A Nectarine

Oil on gessoed paper, 3.5x3.75"

So we made the move to Minnesota, of course. With all the excitement of moving into a new house, starting a new job, and getting settled in, there has been almost no time for painting. But I did manage to sit down the other day in my new studio with my brushes and a nectarine to do some work. After a few months away from painting, I wasn't sure how it would turn out. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I hadn't forgotten everything I've learned.

As if moving halfway across the country and starting a job weren't enough, Laura and I decided to adopt a puppy! We've been debating about this for, well, always. And a sweet, fuzzy, one year old cockapoo was offered to us free of charge. We weren't sure about it, but after puppysitting him for a weekend we found that he had suckered us in. So we kept him. He's housebroken, which is wonderful. And he loves attention, which I don't think will make it very easy to increase the time I get to spend painting. But he's a sweetheart and we are so thankful to have the little furball.

So I present to you, Hero the Cockapoo.

Prosperity

Oil on gessobord, 7x5"

After Christmas break, one of the students that I have worked with for the last couple years brought a gift for me from Malaysia, where his parents live. The gift was three statuettes, representing Luck, Long Life, and Prosperity. Since then I've been itching to paint them. I started this one a couple weeks ago, and built up several layers of paint to bring out the shadows and highlights. Hopefully it won't be too long before I paint the other two.

My wife and I are leaving Thursday for Minnesota! The apartment is a maze of boxes and assorted treasures that we have collected over the years and there is a still a lot of packing left to be done. We arrive at our new house on Saturday. Of course, this means that it could be a while before we get settled in enough for me to get back to painting and posting on the blog. We are making one detour on our trip: As we pass through Ohio we'll head down to Cincinnati to see my painting in the show at Manifest Gallery. Should be fun.

Commission-Maple Leaf in Mische

Oil and egg tempera on masonite, 6x6"

This fall a colleague gave me a maple leaf and said she wanted to commission a painting of it. I made a couple attempts that I wasn't satisfied with, and then our wedding and honeymoon pushed the painting to the back burner. Once I learned the mische technique, I thought it would be a great way to capture the depth of colors within the leaf. Thankfully, the client was patient and I had a photo of the original leaf to work from. So here it is, my first commission.

Pensive

Oil and egg tempera on masonite, 6x6"

This is another painting done in the mische technique. It is based on a photo of my wife sitting in front of a window. This is actually the second mische painting that I started, but waiting for all the layers to dry made it take months to complete.

Baby Roma Tomato

Mixed media (oil and acrylic) on canvas panel, 6x6"

I tried something a little different with this one. I don't typically do underpaintings, but with all I'm learning from the Renaissance painting class, I thought I'd see what I could incorporate into a more direct painting. I first did a layer of burnt umber acrylic paint for the darkest parts of the background and some of the shading on the tomato. That dried while I cleaned out my brushes. Then I went in with my oils and painted the whole thing the way I normally would. The background is the same color of green throughout, but the bottom layer of dark brown resulted in some dramatic shadows. It made for a rather neat effect, something I'll keep in mind for future paintings. Waiting fifteen minutes for an acrylic underpainting to dry certainly beats waiting several days for the same underpainting to dry in oils!

Magnitude 7 show

Oil on masonite, 6x6"

The astute blog reader will notice that this painting was posted way back on August 10 of last year. So why is it up again? I am shipping this one off to Ohio this weekend. The Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati is hosting their annual Magnitude 7 show. This is a juried show of works that measure 7" or less in any dimension. Since many of the paintings I've been doing lately fit that criterion, I decided to submit a few pieces. Much to my delight, this one made the cut. Since the piece had been sold a couple months ago, I had to get permission from the owner before submitting it, but she was excited about the possibility of having her painting shown. So I framed it in a wide black frame and now it's ready to go.

I must confess, I'm feeling pretty proud about getting accepted into this show. They had about 550 pieces submitted from the US and abroad, but only 51 pieces will be shown. So that's pretty tough odds. The show will run from June 6 through July 3 if anyone happens to be in the Cincinnati area next month.

Acorn Squash

Oil and egg tempera on masonite, 6x6"

Here’s another painting done in the mische technique. It might be my favorite one so far. When you see it in real life, it’s amazing how much it seems to pop off the panel. It looks like you could reach into the painting, grab the stem, and run off to make some squash soup. If you were into squash soup, that is. Unfortunately, the photo has a bit of glare, but hopefully you can still get the point.

Continuing the steady stream of life updates, our house-hunting trip to Minnesota proved fruitful: we got a house! We worked with a fantastic realtor (who happens to be my dad) and did a whirlwind tour of available homes in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis. We found a great one with lots of space and a big yard just at the top of our price range (turns out the great houses are never at the bottom of your price range). We made an offer on Monday, they counter-offered on Tuesday, we counter-counter-offered that night, and they accepted our offer on Wednesday! So now we just have to wait for home inspections and everything else that goes into closing the sale. We haven't decided yet which room will be my studio, but there's lots of space so we shouldn't have any trouble finding a spot.

Apple in Mische Technique

Oil and egg tempera on masonite, 6x6" NFS

Here is the very first Renaissance style painting that I started. I know, you already saw a couple of them a while ago. But this was the first one that we started back in January, it just took longer than the others. There are at least ten layers of paint in this piece, starting with earth red and ending with cadmium red--with many other colors in between. I really like the way that the apple comes out from the background. The apple I was painting from had very strange markings on it, as you can see. But by the fourth week of painting, it was definitely getting brown all over. So I took a photo of the apple and had to use that to finish the painting. Unfortunately, none of the photos that I took of the painting came out very well. As with the other Renaissance style paintings, there is a touch of medium (a mixture of varnish, linseed oil, and paint thinner) mixed in with the paint to make it a little more translucent for glazing, so it has a bit more sheen than paintings that don’t have any medium. That sheen makes it difficult to photograph without there being a glare. I’ll try to get a better photo sometime soon.

In other news, remember that job I was interviewing for in Minnesota? Well I got it! My wife and I have decided to make the move to the Midwest and we’re actually flying back to Minnesota this weekend to look at houses. Wish us luck!

Petrov

Oil on canvas panel, 6x6"

My wife used to live in Cambridge, just off Massachusetts Avenue. There was a cute little Asian crafts shop on Mass Ave that we were always curious about. We went in one evening, and discovered that their main product was an amazing line of handmade lamps. They looked like something you would find growing in a forest, but with a light inside. There was a little white dog living in the store who was very cute. But his tongue was too big, and about a fourth of it hung out of his mouth at all times. In typical dog fashion, he didn't seem to mind, and was still very generous with his kisses to strangers. Suffice to say, the lamps were all pretty expensive for our budget, but we wanted to support the local business. We found this little terra cotta statuette that reminded us of the white dog with the funny tongue. So we bought it, and my wife named him Petrov. And little Petrov has been with us ever since, sometimes traveling with us when we go on vacation.

Speaking of travel, I'll be in Minnesota most of this coming week, interviewing for a job. So there likely won't be any new posts till next weekend. But I should be finishing some of my Renaissance style paintings soon, so there will be more paintings to share before long. By the way, Petrov will be staying here. Someone has to protect my wife while I'm away.

Do you think he likes it?

Sagittarius

Oil on masonite, 6x6"

The instructor of my Renaissance Painting class has said several times that it's a great technique for painting night skies. Intrigued, I thought I'd give it a try. First I looked up the constellation Sagittarius online to find a star pattern (it's my birth sign). From there, the painting started out in the same way as others: A layer of transparent earth red with white egg tempera in the lightest areas. Then a layer of yellow ochre went over the whole painting, with more tempera for the stars and astral clouds. Over this layer, patches of red and green were painted in thinly, with more tempera in the brightest stars and lightest parts of the nebula clouds. At this point, the painting looked like some crazy galactic Christmas story. Finally, two layers of ultramarine blue with more tempera went on. And that's when it really started to look like a night sky. Even though the "distant" stars are only behind a fraction of a millimeter of paint, they do appear to recede by light years. The tempera got a little too thick in the middle section, but the overall effect came out pretty neat and now I have a funky new (but very old) approach to painting a night sky!

Full Glass, Empty Bottle

Oil on gessobord, 5x7"

I started this one about a week ago and worked on it for an hour or two at a time since then. I haven’t done many paintings of glass before, so it was an interesting challenge. Of course, this was a pretty simple glass. Because I worked on it over the course of about a week, I was able to paint in layers and build the color up over time. This was helpful for making some of the reflections in the bottle and in the light shining through the wine.

Little Pepper

Acrylic on stretched canvas, 2.5x3.5"

I've had these tiny stretched canvases sitting around for several months. Last night I didn't have much time to paint, so I decided one of these mini-canvases would be perfect. I pulled a little red pepper out of the fridge and went to it. I haven't been using acrylic paints much lately--they dry so quickly that the paint on one side of a shape is dry by the time I've gotten to the other side, which limits color mixing on the canvas. But when making such a small painting, the quick drying time is not much of a concern. I had fun making this little guy, and I've got a stack of these mini-canvases on the shelf. Perhaps there will be more tiny paintings down the road.

Hawaiian Glow

Oil on canvas panel, 10x8"

While on our honeymoon, we took a helicopter tour of the island of Kauai. It was pretty cool, flying over the tops of mountains and into the depths of valleys. It had been quite rainy, so there were waterfalls everywhere as the rainwater made it's way back to the sea. Also thanks to the recent rain, the air was pretty misty. So as the sun got lower in the sky, it created quite a glow through the valleys. That's what I tried to capture with this painting. The lush green in the foreground shadows and the misty glow as sunlight hit the mountains in the distance. Not sure how successful I was, but one thing about this blog is that I post all my paintings, the hits and the misses.

Three Clems, Two Stems

Oil on masonite, 6x6" SOLD

My wife was out of town last weekend so I filled my time with a bunch of painting. I worked on a couple layers for paintings for my Renaissance class and did a couple complete paintings, too. Sadly, it's taken me till today to start getting anything posted. As the title suggests, two of these clementines had stubby little stems, but the third must have been a divine creation. When I was about 90% done, I put the painting up on a shelf so I could step back and see what needed some tweaking. Well, the masking tape that held it to a larger support board decided to quit it's job, causing the painting to fall onto the ironing board, then onto my shirt, then my pants, then onto a button down that was hanging on the ironing board, before it finally came to rest on my foot. Wet paint clearly marked each step of this path. Needless to say, the painting was not looking so good, either. But the funny thing about oil paint is that it is a forgiving medium, if you ask for it. Not one to give up, I went back to work (with stronger tape) and managed to smooth out the smudges and recover what was left of my painting. That button down shirt, however...

O R E O

Oil on masonite, 6x6"

Turns out that taking one bite out of an Oreo, and then staring at it for the next several hours is actually not that much fun. A couple hours into this painting I was getting frustrated with the way the paint was (not) behaving. Then I decided to try some of the glazing techniques I’m learning about in my class and was pleasantly surprised to find that things actually started going much better. Imagine that: the kid can learn.

Pepper Pals

Oil on masonite, 6x6”

In addition to having a very long stem, the yellow pepper had a deep indentation on one side, into which the orange pepper happened to fit perfectly. As though they were meant to snuggle. Those peppers, so sweet.

Voggy Sunset

Mische technique (oil and egg tempera) on masonite, 6x6"

Finally! I have finished my first Renaissance style painting! This painting was done in many layers, starting with a base of transparent earth red (basically, burnt sienna). While that layer was still wet, I put in a layer of white egg tempera for the brighter areas. When that was dry a week later, a layer of yellow ochre was laid over the whole painting, with another layer of white egg tempera in the lighter areas. From there more layers of color were put in, with a week of drying time in between each. The purpose of the egg tempera is to create bright areas that glow through the layers of color above them. This technique is called Mische Technique, and is a resurrection of the methods used by Flemish masters of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The inspiration for this painting was a photo taken on our honeymoon. At the end of a day of hiking around volcanoes on the Big Island of Hawaii, we drove down to the shore in time for sunset. It was a particularly "voggy" day, as the locals told us. London has fog, LA has smog, Hawaii has vog. It's when there is a lot of volcanic emissions in the air, causing a rather stinky fog. But it certainly makes for some cool light effects! Sunset on this day did not have the pinks and oranges that I am accustomed to, instead there was a strange golden film everywhere, obscuring all but the brightest reflections in the distance.

Where've I been?

Yes, yes, I know, it has been four months since my last post. You got bored. Well, wedding planning, honeymooning, the holidays... all that took a higher priority. The wedding was wonderful, though, just so you know. And married life has been fantastic. So I guess that's a fair trade off, in the end. Our honeymoon was lots of fun, but who knew that Hawaii could get downpours every day for two weeks straight? We found that out the hard way. But it's true what they say, rain does bring rainbows. And hopefully some of the pictures we took there will find their way into paintings sooner or later.

Since I have been out of practice, I decided to take a class to get me back into painting mode. The class I'm taking is Renaissance Painting Techniques at the Massachusetts College of Art. This technique is actually quite different from the way I usually paint. Typically, I've done more direct painting. Meaning that I pretty much paint the color that I want something to be right away, and I usually finish paintings in one or two sittings. Well, that's not how the Dutch and Italian masters did it back in the old days. They did paintings in many stages and layers, creating images of great depth and luminosity. So that's what I'm learning to do now. But each painting takes 8 weeks or more to complete! Even though each stage of the painting might only take an hour or so to do, you then have to wait for the paint to dry before moving on to the next step. Since it's oil paint, it usually takes a week before it's dry enough to add the next layer. Which begs the question, when am I going to have anything new to post here? Patience young grasshopper. I do have three paintings in progress, but they won't be done for five or six more weeks. And so far they're just brown and white. So there's not much to see. But I will post them as they get finished. And if I do anything else of interest, I'll put that up, too.