Daily Painting

I realize that lately, I have been sitting down to paint, feeling too lazy to set up my easel every time I go for plein-air. I was thinking of how to be loose - big brushes, big movements, and realized that sitting just doesn't make that possible. Gripping the brush with an overhand grip, or using my opposite (left) may all be conducive to looser bolder movements where tightness and details are not important, at least in the beginning. So, no more sitting. I read somewhere that you can use your wrist and move the brush with small tight strokes. Moving from the elbow gives bigger movements, and you cannot get too detailed that way. Moving from the shoulder gives yet bigger movements. Now I realize sitting and standing are worlds apart - and the latter makes you looser, lets you have distance to the paper, and allows you to move more than just your wrist. Today I went plein-air painting on my own to downtown Los Altos, and was drawn to this scene because of the bright yellow umbr...

In cognitive therapy, you challenge your original thoughts so that you can think in a more healthy way. I think of it as talking yourself out of something you believe in that is bringing you down. I am hereby defining cognitive painting as painting with more awareness, trying to recall all that I have learned, and actually slowing down and applying it to the process, and not discovering at critique time what I should have actually done. I know so much theory from all my reading, but because it is more learned than practiced, I forget half of it when I start to paint. Today, I told myself that there is an invisible teacher sitting on my shoulder, talking me through the process. Big Shapes, she whispered, and I looked for the big shapes. Value Studies, she said, and then added, at least four. So I obediently did one and loved it. Then I forced myself to do another, and another. I didn't do the fourth one because I was happy with the third one. She wasn't pleased. Focal poin...

In my first painting, I did a preliminary sketch and then in the painting, saved the whites, and worked with light layers of a limited palette. All that painstaking planning led to a very mediocre painting. I think I know why. Later, I was walking with a fellow painter to lunch, and she said she doesn't do value studies because they don't help her. I told her I always do a value study. Then I found myself thinking that when they work, they work, and the painting works. When they don't work, I will sometimes do the painting anyway. ! Why? I don't know. I feel it'll be ok, and ignore the message the little thumbnail is giving me. I have almost never done a series of thumbnails to work something out. That's what they say you should do, that thye don't take long, they are quick and avoid potential problems. I give it a first shot - good or bad - and then attack my painting. That is what happened today. The value study had the same problems the painting does. ...

"Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?" "Supposing it didn't," said Pooh after careful thought. Piglet was comforted by this.                                             -- A.A. Milne I took a meditation/self-help class last year, and we were asked to do an exercise of writing down what stressed us the most. Next to that, to write a solution to that stress point. My stress point was "paint big," and the solution, very simply, was "Don't." As with Piglet above, I was extremely comforted by this. I tell myself I am not ready, that I will get there. But I see others paint big, most competitions require a certain minimum dimension, and though I've met that minimum, the urge and pressure is still there to paint BIG. I was pleased to be accepted into the Small Works Exhibit in Florida - it takes skill to do a pleasing small work, just as much as i...

I have heard some artists say that they can visualize their final painting right at the beginning, and work towards getting there. Others say they don't know where it might be headed, but they are responding to the moment, what it needs, and the final product may be whatever it is. When I was writing more, some of the writers I read about also said something similar - that they know how it all ends, they simply have to write each chapter towards that end goal. Yet others said each chapter may be a discovery, and the ending could be anything, depending on the surprises during their journey of discovering what their plot was about. As an architect, I feel I can visualize a space as I am designing, and it helps me solve problems - about ceiling heights, how something might connect to something else, intricate details - many times, I can visualize the answer, and sketching it out may help that resolution. With painting, however, I cannot visualize the end product. I see the source,...

When I first saw the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley many, many years ago, I think I was awed by its massiveness, its sheer size, its grandeur, and its setting, perched up on a hill, looking down at all else. Seeing the Claremont again last weekend as an artist, not just as an architect, had a completely different impact on me. The whites, the stunning whites, its overall silhouette against the blue sky, and of course, the datils and all the shadows on its white facade, made it eminently paintable. It is one thing to assess a building as a design or for its constructability, and quite another as a subject to paint, where you think about the right viewing angle, the perspective, perhaps a different color palette, and its overall impact as a painting. Here are a few studies. The first, a value study in graphite; the second, a "painting the shade" study; and the third, a larger piece that evidently needs more pop, more darks.   

I realized that when I see a completed watercolor by another artist, I judge it for what it is - composition, subject, technique, and of course, the impact on me of the overall painting. Without being able to see their direct subject, or reference material, I only have the art to look at and have an opinion on, since there is nothing else to compare it with. With my own work, however, whether or not I did justice to the subject is a huge part of the overall feeling I have. Lack of objectivity for the painting is bad enough without this added parameter of comparison to the subject. I cannot forget the subject. Only time will slowly fade it away, and perhaps that is part of the magic that happens when an erstwhile not-great painting starts to look not-bad. I pass by this building occasionally and am always struck by the darks - almost like a black and white scene devoid of color, other than the flag. I didn't want to use black and wanted to make my own, so attempted this en plein a...