This week's painting

In a hurry. Crazy week. Went to San Francisco and Portland.

Here's this week's painting. More words soon.

They're back

Well, whaddya know? It’s sunny out and I recently acquired a back yard, so I took some pictures of some paintings.

Thus: My first weekly painting is up.



If you’re on Facebook, you’ve seen it in progress.

I’ll put a page together with the scketches and the painting in progress and the final picture soon. I’ve got a wedding in MD this weekend, so I won’t have much time to get to it.

BTW, man, I love May and Memorial Day weekend and the Spring. I’m going to go outside.

It has begun

Finished the painting last night.

The cell phone pic I took of it (up on my Facebook page) is so distorted that I'm going to skip posting it here. I'll have a nice photo up on Thurs.

Here's the sketch I did before the painting:

T-Minus 3 days

Looks like the painting I worked on a couple of Saturdays ago is going to be my first weekly painting.

I still have a bunch of things that aren't worked out, like how I'm going to take pictures of these things and post them regularly. Also, last year when I started weekly paintings, I had a lot better idea of what I was going to paint.

But, never mind all that, I'm diving in.

Here's the latest progress on the painting. While it's going well and I'm achieving what I wanted, there's a problem with the current painting that makes the mouth look crooked. Also, I'm being a little tentative, I might push the contrast in part of the shadow on the face. And potentially ruin it ... Should I play it safe and guarantee a painting to start the weekly painting project, or go for it?

Find out on Thurs.

Meanwhile, I have to drive to Valhalla NY on Wed costing me a day. Oh, and next week will see me in Pittsburgh and San Francisco. Stay tuned.

Tonight

Still recovering from a trip to NYC. For work.

Well, recovered, but now my stomach’s a little wack.

Drew last night. Painting tomorrow.

Have many people to get back to on the internets. Didn’t have much internets access last week.

Hey, take a look at philly.com. Let me know what you think. I had a lot to do with it.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of making a couple of my upcoming projects plenty collaborative after a combo of being inspired by a presentation i saw last week by Sir George Martin about the creation of Sgt. Pepper and how it reminded my of things I did (on a much smaller scale with much smaller success) to be creative in the past. I’ll have more info here if I move forward with it.

If you want to participate, tell me the name of your favorite Greek Myth.

More tomorrow.

Saturday Night

Somehow I managed to have the most productive night ever on Saturday. Above the cut, a painting in progress. Below the cut, me congratulating myself. Also, Amanda Kimmel deserved to win Survivor. Just saying. And, why do the Flyers lose defensemen every time they get to the Conference finals? Thanks for the loss on my birthday in '04, if you can find a way to win three more, you can lose on my birthday this year, too!!





Between 7PM and 2:10AM
I watched parts of The Fountainhead, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and The Man Who Fell to Earth
Ate a Schwartzie from Primo's
I move all the furniture from the master bedroom into the other bedroom so we can paint
Set up the gym in my basement (after the 3rd waterheater was put in)
Did a set of crunches on the abs machine in the basement
Cleared and cleaned of my painting table (because of the installation of the 3rd waterheater)
Took out the recycling
Watched the Stars vs. Redwings
Sketched out part of the unfinished Halloween colorforms project
Caught up on some LiveJournal and Facebook
Read a little of Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
Sketched the column and worked on the painting above

I was dreaming when I wrote this forgive me ZZZZZZ

Took a nap. Had a dream.

In the dream Stephanie Seymour and her husband Peter Brandt where walking through our house before going out to dinner with my wife and myself.

They noticed the paintings I had up and both nodded. Before we entered the elevator (in my house? remember it's a dream) I asked them what they were thinking.

Peter said, "They're beautiful. I like the cheeky, beautiful ones more than the boring beautiful ones."
I said, "which ones are the cheeky ones? I have cheeky art ideas, but didn't think they ever made it to my paintings."

He pointed to two. On was like this
But was mostly warm colors, not cool and had little versions of the model, one on each of her shoulders. On the left it said BEFORE on the right it said AFTER.

The other was warm colors again, and had three images floating each above the other in vertical alignment. At the top was a woman's face, in the middle was a full figure of a man and I don't remember the bottom image.

For years I've been having recurring dreams where I meet Stephanie Seymour and I spend most of the dream searching for my business card.

A few weeks ago I had a dream where I handed her the business card shortly after meeting her.

- - - - - - - -
I woke up to my iPod playing Opiate by Tool, then Third Eye.

It's the version of Third Eye with the Timothy Leary quotes, not the Bill Hicks quotes.

Here's what I heard:

"Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities — the political, the religious, the educational authorities — who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing — forming in our minds — their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness, chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself."

A quick search to find that quote when writing this entry put in front of this Leary quote first:


"...chaos is basically good. Relax. Surf the waves of chaos and learn how to redesign your own realities. Sit back. Flow. Open your eyes. Turn off your minds. Unfocus, and let the waves of chaos roll over your brain. Float. Drift, Zoom. Design. Create new order, your order, your style from chaos.

Yes. Yes. Chaos. Yes, yes, chaos . . ."

Some people don't use watercolor because they find it to hard to control. That's exactly why i like it. It's about more than me. I'm only responsible/can-take-credit-for part of the results. But it's also a dance/agreement between order and chaos. Between what I can and can't control. The brush I use and the physics of water and pigment and cotton and gravity and humidity and atmosphere, driven by my/our consciousness.

My opinion is that these things don't come through in my paintings much. But I don't think it's a big deal.

I think what does come across is a blend of colors and emotions. My goal is to capture sentiment that is hard to express any other way.

I have been recently considering the upside/downside of using oils. These thoughts today point in the direction of sticking with watercolors ...

running out of steam.

more later

Oh and: it would make sense to paint now. I have a bachelor party to go to. I will sketch on the train ride over to Philly. I do plan to paint tomorrow. Tune in to find out how that goes ...

you are jealous

I am going here tonight:
http://www.chillertheatre.com/gt/gtc4.htm

i plan to paint some time tomorrow or sunday. however, i have a bachelor party tomorrow and trish comes back from boston on sun. still don't have that weekly deadline for another few weeks.

here's the next image i'm painting: