skype!

Made using skype live video feed. This is very interesting!

 L.Anne is an artist whom I have never met in person, yet here are two portraits of her:

And Darrell is someone who lives half a world away, whom I haven't seen in 20+ years, yet here he is:
 

Strange and wonderful world we live in.

I got it goin' on

portrait made from a facebook picture


new canvas stitched today and the stretcher it will go on


painting in its early stages


playing with my old digital camera
it has a setting called "M" - no idea what that means except that it does a long exposure, maybe 30 seconds... this taken in very dim light

re-enter

I like it better now

different wavelengths

A painting finished a few weeks ago. This was done by painting acrylic washes into the raw canvas and gradually working up the layers:

Levels
acrylic and drawing media on stitched canvas
34w x 32h



New one stitched. Going to gesso this one and try acrylic glazes.
Until now I've been using acrylics on raw canvas and liking the staining effects, but sometimes the colour is not as intense as I'd like. The gesso ground should help intensify the colour, and hopefully I can get the glazes to look good.

I've been practicing acrylic glazing over gesso with these little 12x12 stitched canvases:

Terrible lighting here! But anyway I've been playing around with colours and various brushing and wiping methods, and I'm really liking some of the results.



Another new one stitched, not stretched yet. The plan here is to work up a lovely subtle sky and intensify the lower coloured part, leaving the middle bit raw and unpainted. We'll see how that goes!

end of an era

The downtown studio is FINALLY completely empty and clean and whitewashed and ready to sublet!!



And since I am a nostalgic person, and since the light was just gorgeous, I took the last photos I am likely to take in this space...

portrait of the artist as a rock star... sort of

did I leave any imprint here?

The last studio task: wrapping 5 paintings for shipping. And with that, I am truly gone.

Ah, nostalgia, I love it.

sub-zero plein air

So I thought oil paint was basically useable in any temperature, but no:

Titanium White becomes very stiff and sticky (a bit like half-set epoxy), although other colours appear unaffected in -4C
My oil/solvent mixture takes on a viscosity similar to raw egg white, but returns to normal when back in the studio.
Frozen brushes begin to fall apart, losing many bristles when used to forcibly brush out epoxy-like white paint!

Returning home after this paintings session, I spent half an hour with a pair of tweezers, picking all the little hairs off my painting, haha.

3pm - ready to begin

3.45pm - light shifting fast


this is more-or-less what I was seeing

and this is what my hand and eye made of it - quite dissimilar in colour.

near the end, getting cold but still smiling!