glazes and layers them on top of each other and the sometimes he also paints opaquely as well.  He walked me around to a few different paintings and explained how they were painted and his thought processes. 

I like to think that both he and Peregrine enjoyed the fact that there's an artist at the reception and that they get a chance to talk to another artist instead of just collectors, but then again they also need to mingle with the collectors.  When I go opening receptions, I always wait until the artist is free and also that there doesn't appear to be any collectors nearby waiting to speak with them.  I never monopolize the artist and I'm always alert to fact that if there is a collector nearby that seems to be waiting that I step back and allow that networking to happen.  

I didn't take photos with either artist unfortunately this time around because the gallery was still packed with collectors when I was getting ready to leave and I didn't want to be a strange, star-struck art geek so I opted to ditch the photo session but I'm positive both artists would have kindly obliged.

Joseph Lorusso & Peregrine Heathcote Opening Tonight

I'm really excited about the opening for Joseph Lorusso and Peregrine Heathcote at Newbury Fine Arts on Newbury St. in Boston.   I missed the last opening for both artists and I'm glad to finally get a chance to meet and speak with them tonight.  I'm bad about posting photos but I'm hoping to post photos here of the event but life takes a lot of time out of the day and updating the blog seems to take the back burner to everything else.

Working with a Zorn or Limited Palette

Lately, when I don't have the mindset to work on a full painting and I just want to relax on the couch, I've been plopping down some colors in my cigar box pochade box using the Zorn palette and doing some oil sketches on 5x7" panels.  I just put the cigar box on my lap and do quick sketches using photo references I've printed out or directly from my laptop screen.  It's comfortable and most importantly I'm painting!  Instead of watching mindless television (well, I still have it on) I'm mixing paints and painting.

I'm doing small oil sketches and mini portraits (5x7 panels) and using a limited palette of ivory black, cadmium red medium, yellow ochre and titanium white and I'm truly amazed at the vast amount of colors you can obtain with these four colors.  If you add in ultramarine blue you have a pretty extensive range of hues to work with.

If I'm just pushing colors around and experimenting, I will paint on recycled boxes that I coat with acrylic gesso and when I'm done I'll just toss them out.  Every once in awhile I create something that I love and so I trim the piece and save them although I have to admit that I do get mad at myself when I create something great and now it's on a piece of cardboard.  So learn from my mistakes and don't get caught up in your paintings if you use these temporary recycled cardboard canvases.

As for the cigar box pochade box, I bought a used cigar box from a cigar store at a local mall for $5 and it measures about 9" x 12".  There are larger ones but that was the largest one they had available that day.  The best thing to do is call a cigar store and ask them if they give away the old cigar boxes.  They may not give them away but just sell the old boxes.  If they do give them away or sell them, ask them to hold one for you or ask what days they get new shipments so you can stop in and pick one up.

Artist Aaron Wooten

I found out about Aaron reading a magazine (no, don't remember which one) at Border's Books in Boston. The painting that was featured was one a Marilyn Monroe posing nude done in gratuitous shades of browns, grays and reds. I loved the way his brush strokes were loose yet direct at the same time. The image of Marilyn was a caricature of her body but Aaron kept the distortions of the head limited as though Marilyn body was erased and replaced by some genetic copy of her former body.

I felt compelled to visit his website to see more of his work and was not disappointed. Some people might think of his work as simplistic and perhaps sophomoric but I enjoyed his work. I love the way he distorts his figures so that they are grotesque and a bit sexy at the same time.

I particularly loved the images in his "Beach Chicks and Beatniks" collection and for more adventurous (18 or older) crowd, I also loved the pseudo-abstract images of the orgies in Aaron's "Uninhibited" collection. Aaron uses hard-edged shades of red to create these crazy images of fornication. Viewers be warned, the "Uninhibited" collection is not for G crowd.

You can visit Aaron's web site at:
web.mac.com/aaronrwooten/