Tag: painting

It’s only a paper moon

I was hoping to say something profound while I collected my thoughts here.

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But I got nothing.

They say…

good artists borrow

and great artists steal.

I’ve been intrigued by some old postcard photographs from the 1900’s called ‘Paper Moon.’  They use an acronym RPPC meaning real photo postcard that originated during the dates between 1904-1918. There are a lot of these images taken with kids or couples; families and friends as they would get their picture taken with this life-size paper moon in the background. These photographs are still around and people collect them. The photographs are sepia maybe black and white or both I’m not too sure.  I like old photography to begin with the cameras, the color and the serious faces. I like the whole studio effects and the flatness and how desolate things can look.

 

I just love this idea and feel the need to explore this topic some more. I just want to bring myself back to that era. In the process maybe bring a good original idea back to life with a new contemporary perspective or modern-day version. I’m in the planning stage to do a painting with this theme. I already have the person and image in mind I just need to get the moon and person sketched out together on canvas. I know some photographs will follow in the mix. How hard could it be to make a paper moon? What does it look like it’s made out of is it wood, fiber glass or foam core?

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Of course I have to finish my painting in process before I start another…not.

I have so many paintings in process again.  Three that I can think of off the top of my head but I know there are a couple more tucked away.” The fine art of finishing a painting.” Some will need some serious time to get done and I don’t have any serious time at the moment. So they will have to wait until summertime when the days are long.  I thought if I worked smaller it would go faster but it’s just as much work to do a small painting as a big painting. So my creative process is divided but it is aways in play.

What’s next on your plate?

I have to laugh. I wasn’t very hungry the other night but my son made sure he let mt know that I couldn’t leave the table until I finished everything on my plate.

I stopped saying that.

*Just a note the flags are at half mast around here but it seems like they are always at half mast these days.

How many days does it take to finish a portrait?

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Day one: A friend of mine recommended me to someone who wanted a painting done of their cat. So I met them at Alterra coffee-house a neutral place where we could meet about commissioning a portrait of a cat named Bartholomew/Bart. We Looked at photograph’s, I said I could do this painting and then signed a contract I brought along.

Day two: I reviewed photos, did some sketches, e-mailed client back and waited for confirmation.

Day two: Confirmation from client, printed image and picked up canvas.

Day three: Did grid and started drawing on canvas.

Day four: Still drawing image onto canvas. This is a crucial part of the process getting everything right from the start although it all gets covered with paint.

Day five: I started with a basic under painting worked on background and went straight into the fabric.

Day six: I began with the eyes the most important part. I need to get the eyes perfect.

Day seven: Worked on the face of cat and whiskers.
Whiskers really helped painting.

Day eight: painted the ears.

Day seven: I needed to darken the pattern on the fabric. Darkening some fur shadows and added fluffy accents throughout cat giving it more shape and form so it looks like a 3-dimensional cat also filled in front of sofa.

Day eight: Worked on tail made it longer and changed background.

Day nine: Worked on the paws or the impression of the paw.

Day ten: Touched up shape of head and edges of fur.

Day eleven: Pushed more dark shadows and white areas.

Day twelve: Ears and ear hairs needed some work.

Day thirteen: I always keep coming back to the eyes.

Day fourteen: Worked on back leg, body shape and pattern.

Day fifteen: Finished. e-mail client confirm pick up date.

day sixteen: Went with hooks on back of painting/attached.

Day seventeen: Coffee shop 9:00 dropped of painting. Waitress walks by and says it’s brilliant. It catches me off guard. I laugh. They like painting. It was exactly what they expected.

Keeping our liberty and art spirit alive.

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The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high function, a moment of existence. We make our discoveries while in this state because than we are clear-sighted.

Robert Henri-The art Spirit

We have a magic bullet it’s a  smoothy maker.  We did a combination of eggs and green peppers and well the eggs turned out green by accident so in the spirit of Dr Seuss’ birthday I said oh look we are having green eggs and ham for breakfast. The kids said no thanks. I said you can’t say no you have to say…I do not like green eggs and ham. I will not eat them here or there I will not eat them anywhere. Personally I wouldn’t eat them with a fox or in a box either note to self never do that again.

This year will go down in history, for the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safe, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future.           Adolf Hitler 1935.

This is why Congress will not pass any gun legislation in the USA. We have the 2nd amendment for a reason. “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”                   Thomas Jefferson

A bloody mary for breakfast?

I woke up to a winter wonderland today. We’re snowed in got about 8″ of snow over night expecting 12″ by the end of the day. Schools are closed and there are cars stuck or in the ditch everywhere. It’s a mess out there very thankful we still have power. I’m not going to work I have plenty to do here like finding my cross country ski’s.

In front of me sits a bloody mary, a bagel with cream cheese with a hint of almond and on the side an omelette with cheese, green peppers. Another bloody mary might be due or at least a beer chaser. This is a treat for us not a normal thing.
I’m checking my eBay and had a pretty successful week. I diversified a little and made some good choices aside from my usual postcards.

I was reading from a local newspaper called “Freedom Weekly” free news for free people. It has our national debt of 16,432,519,875,802.97 and it says under it…

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie (marxist term for the middle and upper class) is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
Vladimir Illich Lenin

Do we ever learn from history? The president now says the sequester is going to devastate our economy, but George wills who I believe says 44 billion is less than 2% of the GDP budget. We’ll see what happens this week in Washington.

Painting wise…

I find myself vacillating between feeling that it’s really great and really horrible. One moment, I’m a genius creating masterpieces and the next I’m thinking I haven’t any talent, the work is vapid and I’m a complete idiot. It’s a constant process of doubt and assurance that drives you to do better.
John Alexander

Taking a break from painting the figure.

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Painted today. Taking a seriously needed break from painting the figure. There’s freedom in not having any pencil marks or guidelines to follow on the canvas. The pure artistic desire to just paint. Taking the time to figure out on your own where everything belongs, how it visually looks and how it all relates.

I always start with the under painting. I use raw sienna and prussian blue and a little white for a change basically establishing my value study as I covered the whole canvas with paint.

I am working from a photograph I took some time ago in North Carolina while we staying at the Hilton. It was a summer night and we would stroll down the boardwalk. The evening lights and water reflections were a delight to be around while we would watch the sun set and then stop at a nearby bistro for a local beer and southern platter. Our little get away from the party at hand. The ocean breeze was so warm.

“The boardwalk in Charlotte” I have a few other photo’s so this could turn into a series. When I finish this one I’m hoping to bring it down to the local coffee shop called Smith Bros located right along Lake Michigan/one of the great lakes. Some very interesting array of artwork is on display there and some by a couple of friends I have unexpectedly come to know by chance. My work is not on display at this time because I had a piece disappear with the owner from another coffee shop that closed it doors unexpected. Stolen in other words…we take our chances as artists not like it’s worth a million dollars yet. There are a couple of other galleries that have pop up in Port Washington lately I need to inquire.

Picasso’s Genius Revealed: He Used Common House Paint

I thought this was an interesting article about Picasso the artist we all love and/or hate.

By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer | LiveScience.com – Fri, Feb 8, 2013Email0Share558Share24PrintRelated ContentView PhotoAmong the Picasso paintings in …

Pablo Picasso, famous for pushing the boundaries of art with cubism, also broke with convention when it came to paint, new research shows. X-ray analysis of some of the painter’s masterworks solves a long-standing mystery about the type of paint the artist used on his canvases, revealing it to be basic house paint.

Art scholars had long suspected Picasso was one of the first master artists to employ house paint, rather than traditional artists’ paint, to achieve a glossy style that hid brush marks. There was no absolute confirmation of this, however, until now.

Physicists at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill., trained their hard X-ray nanoprobe at Picasso’s painting “The Red Armchair,” completed in 1931, which they borrowed from the Art Institute of Chicago. The nanoprobe instrument can “see” details down to the level of individual pigment particles, revealing the arrangement of particular chemical elements in the paint.

The analysis showed that Picasso used enamel paint that matches the precise chemical composition of the first brand of commercial house paint, called Ripolin. The researchers were able to compare the painting’s pigment with those of paints available at the time by analyzing decades-old paint samples bought on eBay. [9 Famous Art Forgers]

What’s more, the detailed study, which used X-rays to probe the painting’s pigmentdown to the scale of 30 nanometers (a sheet of copier paper is 100,000 nanometers thick), was able to pinpoint the manufacturing region where the paint was made by studying its particular impurities.

“The nanoprobe at the [Advanced Photon Source X-ray facility and the Center for Nanoscale Materials] allowed unprecedented visualization of information about chemical composition within a singe grain of paint pigment, significantly reducing doubt that Picasso used common house paint in some of his most famous works,” one of the research leaders, Argonne’s Volker Rose, said in a statement.

Art scholars think Picasso experimented with Ripolin to achieve a different effect than would’ve been possible with traditional oil paints, which dry slowly and can be heavily blended. In contrast, house paint dries quickly and leaves effects like marbling, muted edges, and even drips of paint. Still, experts couldn’t be sure house paint was the key to Picasso’s look without proof.

“Appearances can deceive, so this is where art can benefit from scientific research,” said Francesca Casadio, senior conservator scientist at the Art Institute of Chicago. “We needed to reverse-engineer the paint so that we could figure out if there was a fingerprint that we could then go look for in the pictures around the world that are suspected to be painted with Ripolin, the first commercial brand of house paint.”

The scientists detailed their findings in a paper published last month in the journal Applied Physics A: Materials Science & Processing.

http://news.yahoo.com/picassos-genius-revealed-used-common-house-paint-155124899.html;_ylt=Ap0DcsWQgEwSGIHvhxzBPm3zWed_;_ylu=X3oDMTJtcTZjYXRiBG1pdANIQ01PTCBvbiBhcnRpY2xlIHJpZ2h0IHJhaWwEcGtnA2lkLTMwNDY2NTcEcG9zAzYEc2VjA01lZGlhQkNhcm91c2VsTWl4ZWRIQ00EdmVyAzE2;_ylg=X3oDMTNqb3BsYjNuBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDMmI5YjFjMDItYTZmNC0zNzcwLWIzOWQtMDQxOTI3NTg2NmM1BHBzdGNhdAN1LXMEcHQDc3RvcnlwYWdlBHRlc3QDaXB0Y19za3lzY3JhcGVyX3JlbGF0ZWQ-;_ylv=3

Galleries set the stage with food, wine and music.

Galleries set the stage with food, wine and music. Inviting the public to participate as special guests as they mingle, engage in conversations and share ideas. And of course…meet the artist.
It’s a funny thing all the time and work it takes for artists to line up a show that when it comes down to attending the opening reception it’s a sudden…dreaded obligation. Personally I could never get comfortable with just hanging around and mingling with my family much less with a bunch strangers and I consider myself seasoned. The questions? Like what does one say at these things? What does one do? How does one look? If I dress modern I should have dressed more retro and if I dressed retro I should have played it safe with contemporary. At my last show I saw that we had some commonality of wearing tweed referring to the other artist that shared my show so I was thinking I was safe.  

Most artists that I encountered defy the stereotype that we know as unsocial and are usually eager to talk about their work and themselves as they stand in the fore front. I am so stereotypical when it comes to talking about my art. I can talk about anything even the weather for hours but when it comes to my work which I’m passionate about I’m short, succinct and all preparedness is nowhere to be found.So I was reading about some artists that go to great lengths of being late, or not showing up at all and or last having someone else show up in place of them. My first thought was why didn’t I think of that. I have to admit I was a half  hour late for my show only because a bridge was out and the road was under construction so I had to take a detour in a city that I’m not too familiar with anymore. Did I mention it was also raining. The other artist was fashionably late an hour. 

Most importantly what I discovered was that no one buys anything unless they have an emotional connection to it and that I’m the one that needs to make that connection happen for them. So some where and some how? I need to work on getting my passion across to the viewer and forget about sounding esoteric or elite.More often than not people want to see the artist only a few want to talk to them.
I want to conclude by saying I must have done something right aside from showing up because in the end I had finalized a couple of sales during my Danceworks showing in october 09.

Looking back before taking that leaping forward.

    As a passionate or most times obsessed artist I always have to reflect back on what I painted in the past and relate it to what’s on my plate now.  I earnestly try to strive for a higher level of execution or thought. Having said that  I still believe that ‘ I myself do nothing the holy spirit accomplishes all through me.’ William Blake. I went back to 2010 in an earlier blog but felt the need to go back one more year to 2009. Great things happened that year sometimes it never hurts to relive and relearn. I started the year out working on some portraitures. My top 10 for 2009. 

1)   Oil painting portrait 24″ x 36″  ‘Deana and Reid’

2)   Oil painting portrait 24″ x 30″  ‘Jeff and Gloria’

3)   I lined up an art show at  ‘ The Dance Works gallery’ 

4)   Grava gallery: put on display “Layla” throughout the summer.


5)   Co-written and published 1st e-book.

6)   Finished a nude figure painting in oils 30″ x 40″ for sale $2,500.

7)   Worked on series for up coming show: Started (2) large  paintings 24″ x 30″ called soul-searching and finished up the 11″ x 14″ smaller version of soul-searching.

8)   August/pool party at The lighthouse: Displayed and delivered portraitures.

9)   October: Gallery night opening at The Dance Works art gallery. 

10)  Flew to North Carolina for a wedding stayed at the Hilton. Took a lot of photographs plan to do a large painting of the boardwalk. I have new ideas about flying. Thank God it was only an hour flight! 

 

My top ten paintings a year in Review 2010

1)    The year started out with the sale of two paintings at The Dance Works art  gallery. The show started in October and ran through the beginning of January.

2)  Reworked ‘The Lilly’

   

3)   Started taking my photography to a higher level.

4)   I started preparing for my artist video. Release date will be in 2011.

5)   I scheduled to do a speaking engagement at the local elementary school on career day. It was very enlightening.

6)   Displayed art work at The Smith Brothers Coffee shop in Port Washington.

7)   Also had work on display at The Last Drop of Coffee in Shorewood.

8)   Worked on getting the Zazzle store up and running.

8)   MIAD had an Art Sale for alumni/faculty/and students.

9)   Most important completion and delivery of portrait called ‘GRANNY’.

10) Started preparing three new canvases.

Why you should frame your art.

There are two reasons why we have art frames on paintings. They can protect art, of course, but most importantly they can aid to their attractiveness on display.

Since the very early days of painting, frames have served to enhance the visual beauty of art. Pictures were hung on walls and they became furnishings. The first frames were often works of art themselves. They were large and elaborately carved and decorated wooden frames. There was a practical reason also. The frame framed the picture. In other words, it created a boundary that enclosed the image and separated it physically from the surrounding wall.

As the idea of paintings as furniture began to spread, the frame became such an essential element of the entire package that the art was not considered complete until it was framed. The frame often time was more art than the painting itself. The framer was an artist in his own right. One part of his art was the carving and decoration of the frame and another was the matching of frame and picture to create a harmonious whole.

Framing changed dramatically with the introduction of lithographs and prints. These were either original works or copies of works printed on paper rather than actual paintings on canvas. Little was understood about preservation at first and although the art prints were being framed in a similar fashion to oil paintings at first, it was soon realized that certain protection was needed. It also became common to use colored matting to frame the image inside the wooden external frame.

As the lithograph or print became more and more popular, the art of modern framing was developed. The external frame became more than just a frame for the image, but also the platform that allowed glass to cover and protect the image and matting to enhance and create an inner frame. The use of matting inside the outer frame became another art form. Colors in the mats themselves were matched to colors in the art work to create a unified visual image. The mats, the image, the glass, and even protective backing and mounting material was all held together by the frame.

Today, the major reason for the use of frames with art is still the original one. The frame isolates the art from the surrounding environment making it a unified piece. With prints, the frame still serves as a platform for the glass, backing, and matting. Of course, the major reason for a frame from a practical point of view is that we have become so used to them that no hanging picture would look natural without one.

Aazdak Alisimo writes about art framing for ArtFramingGalleries.com.

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