painting "en plein air"

was waiting for cleaning man to come, but had no idea when he would– as he had to go to deal with french bureaucracy. had talked with dan about going out painting today, so when dan called i couldn’t stand being in anymore and just went to meet him. it took me a half hour to get to the luxembourg gardens where we would paint, and just as i arrived, my cell phone rang saying the cleaning guy was at my door waiting to get in. damn. so i told him i’d be back in an hour and a half and stayed to do a quick painting. the painting turned out really well (though i need another hour or so to finish it based on photos i took on site) and i was excited about this new experience. i had been putting off going outside to paint because i was hesitant (and afraid?). i just needed to do it. so now that i have done it, i understand it. it’s easy and good to do. having time limit makes me paint faster and looser.

how to caricature

have been working on a portrait of a friend’s daughter as a modigliani painting. finding it very difficult since modigliani’s style is to elongate the persons features. he painted his girlfriend, jeanne hebuterne often, but the faces he painted doesn’t even look like her. my subject has a rounder face. i need to make the portrait somehow look like her. i tried a bunch of tests using photoshop, distorting a photo of her – squeezing and elongating her face. that worked pretty well, but it can’t just be pasted into the other painting. when i simplify the features into lines, it just doesn’t look like her. i decided i needed to understand how caricatures worked. i went onto the internet, which continues to amaze me. i found a fantastic tutorial on caricatures and have spent all morning reading that. check it out:

http://www.tomrichmond.com/blog/2008/02/14/how-to-draw-caricatures-1-the-5-shapes/ and then

http://www.tomrichmond.com/blog/category/tutorials/

i think this will help me.

tourist painting

we went to meet jj’s new buddy, a girl who will join the school in september. she is from new zealand but she and her family have been living in paris for a while already. she lives near gard du nord, so has a bit of a hike to get to school. she has played the cello since she was 5 and goes to various music camps and groups. jj was excited to hear this since she wants to organize a quartet. i’m looking forward to hearing her play.

i have given myself a bunch of tasks for painting, one of them being to do a painting quickly. i want to try to loosen up my style since i feel that my paintings are too uptight. i try to push and exaggerate the colors, but there is too much detail and they look too photographic. there is a fashion now for some artists to do a painting a day. funny, though, many don’t actually do “one a day”, they have watered down the concept to just do “one IN a day”. in any case, i figured if i could try to complete a painting in 1-3 hours, it would free up my style a bit and make it more “impressionistic”. the other task i had given myself was to try to paint tourist landmarks, but in a more artistic style. hopefully a classier style than the stuff the artists sell to tourists on montmartre. someone told me that you can actually make a pretty good living in a few months, selling paintings to tourists. in the past i would’ve called it “selling out”, but now, i figured that every hour i spend painting is improving my skill and if i can make a little money on it, it doesn’t matter what i do. so today i made a quick painting based on a photo i took of the eiffel tower – but just a part of the tower. i was quite pleased. i started with an orange base, because i had wanted to experiment with that. i saw another painter use it and then i looked it up on the web. it is a well known technique. i loved it. the orange peeks through the image and makes it feel more light. when i paint on white backgrounds i work so hard to cover every little bit of the canvas, but with this method i don’t have to do that.

caillebotte exhibit

libby had gone to italy for her junior year in college. she was a “classics” major. after graduating, she worked for a couple of years as a buyer for macy’s. she then decided she wanted to live in italy so picked herself up and just went. people all wonder why she wanted to do that. i wondered why, even though i did the same thing. i could see how people would have wondered at my similar choices. she got an apartment and a job teaching english. she has made friends there. i’m proud of her for doing it. i hadn’t known libby very well before. her mom, my cousin, is exactly my age. i already was living far away when libby was growing up. i would see her from time to time. i only knew her as a little kid. but now she’s 25, an adult. she’s a great person. i really enjoy her company. jj and libby went shopping together. jj wanted to bring libby up and down our shopping street. it was cute. in the afternoon, we went to see the “caillebotte” exhibit. he is a lesser known impressionist painter. i have always loved his painting of the floor scrapers. the painting has good movement, good technique and an interestingly weird subject. the light reflecting on the floor and the little wood shavings got me...

hints of spring & small steps forward for my paintings

jj is going away today, flying to evian, france, with the "girl gang of 4". one of her good friends has an apartment there. they will ski for the week in the alps. tough life. jj and i are both a little nervous about it. just normal, you know.

p and i are going to a stay at a luxury hotel - a renovated chateau, about 70 km from paris  (got a great deal!)  we are bringing the dog. lots of parks and forests nearby for walking. it will be our valentine's and anniversary weekend (anniversary is actually feb 29th, only every 4 years).

meanwhile, the weather has warmed up and spring is in the air. i know it's trying to trick us into feeling good, before winter comes back... but anyway, it is around 55 degrees, the sun is shining and in the park by the eiffel tower, i can smell flowers. i can't see them, but i can smell them.  it might be the trees.

i have been meaning to go to talk to the owner of this particular restaurant to see if they would be interested in putting my paintings on the wall. i have been meaning to go for months, but was getting up my courage... i have had lunch there and then p and i went there a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it. i left them a postcard of mine, with a note thanking them for such a delicious meal (a strategic ploy). so i was walking by this morning around 11, with maynard and they were preparing for lunch. i decided it was time to plunge in, so i attached maynard outside, knocked on the door and went in. i told him we had had dinner there and that i was an artist and would he be interested in showing my work. he pulled out my postcard and asked if that was me! he said he was very interested and only had one other artist that was meant to show in february. he had to contact that artist and then i can show after that! i am so excited. i told him i'd love to have an opening event that was a wine tasting at the same time (they are a wine focused restaurant). he said that would be great, that they do wine tastings all the time and that he could cook some little tasty treats! yayyy!!

later: finished the onion painting.  put jj on a plane to the alps with her friends to go skiing.  was sad.  for a moment had an inkling of wanting to cry.  that thought of “in only 3 years she will leave the nest...”  met p for light dinner at “le suffren” a brasserie at the corner of the champs de mars.  it has a bright and cheerful ambiance.  famous for its seafood.

sick dog

maynard came in the door from his evening walk last night and promptly barfed twice in great quantities. this morning, waiting to see how things went, he did it again twice. i spent a lot of time cleaning rugs. anyway, i called the vet and she said he had to come in. later she told me that there was something very contagious going around all the dogs and she had been bombarded with calls. she gave him 2 shots and he has to take a course of antibiotics.

meanwhile, started a new painting of a close up of chimneys.

made myself do an “art date” today. one of the books i have to help me in art, recommends scheduling an art date for yourself. i went to visit a cool area of town around the rue vielle de temple, which has galleries and designy shops. i went to a specific gallery which was recommended to me by the art critic i had met (at a parent pot luck). it was hidden away behind a big parisian door with a very subtle sign for the gallery. they were showing , robert irwin, an american artist who has been around for many decades. this show was “high art”. it had about 8 pieces, all of which were a series of vertical neon lights of different colors. i didn’t even bother to look at their prices. nice work if you can get it. i think i will be doing medium low art for my life. which is ok. anyway, i did pop into another few galleries, one of which had an asian theme. pretty interesting, i thought. there was one particular artist who took ancient asian calligraphy and made beautiful abstract watercolors from it. the range of prices were between 400-600 euros. actually a reasonable price...  (doesn't make me mad or shock me)

basquiat show

jj doesn’t go back to school until tomorrow, so i felt we should have a date and do something in paris. it’s too easy for her to hang out at home, so i need to take the initiative. she was a bit outraged that her art teacher had “required” them all to go to an art exhibit over the vacation, but i thought it was a good idea. the teacher had recommended a number of contemporary art shows. the palais de tokyo is one art museum and occupies one half of a big building sitting on the seine. the other half of the building is occupied with the museum of modern art. we had tried to go earlier in the vacation, but there were waiting lines for both, so we had given up. today, we went back and there was a longer line for the basquiat show, but it didn’t look too bad, and i felt we had to do it this time. in fact, there was a lady trying to sell her ticket, so i bought it. since jj is under 25, she would get in for free. so we got to skip the rest of the line.

when basquiat was a hot item in new york, in the 80’s, i had not paid too much attention. he was new on the scene and there was a lot of hype about him. i sort of wrote him off as a gimmick.  now, looking at his paintings, i have to say that i like them. isn't that what happens with famous painters and their work?  with all the exposure, you get used to them, and eventually accept them.  strangely, some of my own paintings (in the “collaboration” series), have a similar feeling – though not as rebellious. it's the “child-like” look. i don’t LOVE his stuff, but i am entertained by it. there were paintings jj liked too. she had to pick 2 of them to write about for school.

"tasha, the cat" painting

"tasha, the cat" painting took me a very long time. 2 weeks. i have realized (again) that am being too constrained with photos as reference for paintings. too easy to get pulled into the details. need to loosen up and focus more on brushstrokes and rogue colors. need to work faster and from life. will go get some eggplants and red peppers and do still life had planned to do in august. in the past, i have done paintings “en pleine aire” – sitting on the side of a landscape and finishing it in 3 hours. need to go back to the freshness of that.

maynard portrait

"maynard at the door"

acrylic on canvas

18" x 22"; 46cm x 56cm

final eddie bunny

"eddie bunny"
acrylic on canvas

12" x 9"; 30cm x 24cm