Stormy night two.

 The photo was of the IBM building across the street from me on a rainy night, but I only use the photo to get started, after that the paint takes over and one paint stroke leads to the next.  I generally pay attention only to the particular place where I am painting and it's a little hard to put them all together afterwards. 

4FAC, The fourfold path of Art Criticism. A bold new path or a winding road to nowhere.

Here's the thing, I bring my paintings to the circle hoping to hear something useful and don't usually.  Likewise comments on the blog.

Well critiquing is tough, you above all do not wish to offend, but you kind of want to say something, but sometimes nothing to say really stands out.  Maybe you make a joke or maybe you say something vague just to get it done.  This is not helpful to the artist.

I've been thinking on the matter and I have broken down what seems to me to be the most common kinds of criticism that I hear.

 1. That looks like suchandsuch.

This is the least helpful kind of comment.  If it is something like 'it looks like a summer day' it may help, but if it is 'it looks like a hammer' not so much.

2. What you oughta do is...

This is a slightly better comment, but it is a tad bossy, and it's generally not helpful because the viewer can never know what is in the heart of the artist.

3. What I like the best is this, what I like the least is that.

I think this is pretty good because it rules out the 'oh everything is beautiful the way it is' comment, and it shields the critic a bit from testy artists because you can say something good to make the critical part go down more easily.

4. How or why did you do this or that?

This is good because it gives the artist a chance to talk and we are Chatty Cathies are we not?

I have an old friend in St Joe Missouri and we have been exchanging images and criticism for about a month and we have been learning a lot and also getting good at giving useful information.  

I am posting this here to begin some kind of conversation.

And I am going to try to use it on this week's postings.

Alan Summer 4

 After last week’s showtime it occurred to me that people thought that I had completed the lake painting on gessoed canvas where I still had a lot of work to do. I should have taken a photo of it then but I didn’t. I think I’ve pretty much finished it now although this medium allows me to fairly easily change some elements

. 

Every time I look at it I see something I might change - like that shadow line on the hill next to the railing. 

I’m working on a larger version on Yupo of the el track behind Byron’s. I’ve decided to be fairly free with this version and might base it on the sketch rather than the original photo. We’ll see. 

June 29, 2024 — Elaine O.

I'm slowly moving forward, not in any hurry. I love this moment and want to get it right. I am a bit worried about the face and especially where the profile meets the background, so I'm circling around the head (hoping to get him to the level of the pot and stick). As for the scarf, I know many of you prefer red, but I really want to document this particular scarf, so blue it stays. Plus, I already gave an imaginary red scarf to the imaginary person in the background.  

14" x 10"

I Didn’t Get There First

 We had rented a house on the harbor and the owner told us about this one. She was trying to sell it so we looked at it back when we thought we might want to have a house in Ocean Springs. Turns out Alan painted it too. 

As usual, the photos flipped….his is first. She never did sell it and is still renting it on Air BnB. 

Girls and houses….

 

Well, I took Pat’s suggestion  and just painted the girls freehand without any sketching. They look much older because my proportions are off, but overall it’s not a terrible effort.And it was good practice for working on the hands and faces. Again this is on cheap Strathmore paper, so I can’t get too many layers in before it starts to shred…

Here’s the sketch which still needs some work.  Nora’s head looks too big, but it matches the proportions of the grid…

And here’s the final version of their house remodel. I painted it a third time to match the style of the sketch of the original facade, because they want to hang both of them together. I painted the original sketch back in 2013!

What do they say about great minds?

 

A new series

 

Looking less and less like windows across the street, but I am hoping it works in an abstract way.  Lots of fun do do by the way.

Alan Summer 3

 I’ve finished the behind Byron’s under the el painting based on my sketch.  When you make it bigger I find that the elements need a lot more detail. Where you can merely suggest elements when it’s small, you have to tell more of a story so it makes sense when it’s bigger. I also liked the looseness of the sketch that made this heavy structure light and airy. I’ll have to try this again with even larger paper - maybe even Yupo. 

Another sketch of a Chicago hot dog stand is of Budacki’s on Damen with a colorful eating area in the parking lot. 

             

Sunset at our lake cottage. Beginning this on gessoed canvas. I like the way that the canvas helps the reflections. 

June 22, 2024 — Elaine O.

Working away, slowly but surely, on this portrait. I know it's hard to tell what's happening from the pencil sketch, but, as bits of background go in, we can narrow down the options. No, it's not a founding father; no, Hamilton isn't back in town; no, it's not Napoleon. It's Dave in Paris, looking very continental indeed.

14" x 10"

Just Another House

 Saw this place so many times because it’s located on Porter which has a sidewalk. Whoopee. 

Process and closure….

 Here’s my color study and my sketch using those colors.

Here’s a second study I did using my usual portrait colors. (I’m only realizing now that I have usual portrait colors….) The pose is cropped quite a bit from the first one. I gotta say, I like the combo of watercolor and pencil lines, especially around the hands. I want to do a larger version of this, drawing on the watercolor paper, with pencil, but that can go wrong in so many ways and I hate to erase on we paper. Maybe I still need to draw it on tracing paper and then transfer it to the we paper and pencil over it. Such a process….!

And finally closure on my friend’s daughter’s house. I’m giving this to my friend on Tuesday. I ended up cutting it down to 8x10 from 9x12, even tho the trees were my favorite part….no more house portraits for me….

Not so dark, not so stormy

 When I first started this painting I was expecting it would have more oomph, but now it looks more sedate.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  It was a lot of fun, which is important to me, and I think I learned a lot, so I am pleased enough.

Added a little turquoise to the transom sections, and was going to enclose the the windows with a dark green and smudge them up a bit, but sometimes a painting is done and it's best to get to a clean sheet of paper.

Ss Alpha Varicella Zoster

 Day one of my husband's shingles attack or onset. The shooting pain & the watery blisters gave us mixed signals throughout the day. We thought they were just unusual pimples, a reaction to his numerous medications and 10 days hospitalizations! It was almost early dawn Chicago time when in desperate needs for answer we phoned his female cousin, a pediatrician in San Diego , who patiently  informed Tony that he had shingles, after we showed her photos of his right face & descriptions of the symptoms. It was the start of a journey of agony from October 2023 to January 2024. I planned to create a series of paintings about this health crisis. And this is the start! Alpha agony!

Alan Summer 2

 I’m finished with the iris. All of a sudden, it was done. 

I was wrong about the direction of the alley painting. It was sunrise with the sun coming up in the east. I’m rarely up and about at this time of day but it is sunrise. It’s why I like that far tree so much. 

I’m trying to see if the small urban sketches can translate into full sized paintings. I’m quite fond of the sketch behind Byron’s so I’m enlarging it slightly. I might have to be a better drawer and I might have to get some new maskit.

  

Color studies….

 Pthalo blue, opera, Hansa yellow…

Cobalt teal, rose done, cadmium yellow deep…

Windsor blue, scarlet lake, Indian yellow….

French ultramarine, alizarin crimson, Naples yellow…

What am I learning from these? Well…I don’t use enough pigment when I mix colors. Many of my yellows are opaque and really dull the mixes. It’s hard to mix bright greens, but interesting to see the variety of neutrals and the neutrals are most interesting when they tilt towards a primary. I’m still working on this last one, which seems to be producing the most variety. More to come….

Still dark still stormy

 Trying to get away from the flannel shirt look by personalizing the panes.  Lots of stuff to go over and over here.  Now tell me true, if you saw just this painting would you think IBM Building?

Trouble in the Foreground

 Trouble in the background too. Don’t like that green blob. 

I decided to go really dark under the pier….sepia and indigo.  But before I did that I laid the yellow colors down for the grasses and then used mask to bring them up to the pier .  So clever  I knew that mask was sick.  In fact, it did not work at all.  I tried acrylic, markers, gouache, pastel pencils over that dark  And that is why the grasses are green at the top.  

My magic brush would not cut through for definition either.  But for once, a Blick impulse buy came in handy  A disposable fountain pen cut some dark back in….$3.

Alan Summer 1

 Continuing my flowers on Yupo theme (you might not have noticed that there was one) here’s the beginning of an iris in my friend’s garden. A lot of pigments pushing each other around. I removed quite a lot to get me back to some white space. 

While waiting for the paint to dry, I started this small sketch of the lot behind Byron’s on Irving. I’m really starting to like these little things. This tells me that a larger version should be in the works although I don’t know if it would be any better. 

June 8, 2024 — Elaine O.

Moving to landscape...  I was strolling around Versailles when this incredible tree caught my eye. Great presence, amazing sense of movement. And suddenly, big dark storm clouds rolled in. That sky and that tree just needed to be memorialized. This is my first attempt. It's not quite right, but I can see what I plan to change for the next try. 

Storm Cloud over Versailles study    12" x 9"

Alan Spring 9

 OK. It might not be much but I spent a little time adjusting this sketch. I was trying to put the second limb clearly in the background. I liked most of the other elements in the sketch especially the ramp and the foreground 

I mislabeled this as abstract where it is really not. It’s more of a minimalist observation of reality. I called this 15 Pebbles and a Twig. Saw this in my alley (source of so many fine paintings) and decided that it would make a cool little painting. 

Here’s a little exercise from my sketchbook. I have a handful of small flowcharting templates from my IT days. I like to work out the geometry and perspective in light graphite because I don’t like being so far off from the very beginning. But I don’t like the look of rulered lines. So I use these templates to set the basis for the sketch. 

Then I sketch using India ink or fine black marker feeling free because I don’t worry about the structure. When I’m done with this, I erase everything so there is no lead marks on the paper. 

Then I can masque certain things and wash with watercolor. Easy….Peasy. At least when I know that I have objects in the right place I can freely add the color. 

A dark and stormy night

 Just the beginning, trust me it will get messier.

And here is the dark and stormy night.

And here is the homework.

June 1, 2024 — Elaine O.

The baguette is finished and I'm calling it a success. I tried painting some new-to-me shiny surfaces and I commemorated a moment. Sure, I see some problems, primarily with the placement of the butter dish and the way the crust curves on the bottom right. And I wish I'd used some more colorful plates—but who thinks about the plate when they're about to dig into a delicious baguette? Basically, I'm happy—both with the painting and with the beginnings of my baguette-making adventure. 

14" x 11"