AN ECONOMY OF MISCHIEF

Two days of underpainting brings this bone-in-the-throat result. I'm using a mixture of burnt umber and burnt sienna, very dry and mixed with just a drop or two of turpentine to thin it. It does almost as fast as watercolor and is a supremely lean and siccative base for the rest of the paint.

I'm guessing it will take two more days to finish laying down and then balancing these tones and then commences the painting.

Sleep well,

Uncle Jim

TRANS-NUCLEOTIDE DESSERT

It took me almost 5 working days to re-draw the "You Drive" sketch and transfer it to canvas. That gave me a lot of time to think about things.

BOULDERS FROM LITTLE STONES GROW

Because I use walnut oil as a medium the caterpillar picture is drying slowly, so there is no picture of the varnish-enriched colors. In the interim, here is a drawing literally found on the cluttered cement floor of the basement:

It's about 9" x 12". I'm going to finish it up and modify it to fit a 38" x 24" canvas. 

MAKING A PICTURE FROM START TO FINISH 8

Here is a snapshot of the painting about 90% done... the crucial point in any picture. As Szukalski told me more than once, if a picture is properly constructed the last 10% of effort will yield 50% of the effect.

But has this picture been properly constructed? 

MAKING A PICTURE FROM START TO FINISH #6

This week I moved my oil painting setup to a corner of my attic studio and painted this brownstone there. The workspace arrangement isn't perfect: low sloping ceilings, west light, midnight blue carpet. But the atmosphere in that room is worth forcing the issue over.

I am dismayed at the way this underpainting came out, but what the hell. I'd give even odds the final picture will be a flop. Well, that's life.

Doggedly,

Uncle Jim

MAKING A PICTURE FROM START TO FINISH #5

The drawing has been transferred to the panel by putting charcoal on the back of the to-size (30" x 20") copy and tracing it with a soft pencil. The resultant charcoal lines are very faint, so fixing them is a must. 

Now comes inking the linework with a mixture of ivory black and burnt umber in diluted resinous medium. This will determine how well fine-tuned the picture will be. Every stroke must be as right as I can make it. This is the part where I always fall down because, and it is a mystery that holds me post-bound, whenever I ink a line in any medium I lose my concentration mid-stroke. Frequently my eyes become unfocused and I watch, blearily detached, the nib or brush moving to the end of the line. 

Does anyone else have this problem? It's definitely a handicap, something I have to fight to control, which screws up the delicate balance of thought and instinct and impedes the natural flow of work. Inking is unpleasant for me because in no other aspect of my life is the outer edge of my basic competence so sharply seen. Yes, I've plenty of opportunity then for rueful speculation on nature's terrifying little ways. 

Oddly enough the most effective way for me to combat this is to devote a small part of my mind to listening to something soothing  and engaging, such as an attractive human voice saying something I cannot really understand. I don't want to follow a story, I just want to hear a voice I like saying things that will intrigue me if I focus on them at random for a few moments.

For years my favorite was Nancy Reagan reading MY TURN. Then Jim Ottaviani sent me some of Richard Feynman's lectures on tape and I've spent God only knows how many hundreds of hours listening to these. For a while GOD IS NOT GREAT read by Christopher Hitchens himself was a favorite, but I soon found that work done to this recording almost always came out badly.

I couldn't figure out why that was. I thoroughly enjoyed the fragments of the book I absorbed, especially when he went after a target I wanted to see bloodied. What was there in this reading that was having such an adverse effect on my work?

Finally I identified the problem: Hitchens was only pretending to be honest and objective, and the discordance between his pretense and his purpose was curdling the atmosphere around my drawing board.

 Sadder but wiser,

Uncle Jim

MAKING A PICTURE FROM START TO FINISH #4

Here is the sketch the picture will be made from. It needs a little work; the distant hills on the left need building up, the tree anatomy needs adjusting for eye-comfort, specifically the addition of a limb added to the lefthand side, and ropes need to be added to the snare to make its functionality evident.

For once the lines of the harmonic composition template seem to me to rest in place like the ossicles of sea star: right where they should be. If that theory is correct I should be able to make this picture sing like a lyre if I can control the values properly. I'm looking forward to painting dark clouds behind the little spectator's head and seeing it pop beautifully. Today I will finish the sketch, blow it up to canvas size on the Kinko's blueprint copier and trace it on with charcoal powder. Then perhaps two days for the brownstone, a detailed underpainting in burnt umber.

Today I bought the base for an adjustable height work table and am going to build on it a large lightboxed standing/sitting drawing board. I'm also going to clear out the clutter from my attic studio and put my painting setup in there next to the drawing table. No more scampering from drawing board to light box to basement painting studio. All my life my studios have been clumsy and furnished with scavenged furniture. This one will be just what I want.

Your Uncle Jim