I'm wondering what you want me to talk about. I mean I tend to ramblings already but I'm wondering what you are interested.
I could talk about books that I like to reference often. I might do a post about that.
We could talk about aspect ratios that I'm finding pleasant. Like this one of Dan the model. I had reference photos of his face from a class way back, and when I had to crop it for a painting I decided on this size. It's like only 21 inches tall, but there's something about this ratio that seems to be working for me. Not a lot of dead space going on here, but that might just be yellow being varied enough to hold up that corner. I'm going to keep on talking about this, 'cause I don't like how this paragraph breaks underneath the photograph. This paintings is done on paper adhered to a panel with matte medium. A drawing was done then fixed. A coat of clear gesso was then applied over it.
Whatever the case may be it showed up again in my portfolio with this painting of a security guard's daughter. This one, the reference photo was already cropped and I didn't have access to the original photo to make any decision on how it was going to be cropped. Also the original was in black and white. The guy gave me two photographs of his daughter, one vertical wise in color, and the other horizontal as you see here, but in black n' white. I thought the horizontal composition was stronger. I had to use the color photograph for color ideas as I worked on the black n' white composition. If that makes any sense. I think working from that awkward situation really pushed this painting into areas I hadn't been to. The space the figure inhabits has some direct thought put into it, that seems to stand up to the figure.
It was a hassle, but it's one of my only paintings where the background doesn't feel that influenced by Tim Harney. It starts to look like something that's truly me. The thing is though, I was painting that area when I was frustrated with the paintings and not keeping up with my journal, so I'm not exactly sure what my train of thought was when working on it. However, from this I'm able to transition into my newest painting. Which I'm doing in spirit of this aspect ratio that seems to be working very well for me.
It is a portrait of my now deceased Grandfather on my mother's side. She's been asking me to do a portrait of him forever, and right now as I get setup to put some thought out ideas down onto panel I thought I could bust out this portrait and make her really happy. She comes from a family of eight so once this semester is done I'm going to be sending it home to see how all my aunts and uncles respond.
My class was saying that my grandfather looks like Hunter S. Thompson...
It didn't hurt either that she sent me the photograph up with a care package right when I was scrambling to set up a new painting. I had to scan in the photograph since it's analogue (and also they had flash on it seems) but I was able to get a nice resolution and crop it nice to what I'm comfortable with. The panel is prepared with polymer gesso rather than my usual homemade gesso with animal fat. However, when I put the rabbit skin glue on top of it and let it dry the paint started to do wonderful things. It's acting much like the first portrait of Mike Vance, and being very fluid on the surface. This plus the fact that I have some newly mixed safflower oil and stand oil mediums set up kindly by my roommate Jordan Elquist, creates a new arena that I'm enjoying. Though the stand oil is making this thing take forever to dry. It's still a work in progress and I'll follow up once I'm done with it.
I'm thinking of doing a follow up piece with my 3 uncles in it. Then after that I'll hopefully be prepare to take on my more advanced ideas and start looking back into my meta painting theories. I'm trying my best to put a lot of forethought into my paintings, in general, before I jump into them. But these family portraits however, are done off of old scrapbook analogue photographs. There's not much to think about besides cropping. The painting's purpose is simple, my family would like a painting of our grandfather. No grand statements about what paintings should be doing. Just a portrait that I know would make a lot of people happy.
Alright I think I'm going to wrap this up for now. Drop me a comment to tell me what you think about this blog. It should be updated more regularly than my other two. Also, I want to know what you guys want me to ramble about. I think the next post is going to be about books that I think are valuable to artists, but after that I'm blank. Give this scattergun some direction.
Thank you for reading, more soon hopefully.
