Still on the Easel

Caumsett, Late Afternoon, 4/14

2010-04-19T22:23:00.002-04:00

I hiked about two miles to the beach at Caumsett, by which time it was already almost 6 p.m. The park closes at dusk which at this point in April is about 7:15. I figured that the hike back would take me a half hour and I didn't want to be stumbling around in the dark. So that didn't leave much time to paint. That meant that this was about forty minutes of painting.

Back at home I spent another hour to hour and a half finishing this. It's 11 by 14 inches, oil on linen.

America, where gimmicks trump genuine achievement

2010-03-30T17:26:00.004-04:00

When people talk about artist Scott Wade's dirty pictures they are not referring to the salacious content but to his preferred medium, grimy car windshields. I have to admit this is an amusing idea, particularly when the subject is the reinterpretation of a renaissance masterpiece like Boticelli's Venus.

But browsing through his site, one eventually has to confront a question like this: Aside from the choice of medium, how good is he as an artist? In this country it sometimes appears that we value cleverness over actual achievement, wit over work.

Maybe Marshal McLuhan was right. The medium is the message.

Hands and arms

2010-03-28T16:03:00.002-04:00

There is nothing better than working on that at which you are weakest. Hands? Noses? Ears? If they are a weak point it's good to hit the weakness head-on and work on it until it's no longer a weakness.

Marcello

2010-03-28T15:57:00.004-04:00

From Saturday afternoon at the Art Students League in New York. A long pose, about an hour and 20 minutes.

Diana in the American Wing at the Met

2010-03-26T23:27:00.002-04:00

Quick sketch. Kinda makes Diana look like she's standing on a stack of books, doesn't it. Oh well, a 15 minute sketch from the cafe in the enclosed courtyard there. Very relaxing spot.

'The Mourners' at the Met

2010-03-26T22:54:00.006-04:00

In the group of artists with whom I associate, everybody is talking about the show of drawings by Bronzino at the Met. It is an unusual and perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime show that brings together all of the 70 or so drawings known by this artist.

OK, I did see the show but maybe I'm a bit jaded, or maybe it's because I've been looking at reproductions of many of these drawings for years. Maybe it was that stuffy, claustrophobic, dark room where the Met holds all of its drawing shows, but I was not as excited as I expected to be.

The show that DID excite me is on the first floor in the Met's Medieval Galleries and it's simply called "The Mourners." The mourners in question are a series of 37 or so alabaster sculptures created by Jean de la Huerta and Antoine Le Moiturier for the base of the tomb of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy. They were created in the mid-15th century and most are in exquisite condition after 560 years.

Part of the charm experienced when viewing these sculptures is that they are each only about 16 inches tall. Another part of the magic is the dramatic manner in which the Met has lit them. Follow this link to the Met's description the show and look for the further link there to the FRAME display online which will allow viewers to rotate each of these little masterpieces 360 degrees.

Saturday afternoon

2010-03-16T18:31:00.002-04:00

No matter what else has gone on during the rest of the week, I know that on Saturday afternoon I can drop into a zen-like state as I try to render the human form as observed in the model's poses at the Art Students League. The League has been in operation since the 1870s and has occupied its current building since 1898. The studio where we draw is on the second floor across from the gallery. I was told that our second floor studio was used at one time by William Merritt Chase, among others. But the roster of students who've studied there is as impressive as the faculty.

James Lancel McElhinney teaches anatomy and drawing the human figure there and I've been working as his monitor for a couple of years now. For more info on the class and what it has to offer follow this link to our Facebook page.

Nobody doesn't like Banksy

2010-03-04T20:56:00.007-05:00

OK, maybe Queen Elizabeth doesn't like Banksy. And maybe if you're the building landlord, depending on what image he puts on your wall, you might not like Banksy. But it's hard not to love the work of an anonymous graffiti artist who has this much wit and such a comprehensive command of potent imagery as this fellow has. The image above, done in New York City, is rumored to have been commissioned by the building owner.

His work is in a number of museums. Or was, anyway. In some, it only stayed for a couple of hours before the guards noticed that something new had been smuggled into the place and surreptitiously stuck on the wall.

Banksy is the nom de brush of a so-far-unidentified British graffiti artist who is believed to be male and born about 1974. His renderings can be witty and edgy commentaries on our consumer culture but they can just as easily be damning political commentary. They are never mundane.

Executed quickly with the aid of large-scale, pre-cut stencils and a limited palette of spray-paint colors, Banksy's works, when they can be removed or pried loose from their building exteriors, have sometimes commanded sums in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, though it's not clear that the artist himself realizes any of that profit.

Soon we'll get to see a film made with his co-operation. Exit Through the Gift Shop is scheduled for release, Spring, 2010.

There's a link to his own web-site here, which includes the trailer for the movie, graffiti he has posted around the world and photos of Banksy art in museums.

Channeling Vermeer

2010-03-03T20:28:00.002-05:00

The painter Jonathan Janson does an amazing job channeling the spirit of Jan Vermeer in the creation of his nonetheless rather contemporary paintings. (His website here.)

You might be surprised to know that Janson is not shy about sharing the secrets of painting like this old master. His website offers discs and a book on how to imitate the working method and technique of the 17th century Delft painter. The book is a very worthy effort, but like a lot of self-published books it suffers terribly from a lack of editing. (The copy I bought has substantial groups of pages that were cut and pasted to reappear in other places in the book as if Janson was not quite sure where they really belonged.) Nonetheless, his gist of the method is reasonably presented and very workable for the average painter.

Janson's affection for Vermeer goes even further in his highly developed website, the Essential Vermeer, which includes a number of quite useful devices seldom encountered on the internet, like a scale comparison of each of Vermeer's paintings and a thorough discussion of Vermeer's probable use of the camera obsucra.

Lucian Freud, a shy painter speaks

2010-03-02T18:59:00.005-05:00

What looks like a fascinating film about Lucian Freud will be released next week in Paris to coincide with the artist's birthday. Called The God of Small Things, Lucian Freud Captured on Film was put together by Tim Meara. There is a trailer for the film that one can see on the website, Painting Perceptions, maintained by Larry Groff, here.

Groff has also put up an extensive and thoughtful multi-part video interview that will provide considerable insight into the work of this artist, whom Robert Hughes called "our greatest living painter." The normally shy and somewhat reclusive Freud was filmed in 1988 for that interview.

More pine cones

2010-02-28T20:53:00.004-05:00

For reasons described in an earlier post, I have a thing for pine cones. Readers will also know that I have a similar sort of affection for sea shells, loose feathers and odd rocks.

Here is a larger painting, 30 x 36 inches, oil on Belgian linen. I did this a year ago looking at pine cones and the shadows they cast in the sunlight through a nearby window. I liked the way the pine cones and thier shadows seemed to dance in a line against the sunlight.

The painting is titled, "Bear Mountain Boogie Woogie."

Re-evaluation

2010-02-28T12:30:00.008-05:00

Above is a painting I did almost three years ago. Oil on linen, 9 x 12 inches. I didn't think much of it at the time but came across it recently and, looking at it fresh, felt better about it. My wife, Renee, does not care for the odd assemblage of subject matter, but when I did it I was thinking about how much I admired the work of mid-20th century artist and art director Walter Murch.

Murch did some wonderful paintings that one might call industrial still-life. As an illustrator he did covers for magazines like Fortune. In his fine art, Murch was not afraid to combine disparate objects into a painting that left people wondering what the odd combination meant. His seemed to be a representational artist's response in the conversation about surrealism.

By the light which defines them

2010-02-26T16:35:00.002-05:00

My father used to pick up pine cones while he hiked looking for birds. I don't know what recommended certain pine cones for transport back to our house. Among the thousands along his path a few came back and tended to end up on dresser tops and mantle pieces. I will admit to being partial to them in the same way.

He also picked up the odd bird feather, stone or seashell. All that looking at the ground for things to pick up, it's a wonder he ever saw the birds he claimed to be looking for. Maybe his neck hurt from looking up in the sky so much and scanning the ground below was a nice change of pace.

Carnival in Web World

2010-02-19T14:14:00.005-05:00

Alan Taylor, a web developer for Boston.com, has assembled a really beautiful collection of 39 photos from around the world, centered on the theme of Carnival. The costumes are astounding, the exuberance is contagious and the photography is mesmerizing. And, no, they're not all from Rio. See the photos in large format, here.

Quiz

2010-02-19T13:15:00.005-05:00

How much art history do you know? Can you recognize and correctly identify 25 self-portraits by famous artists of the past? Here's a fun quiz created by Artists Online. Click the link, here. On the site you can roll your mouse over the image of an individual painting for an identification. (Full disclosure: I got 22 of 25 correct.)

2010-02-15T20:35:00.002-05:00

I'm never sure whether our model, Cathy, is dozing or just peering through those squinty eyes. If I were her, holding a pose like this all afternoon, I know I'd be dozing.

She is the daughter of one of the original Disney animators and grew up in California. At a fairly young age she was posing for the animators doing the sequential poses they required to put together first generations of cartoons.

She's also done voice-over work for animation as well. She joins a long list of notable models at the Art Students League in New York. Models that reportedly included, at various times, Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston and Madonna. I believe Kevin Bacon modeled here as well at one point.

Most, however, are not famous. But, New York being New York, the job has attracted a great many actors and dancers who could use an income between jobs.

Work in progress

2010-02-10T18:32:00.004-05:00

This is a bit larger than I have been working. It's 24 x 20 inches and it's a gallery wrap canvas. I don't know why I got that kind of canvas. While I do like the thickness and substantial heft of the gallery wrap, it's a pain in the butt to frame.

The subject is my 26 year old son, a sergeant, crew chief and flight instructor in the Army. He joined the Army in July of 2001, just months before 9/11.

He has served in South Korea and Iraq as well as Fairbanks, Alaska. He's escorted Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and various other generals and dignitaries at various times. He lives and breathes Blackhawk helicopters.

I am grateful that Peter returned in one piece from 15 months in one of Iraq's deadliest cities. I think he is grateful for that as well.

Over Christmas my wife and I visited him and our daughter-in-law in Virgina where he is now stationed. After postings in Kirkuk, Iraq and Fairbanks, Alaska, it's nice to have him a little closer to home. This summer he and Amanda are planning a trip to Niagara Falls during which they'll spend some time with us here on Long Island.

6th of 7 Portraits

2010-01-12T19:38:00.004-05:00

Has it really been this long since my last post?

This is the sixth of seven portraits for 'The Portrait Project.' Our committment to each other was that each of the seven of us would paint a self-portrait and portraits of at least two others in the group. We agreed to reassess the project at the one-year mark which is coming up in the next month. By completing the portrait of Myung-ja, above, I've done six. That leaves just Kurt Tatum whose image I have started and moved along, not quite to the half-way point.

More pine cones and sea shells

2009-11-15T12:52:00.004-05:00

Each 8 x 10 inches. Smaller than I really care to work but some shows in the NYC area during the holidays require "small" to be no larger than an 8 x 10 image.

Helene Balzarini

2009-11-08T13:41:00.003-05:00

Another artist in the Portrait Project: Helene Pinnisi Balzarini. If artists could choose their names I would gravitate towards names like Pinnisi or Balzarini. These names just sound inherently artistic, right?

This is not finished but fairly far along. She put her left hand on the wall as I took a reference photo. I asked her to move it up slightly to better fit the composition. She left her painting apron on, which I like for the color element. Helene wears glasses but took them off. This was a good move. The glasses have a very distinctive look and I suspect in a few years a picture of her in those glasses would look dated.

Work in Progress - Kevin

2009-10-31T20:33:00.002-04:00

This just goes to show you how ghastly things can get in the underpainting stage. Night before last his face was green. It all gets better in the final stages. Honest!

Progress in the Portrait Project

2009-10-25T18:49:00.002-04:00

Top to bottom: Michael Elsasser, Claudia Monaco and moi. Sea earlier posts for preliminary drawings. Obviously I like horizontal compositions for these portraits and I also like side or back-lit light sources. The shadow areas are built up in multiple glazes of alternating complimentary colors Terra verte mixed with a tiny piece of viridian in one glaze and vermilion mixed with a little alizarin crimson in the next glaze.

Meself

2009-10-14T21:11:00.003-04:00

At the drawing and under-painting stage.

Another contribution to the portrait project I have mentioned in earlier posts. Tough to look at oneself and acknowledge that I don't look as I did when I was twenty-five. You would think the mirror would do a pretty good job of accomplishing that but we do have a way of deceiving ourselves and, for an artist that doesn't go away until we drag a brush over every square inch of the face.

At that point the tendency may be to go too far in the other direction. Earlier self-portraits have prompted others to tell me that I'm not that gray, etc. Maybe this time I'll nail it.

Mistakes in a drawing

2009-10-11T17:56:00.003-04:00

As I look at this now I realize that the perspective for the wainscoting is at the wrong angle when compared to the angle of the line where the floor meets the wall. I also realized that the leg of her chair nearest the viewer was in the wrong place so I re-drew it with my eraser, placing it a little closer to the other leg and in line with the back of the chair.

But I'm fairly happy with my rendering of the figure herself. She's a new model and I don't know her name. She seemed Eastern European or Russian.

Michael and Claudia, drawing and underpainting.

2009-10-07T19:44:00.004-04:00

Michael Elsasser and Claudia Monaco are two of the other artists participating in what seven of us have come to call our 'portrait project.' We have agreed to spend a year or so each doing a minimum of two portraits of other artists in our group plus a self-portrait. The end of our year will come in January and at that point we hope to find a venue in which to exhibit our results.

I started my self-portrait and another rendering of Claudia in the spring, but after staring at the canvases for a number of months have decided to start over with entirely new compositions.

Except for Claudia who is a fairly new member of our group, the rest of us met six years ago at the Art Students League in Manhattan in Sherry Camhy's drawing and anatomy class. We have all since moved on to other classes at the League but we now get together for lunch once a month to share progress on our project and swap other stories.

Michael, for example, was just featured in Connoisseur Magazine. An article written by a magazine editor describes first-hand what it's like to purchase a portrait painted by Michael and add it to his collection.

Eva

2009-10-05T20:13:00.001-04:00

A new model, Eva. Well, new to us anyway. She is petite and athletic. This drawing took about an hour with a number 4B pencil.

Tyrone at the Art Students League

2009-09-27T11:50:00.005-04:00

Tyrone held one pose for the afternoon on Saturday, posing in sessions of 20 minutes each with five minute breaks, seated on a high stool in front of an old plaster bas-relief. James McElhinney's class is focused on drawing, the figure and anatomy. The class runs from 1 pm. until 4:30. These four drawings, each done with a 6B pencil, represent one afternoon's work.

Note: image enlarges if you click on it.

Looking across Oyster Bay from Center Island

2009-09-18T19:47:00.005-04:00

Beautiful weather this week and clear skies. This is an abridged and edited view that comes at the top of a small hill on a weekly bike ride I do. I'm not a sailor, so I don't know for sure, but the boat off in the distance looked positively 19th century.

Cold Spring Harbor, Dusk, Plein Air Painting

2009-09-16T22:23:00.000-04:00

Oil on masonite panel. About two hours.

Figure drawing, year six

2009-09-15T19:26:00.005-04:00

Laetitia has turned her back on you.

These were done with a 7B pencil, the top drawing in two minutes, the drawing below it in the course of roughly an hour, in three twenty-minute poses, punctuated with five-minute breaks.

I've been going into the Art Students League in Manhattan on Saturdays or Sundays now for six years. Before that I tried briefly going in one week night each week but it was tough fighting traffic and trying not to get into class too late. Weekends are better.

I drove in for a few years. It was especially nice when I had a Sunday morning class just after the city revoked parking fees under the campaign that people shouldn't have to "pay to pray" on Sundays. But after a year the rest of the world figured out that parking in the city is free on Sundays and now I'm convinced that ghouls circle the city at midnight on Saturday nights waiting for the clock to strike and grab their spaces.

I did take the summer off, although most years I have continued in one class or another.

I'm of a mind to take a sculpture class but the only weekend class offered in sculpture at the League is one in which students work life size. For a guy who lives on Long Island that's a bit daunting. I'd like to bring my work home when it's finished and I'd prefer not to have to contract with a mover to do so.

The sketchbook project

2009-09-01T11:17:00.003-04:00

The Sketchbook Project, as it was called, invited artists to fill rather small, modest sketchbooks and submit them to a traveling show. I did as requested and to my surprise the show traveled quite a bit this year. Perhaps you saw it in one of the following venues:

Atlanta, GA, Art House Gallery;
Washington, DC, Museum of Contempory Art DC;
Philadelphia, PA, Chris' Jazz Café;
Boston, MA, Laconia Gallery;
Chicago, IL, Antena Gallery;
Chicago IL, Art Source Gallery;
St. Louis, MO, Soulard Art Market;
Brooklyn, NY, 3rd Ward Gallery;
Atlanta, GA, Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA);

The Art House Gallery is all about staging large participatory exhibits like this. Their current project involves having as many artists as possible fill a handful of tiny canvases which are then exhibited mosaic style in the Atlanta airport.

Fun stuff.

At the end of the day

2009-08-23T17:06:00.001-04:00

Progress report

2009-08-18T12:30:00.005-04:00

HERE ARE TWO PAINTINGS I started some time ago, paintings on which I just resumed work. The little rowboat is was spotted catching sunlight in late May from between the planks of the dock at Islesford on Little Cranberry Island, Maine.

The young lady is another imaginary beach queen wearing a paper crown. James McElhinney with whom I've worked for several years at the Art Students League in New York refers to this kind of pose as "one of the mud-flap girls."

Exhibiting at the Salmagundi Club

2009-08-16T14:31:00.004-04:00

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, the Salmagundi Club is a grand old artists' organization on Fifth Avenue just below 12th Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. It's a couple of blocks north of Washington Square.

The above oil painting of my wife is there in a juried portraiture show along with works by other notable artist members.

Plein Air at the Vanderbilt Museum, Centerport

2009-08-14T21:31:00.000-04:00

I HAD A GREAT TIME yesterday afternoon and evening painting on the grounds of the Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium. Heavy clouds and predictions of thunderstorms threatened our afternoon but by 4 o'clock or so it was clear that blue sky was taking over and we'd have a nice evening.

It was fun painting in the good comapny of accomplished painters like Anthony Davis, Jane McGraw-Teubner, Esther Marie Chagaris and David Monteiro.

At 6 pm the grounds opened up for the annual Northport Rotary Club's "Wine in the Courtyard" celebration and 700 paying guests surveyed our efforts for the day. The two images shown here 14 x 11 and 11 x 14 inches respectively were what I had to show for a day spent admiring the view across Centerport Harbor from the bluff behind the mansion, looking off toward Asharokan and farther still toward the Connecticut shore.

Gary Erbe's trompe l'oeil painted collages

2009-08-10T09:14:00.000-04:00

I went into NYC Saturday to drop off a couple of paintings for two upcoming shows at the Salmagundi Club. If you don't know this grand old place, you should stop in for a visit. It's one of the oldest art organizations in the country. The club occupies a townhouse built in the 1850s on lower fifth avenue just a few blocks north of Washington Square. The building has been used in a number of movies, most recently the club library was used in "The Good Shepherd." But I'll save all that for another posting.

Saturday was the last day of a wonderful retrospective exhibit by Gary Erbe, an artist one might describe as a hyper realist, in the tradition of William Harnett and John Peto. But unlike those 19th century masters Erbe often works quite large. You can see a great many of his works on his website but there's nothing quite like seeing them in person. Some are very large indeed.

One theme that fascinated me was a series of paintings of abstract collages. The textures of papers overlapping each other are minutely examined and delineated in paint. But what makes these works unique is Erbe's reverence for the abstract, perhaps a rather unusual quality for one who works so hyper real.

I was fortunate enough that when I saw this exhibit that Erbe himself was there and we chatted for a few moments. I told him that I was flattered to see two newspaper front pages done long ago at Newsday (where I was director of design) were included in one of his largest paintings ("Subway Series"). I assumed that he had included the Newsday front pages because he lives on Long Island where the paper circulates.

"No," he said. "I live in Hoboken."

He had simply included those newspaper front pages because he thought they were particularly graphic. And so I was flattered all over again. Erbe may be as charming as he is talented.

Erbe's website: http://www.garyerbe.com/

Finished... Again

2009-08-07T09:50:00.000-04:00

This little yard-side scene was up the road from where we stayed on Little Cranberry Island in Maine at the end of May. The top image is a reference photo I took for this painting. The finished painting is 24 by 30 inches, oil on canvas.

Although I signed this painting and considered it finished more than a week ago, I just went back into it and added a bicycle to the porch. It's an illustrative detail that may not add anything aesthetic, although I like the way reds and greens play off each other in this painting, along with the complimentary relationship between the maroon and the yellow. But I liked the addition of the bike for some sort of story-telling quality that the detail adds.

And as you can see from the reference photo, I chose to change the color of the shed in the background and lose the bush in the center.

Movies about artists... waiting to be made into films

2009-08-06T22:24:00.000-04:00

Here, again in no particular order, is a list of artists about whom interesting movies could be made. In one or two cases, it's really surprising that we don't have movies given the colorful details surrounding some of these artists.

Whistler was such a flamboyant character and his famous lawsuit for slander would make for fun cinema as well as his notorious painting of Madame X (in which he portrayed her with the strap of her dress fallen down her shoulder only to repaint it with the strap up after enormous public pressure.) Wouldn't all this have made for a great film? Where are Merchant and Ivory when we need them?

Salvador Dali. I mean, really, the old boy must be squirming in his grave knowing that after all his publicity stunts, his weird behavior, bizarre relationships and influential art, mugging thousands of times for photographers with that ridiculous mustache, nobody has bothered to make a movie out of his life. It's not like there's a shortage of material here.

Joseph Cornell. If you've ever read Deborah Solomon's wonderful and cleverly named 1997 biography, "Utopia Parkway," you'll know that the weird banality of this man who lived with his mother and his sickly brother might make a movie very different from the kind we wish for from Dali's life. Cornell's surreal (some would say creepy) boxes, tacked together in his Queens basement, were part of a very different life punctuated with visits from other, younger adoring artists or chauffeur-driven visits from people like actor and collector Tony Curtis who enjoyed taking Cornell out for rides in the limo. Think Grey Gardens focused on a hapless but successful artist.

Andrew Wyeth and the Helga paintings. The secret paintings of Andrew Wyeth. Was this a great marketing ploy played out to gain enormous publicity? The almost reclusive Wyeth found himself on the covers of Time and Newsweek the summer this body of work was revealed. But if, as Wyeth himself declared, the paintings were about "love" and the whole decade-long depiction of Helga in these images had been a secret kept from Betsy Wyeth, then how is it that Helga was retained as part of Betsy's staff for so long after the revelation of this work? (Betsy Wyeth oversaw the licensing and archiving side of the Wyeth image empire.) Was the secret aspect of these paintings a case of marketing hype or was this a case of one woman who knew that you keep your friends close and your enemies closer?

Robert Henri. An artist with a made-up name he acquired because his father had shot a man out west, fled to the east coast and gave everyone in the family a different alias to protect them from the scandal should he ever be caught. Henri was THE influential teacher of so many beloved American painters and yet his own art was only of moderate commercial success. His little sayings and quips in the art schools were collected by Margery Ryerson, one of his students, and have never been out of print even though Henri died 80 years ago. He loved painting portraits but did not have that many commissions. That left him free to do things like paint portraits of Irish urchins that charm us to no end today. A list of his students and followers reads like a Who's Who of American Art: Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Stuart Davis, Bellows, Prendergast, Lawson, Davies...

If you've read this far, you're probably the sort of person who has his or her own list of candidates for bio-pics.

Movies about artists

2009-08-05T21:29:00.000-04:00

I took a summer course in July, here at Hofstra University where I also teach. The course, was taught by Professor Alexander Naymark and met four days a week for 2 hours ten minutes each afternoon. The curriculum examined how artists' biographies are portrayed in the movies. For 16 days we watched a lot of movies about artists. Most were made for entertainment, not as documentaries.

Some, like The Girl with the Pearl Earring, are largely fiction because in the case of Vermeer, for example, we don't know much about the artist and we know even less about his family and life. So when the film imagines him with a shrewish wife and a controlling mother-in-law, we are left to wonder how likely that really was. We do know that his Catholic family had eleven children. It wasn't easy being an artist, even in Holland's so-called Golden Age.

In other cases we have a great deal of information about the artist portrayed, particularly artists of more recent history. Basquiat is a wonderful film made by another artist (Julian Schnabel) who knew and exhibited with Basquiat in some of the same galleries, at more or less the same time.

Here is a list (in no particular order) of some of my favorite movies about artists:

Rembrandt (1936) Charles Laughton in the title role and Elsa Lancester as Hendrickje Stoffels. Laughton seems to have had a great time with this role and, judging from recent Rembrandt bios and research, his portrayal may not have been far off the mark.

Basquiat (1996) Jeffrey Wright in the title role and a youthful Benicio del Toro as his close friend, David Bowie as Warhol, also Willem Dafoe in a cameo of sorts, Christopher Walken, Courtney Love and Tatum O'Neal

Goya's Ghosts (2006) Milos Forman's movie was around for about ten minutes when it was released in 2006. Like Girl with a Pearl Earring, it is a piece of fiction using some historical figures. Stellan Skarsgard is endearing as Goya. Randy Quaid is a delight as the oafish Spanish King Carlos IV. Natalie Portman is the beautiful young woman tortured by the Inquisition. Javier Bardem is the evil and powerful cleric of the Inquisition.

Moulin Rouge (1952) If you can get past the corny device of having Jose Ferrer simultaneously play both Toulouse-Lautrec and his disapproving father, the count, and if you can get past a lip-syncing Zsa-Zsa Gabor as the chanteuse, Jane Avril, then this is a fun recreation of the time and place. The causes and details of Toulouse-Lautrec's early demise are conveyed in a simplified Reader's Digest style.

Surviving Picasso (1996) This was Merchant-Ivory at their best and although I don't think Anthony Hopkins was the obvious first choice to play Picasso, he does a terrific job. (Who else could credibly portray figures as disparate as Picasso and Nixon in one acting career?) Based on Arianna Huffington's book, the movie focuses on Francoise Gilot's ten years as one in a parade of wives and mistresses who had to live with this monster and creative genius.

Modigliani (2004) I'm not sure this film, which was written and directed by Mick Davis, got much exposure here in the U.S. when it was released but Andy Garcia does a great job of capturing the essence of the tragically creative figure. His no-less-tragic lover, Jeanne Hebuterne is played by Elsa Zylberstein. A beautifully sad story, well told.

Frida (2002) Julie Taymor does a pretty good job of capturing the essence and key points of Kahlo's art, career, personality and struggles, physical and otherwise. Selma Hayek and Alfred Molina as Kahlo and Rivera. After seeing this film again recently I went to an early 1980s edition of Encyclopedia Brittannica to see what it had to say about Kahlo. Nada. The artist did not exist for art historians until the mid 80s. In part, we have collectors like Madonna to thank for that.

Artemesia (1997) That would be Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), daughter of the more famous Orazio Gentileschi. French film with screenplay and direction by Agnes Merlet. With a lithe and tanned Valentina Cervi (photo, above) in the title role. This is a sexed-up version of a story only partly understood by historians. Artemsia studied with her father and then apprenticed with his rival, Tassi, who later finds himself charged with her rape. All the ingredients of a Hollywood thriller. Well done but not without some significant distortions to what facts we do know.

I've left Lust for Life and The Agony and the Ecstasy off my list of favorites. It's subjective, I know, but I find those two a little heavy-handed in that mid-20th century Hollywood kind of way.

Tomorrow: Artists whose biographies would make great movies.

My favorite art books

2009-08-04T20:19:00.005-04:00

A number of artists I know collect how-to-draw books and books on anatomy for artists. When asked by other students at the Art Students League, I am happy to recommend the books by Joseph Sheppard, an American painter and sculptor who now lives and works in Italy.

If I am not mistaken, Sheppard was a student of Reginald Marsh. (I believe Sheppard is about 79 years old now.) You can see that there is a liveliness to Sheppard's rendering that seems to have derived from Marsh. But although Marsh taught anatomy and figure drawingand painting, he is not remembered today as a great anatomist. In fact, one instructor at the Art Students League recently recalled that Marsh was fond of saying to his struggling students, "When in doubt, add more muscles." That may be apocryphal but it seems like something Marsh might have said.

Sheppard's figures are much more convincing and accurately rendered. In the 1970s he realized that the anatomy that artists need to learn has very little in common with what doctors and biologists need to learn. Sheppard created a number of books on drawing the figure and, in them, he sometimes uses the term "surface anatomy," meaning the visible clues to anatomy that will be most valuable to an artist.

His drawings, some in pen and ink and others in white and dark chalk on toned paper are works of art that are as enjoyable as art as they are informative and demonstrative.

Yet another book by Sheppard deals with the painting techniques of the old masters. In this large format paperback, Sheppard takes his readers step-by-step through the techniques of Durer, Titian, Veronese, Caravaggio, Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt and Vermeer. It's fascinating to see how, in each case, the demo painting ends up looking somewhat like the work of the master being examined while nonetheless showing Sheppard's irrepressible animated style as well.

Most of these books are still in print. They are far and away the resource books I value most as a painter.

Well, Hullo, Pilgrim...

2009-07-29T11:21:00.003-04:00

I was happy enough with the progress on this to have signed it last night but this morning as I look at it I realize that there was a bicycle on that porch when I first saw this scene on Little Cranberry Island back at the end of May.

Smaller sea shell this time

2009-07-23T21:10:00.007-04:00

I fear I may be better at starting paintings than I am at finishing them. Or maybe it's just that I have a tough time starting just one painting and working on only that one until I finish. I like getting a number of them going at once. That way if I stall out on one there is always another work in progress on which I can keep working.

Even when I worked in the much faster medium of watercolor I worked this way, sometimes getting as many as seven different paintings going at once. With oil paintings you can just put them aside, for months or years , before coming back to them.

Sometimes the stalling out lasts for months, sometimes for more than a year. The last large one I did (see post headlined, "Finished") was one such case of stalling out. I got stuck in the drawing stage and put it aside for some time. Begun in April, put aside for two months. Then I was able to move it along but still avoided the most complicated and, I thought, tricky part of the painting (the part where the large shell holds the smaller shells. Once I got down to it, it wasn't so difficult and after drawing that part in monochrome on the linen the painting moved almost too fast.

The above painting is more an interior than a still life, which is rather uncharacteristic for me. But I did a drawing of a similar dining room chair (another dining room and another marriage, actually) nearly twenty years ago when my sons were very small, in part because even then I really liked the curvy lines of such chairs.

The blue under-painting will serve as a complimentary color to the surface and true color of the wood and furniture which is more in the orange/brown range.

More old brushes

2009-07-19T17:19:00.003-04:00

Last week I wrote about the oldest brush I own, a boar bristle brush I bought 38 years ago when I was in college. It's the second from top in the photo. The three other brushes in this picture are actually in worse shape, and while considerably younger, they are still old bushes.

But I don't throw them out. The one at the top in the photo I used as a broad watercolor bush for a year or more before it began to deteriorate. Now I use it for priming canvas and linen. The two brushes at bottom are nylon or some version of nylon which means they're good for oil or acrilic glazing and they last significantly longer than natural sable brushes (which tend to be expensive anyway.) They go by cute names like sablette, but they are versions of nylon.

As you can see, they don't last forever either. The white handled brush is at least twenty years old but I still use it several times a month along with it's younger cousin with the brown handle. In both cases the nylon fibers have broken and splayed so that the brush no longer holds a cohesive shape. But I still use both for glazing large areas in which I've already built up a number of glazes.

Perhaps I should admit here that I also paint pretty actively with paint rags. That is to say that I apply the paint with a brush but then use a decrepit old paint rag to wipe most of the glaze or opaque paint off the canvas leaving only a trace on the surface. I like building up a color in this fashion but the brush is simply the means of getting the paint on the canvas. It's the paint rag that really leaves the 'brush-stroke' as it were.

Next!

2009-07-17T20:18:00.003-04:00

And starting another. This one with base color in burnt sienna. This canvas 36 by 48 just like the last one. I like the large scale of these and find I don't have much patience with small canvases anymore.

By the way, there may still be some who don't realize that you can click on most of my pictures here and get a considerably larger version of the image.

The Oldest Paint Brush I Own

2009-07-16T12:14:00.003-04:00

I'm pretty sure I bought this brush in 1971 or 1972. When dinosaurs ruled the earth. I still use it and as you can see it's not in terrible shape. As a rule I don't throw out brushes just because they've lost their shape or worn out. They might get demoted to a function that could best be described as scrubber or scumbler, but there is still a use for the old ones.

In the early 1970s I was still in art school at Tulane University's Newcomb School of Art and I was working in acrylic. Soon after I bought this brush I stupidly neglected to clean it after using it with whatever acrylic colors I was using that day. Because it was new -- albeit ruined -- I could not bear to throw it out. So for more than 30 years I kept it with my batch of brushes. Then about five years ago I finally gave it a close look and thought that if I couldn't reclaim it to a useful function I should throw it out.

Today there are a number of very good soaps for cleaning brushes that I'm not sure existed thirty-eight years ago. With patience and repeated gentle washing I was able to return this thing to usefulness.

The brush itself is bristle, considerably softened by repeated washings. Today the manufacturers make a big deal out of boar and hog bristle imported from China. Back then, anything artistic was of enhanced value if it came from France, a land where art was deeply appreciated.

In the intervening decades the wooden handle has mottled noticeably like some sort of tiger-maple. I doubt that Raphael brushes are made in France today and, in fact, I no longer buy 'flats' as these straight edged-brushes are called. But, like owning an antique car, it's still nice to take it out once in a while and put it to work.

Stretching canvas, then and now

2009-07-15T19:09:00.003-04:00

I've been stretching my own canvases since the 1970s. In art school back then nobody -- I mean NOBODY -- bought a pre-stretched canvas from an art store. It wasn't some sort of purist philosophy. It was all about money. A pre-stretched and primed canvas was a ridiculously expensive proposition. And it wasn't that we were poor students either. It really was, comparatively speaking, quite expensive.

So we learned to stretch our own. Somehow I managed to get along without a pair of canvas stretching pliers. Because I went away to school I didn't even have a regular pair of pliers at first. For a number of months what I did have were very raw knuckles. Eventually I got a pair of conventional pliers and things got easier. I think the only thing I ever used was good old "cotton duck" canvas which I then primed myself with acrylic gesso.

In recent years I have come to prefer linen as a surface on which to work. Many artists say that they prefer linen because it is archivally more resilient. While that is true, I just think most of us artists are more sensitive to some real textural differences that are of more immediate appeal. Linen is less regular; it has little flaws where the fiber is thicker or perhaps knotted. (Experts will have to forgive my ignorance of the exact nomenclature here.) But that is exactly the quality I most enjoy about linen.

With the proliferation of art supply companies, there are quite a few that sell pre-stretched and primed linens and canvases of varying sizes. I took a close look at the pricing and came to the conclusion that if I bought the materials and did the stretching myself I might save something like 42 cents over the cost of a store-bought canvas. Perhaps the art supply companies are making the most of cheap labor in Cambodia or Viet Nam. But there doesn't seem to be a way to beat their prices in any of the mid-size or small formats.

With larger canvases, it's a different story. For one thing it's more expensive to ship larger canvases even if the manufacturing cost is low. Here at least it still pays to stretch your own.

The secret to successfully stretching a smooth canvas is to work from the middle outward, alternating long and short sides. If you do this correctly, your wrinkles will migrate outward away from the gradually expanding taut area in the middle. The linen being stretched in these photos is stretched on a 36 by 48 inch frame that has been cross-braced. The stretchers and cross-bracing came from a company called GalleryPro and I bought them as I buy a great deal of my art supplies online from ASW (Art Supply Warehouse). I find they have a great selection and nearly always the lowest price I can find. And, no, I'm not paid for that endorsement.

I now have honest-to-goodness canvas pliers. It's a very worthwhile purchase, and not just to save your knuckles. By the way, don't bother getting any other kind except 100% metal pliers. Anything else (ie. plastic) will break and you'll need to replace.

Oh, one other difference between canvas then and now. It is, of course, possible to stretch a canvas too tight. Back in the 1970s when you did this it meant that the canvas might suddenly tear on the frame. Today it's more likely that the stretchers might break. The wood being sold as stretchers is not as good today.

Finished

2009-07-14T11:40:00.004-04:00

Finished. Signed. Small differences between this image and the previous posted. Are they noticeable? Perhaps only to me.

Progress is our most important product

2009-07-10T15:18:00.005-04:00

Glazing underway. A bit more to go. And lighter areas replaced with more opaque mixtures. It's kind of a shame that the most fun part of the painting is the part that goes the fastest. The glazing is far and away the most satisfying stage of the painting but it tends also to go very quickly, even allowing for drying time between glazes.

Some painters seem to get lost in applying multiple glazes. Titian was said to have done thirty, forty and fifty glazes in one area to achieve a single optical color effect, if we can believe stories from his studio assistants. (He is also said to have painted a great deal with his fingers, but that is another story.) I have not found that more glazes are always better. What is true is that the glazes should be whisper-thin and built up gradually. Sometimes I apply the glaze and then take a cloth and remove perhaps 90% of it, leaving only the remnant of the glaze that has retreated to the crevices in the texture of the linen.

There is a temptation to apply all the color in a single glaze the thickness and consistency of the surface of a candied apple. But the end result is not so good. Believe me, I've tried.

New and large

2009-07-08T21:53:00.003-04:00

36 by 48 inches -- that's fairly large both for me and for my little studio. On a medium/rough linen weave. I love the texture and the scale. Monochromatic underpainting with color glazes in a glossy alkyd to follow.

Another from the Northport Plein Air Weekend

2009-07-05T14:28:00.003-04:00

The 3rd Annual Plein Air painting event in Northport was weekend before last. The drill is that we paint on Friday and Saturday and ono Sunday the finished paintings are exhibited at the LaMantia gallery for a silent auction which benefits the Northport Arts Coalition.

That Friday it stormed and hailed. I had set up my french easel just north of this gazebo in the park, looking out over the water. As the rain came down I retreated to another sort of gazebo with roof and balcony perched over the public restrooms there in the park. Tow other participants including the event organizer, Anthony Davis, joined me. This was the view I had and finally at about 1:30 in the afternoon enough sun came out for me to put some highlights into this painting.

The following day I chose another location and painted the Shipwreck Diner on Main Street. (Shown in an earlier post.)

More from Little Cranberry Island, Maine

2009-07-05T14:25:00.001-04:00

3rd Annual Northport Plein Air Painting Weekend

2009-06-27T20:04:00.003-04:00

If you know Northport, then you know the Shipwreck Diner. If you are of a certain age, then you know it as Otto's Shipwreck Diner. If you are younger, you know it as Tim's Shipwreck Diner. Tim took over from his dad some years ago. Otto still puts on an apron behind the counter there and, when I was painting this, he took a break to come across the street and take a look at what I was painting.

Although he seemed to like what he saw, he didn't llinger. "Gotta get back," he said. "Don't want to lose my job!" Then as if to reinforce his opinion of my work he said, "Show that to the boss!"

The Shipwreck Diner is where my wife and I had our first date. It was also used in the filming of the movie, "In and Out" starring Kevin Kline, Tom Selleck and Joan Cusack.

This 9 x 12 inch oil will be in the silent auction at the LaMantia Gallery tomorrow afternoon between 1 and 3 pm.

Pilgrim, Islesford, Maine

2009-06-24T10:51:00.004-04:00

I think I might title this one, 'Once Again,' although I like the name of the boat herself, 'Pilgrim.' I liked the color possibilities in the faded yellow of the boat, the maroon below her water line, all the greenery of the trees and yard surrounding the boat. This scene was up the road from where we stayed on Little Cranberry Island.

The lettering on the stern and a number of other details I'll save as the final stage of this painting. For now I'm just trying to get the larger areas of color right.

Sketchbook drawings from Maine

2009-06-23T21:46:00.006-04:00

We spent a week on Little Cranberry Island, a few miles southeast of Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park. We were there the last week of May, a time when it's still pretty cool and, in our case, fairly wet as well. Individually and as a community, the people on this island are very friendly, smart and helpful. Lobstermen, for the most part. Renee bought lobster for dinner right on the dock and my brother made a rhubarb pie from a brief harvest of the garden.

John brought along his dog, Bo, a lab who enjoyed daily dips into the ocean, each of which inevitably culminated in the near-euphoric discovery of yet another waterlogged, saliva-saturated stick proudly laid at his master's feet.

Access is by ferry. We stayed at the former Braided Rugs Inn, a big old Victorian with its own impressive library, accumulated over the life of the house. Josephine's House, as it is now called by islanders, is across the street from the island's post office and a few short steps from the elementary school -- a school that this year had an enrollment, I was told, of 12 or so.

Off to Maine

2009-05-22T09:51:00.003-04:00

Off for a week on Little Cranberry Island, Maine. Hope to get lots of sketching and painting done. Back in a week. Meanwhile finished this last night which had been set aside almost a year ago.

Robin, week three

2009-05-19T20:45:00.002-04:00

Wheel invented!

2009-05-11T19:18:00.004-04:00

If you are the sort of person who pokes around on art and artists' websites you may have come across an ad for "The Carder Method" (trademarked). Carder's website sells a six-hour dvd and two tools for learning to paint and draw according to this method. The proportional dividers shown above can be bought from his website for $29.95.

Yes, that's two pieces of wood with some holes drilled into them and a brass screw and nut holding them together. $29.95. I will admit to having bought one of these a couple of years ago, largely because I am too lazy and/or inept at building and making things to have tried to make such a device myself. But that doesn't mean I don't feel foolish for having spent thirty dollars for two pieces of wood and a brass screw.

Carder also sells a color spot checker for $14.95 Presumably that's less expensive because it has no moving parts.

Mark Carder is a very capable and accomplished portrait artist. You can see some of his work on the same website. I respect his art considerably more than I do his marketing claims.

The method itself being described on his website is a quite solid, dependable, almost foolproof method for learning to draw by carefully measuring proportions and learning to paint by carefully observing and comparing mixed colors to the natural colors you're trying to duplicate. As Carder says in a video on his site, this is "how to become a color Xerox."

But while Carder has trademarked the name "The Carder Method," I don't see a patent mentioned anywhere. The irony is that his descriptions of his "method" leave one with the impression that he's come up with all this himself. In fact, these methods have been around much longer than Mr. Carder.

Proportional dividers are such an old concept that one can find them showing up in old master etchings and engravings. And the color-spot method of painting was being taught by Charles W. Hawthorne after the turn of the previous century. "Hawthorne on Painting" published in the 1930s is still being reprinted, by the way, and can be purchased from Dover for $5.95, considerably less than Mr.Carder might charge were he to issue it under his name.

In the book, Hawthorne makes no claim to having originated this approach to painting himself but neither does he mention Carder who, in fact, would not be born for another few decades.

2-minute poses and longer

2009-05-10T18:25:00.000-04:00

Two pieces in Brooklyn exhibit

2009-05-08T21:14:00.002-04:00

Got a call from a curator last night. The two pieces above will be in the juried exhibit "Making Funny" at Under Minerva a gallery in Brooklyn. Opening is May 27 and the show will be up for the month of June closing on July 3rd. Self-Portrait in a Rubber Nose (do I need to point out that it's the one on the left?) and Manifest Destiny, both oil on canvas, both done in 2007.

No hard edges so far

2009-05-07T16:19:00.004-04:00

I am trying to glaze my way up to the right colors. I've so far avoided any really hard edges and now it's getting on my nerves. I need to start drawing into this one to create some interest. This is on linen primed with a clear acrylic so the brown of the linen shows through. In principle I like this idea but wonder about how it may discolor as it ages.

Just Happy to be Here

2009-05-05T17:06:00.003-04:00

The above drawing is included in the new 2009-2010 catalog for the Art Students League of NY. Those familiar with the catalog format know that the bulk of the book consists of a page devoted to each instructor. One each page is a fairly large reproduction of a piece of art by the instructor and a smaller image of a piece done by one of the instructor's students. My drawing appears on the page devoted to James Lancel McElhinney with whom I've been studying for the last two years or so. I am also his 'monitor,' a sort of teaching assistant who takes care of chores like timing the models, collecting class tickets, etc.

Overhearing two students talking about my drawing in the catalog, a third student asked me, "Is that a picture of you?" Well, no, actually it's not: I am neither bald nor thin. And at this point in my life, not likely to pose nude for a group of thirty or so artists. But thanks for the compliment. I guess.

Altered states

2009-05-04T18:11:00.003-04:00

I finished this painting last year. Or so I thought. But something didn't look right and over time I grew to realize that I needed to do something with this painting.

I liked the basic composition, the relationship of the three objects and the definition of the space as being bound by a shadow. It took me a long time to realize that what I didn't like were two things: First the edge of the shadow was too hard and crisp. Second, the overall light was too bluish and I wanted to warm it up. These things sound simple now that I've articulated them but they took me a long time to realize.

But once having realized these things, it took less than an hour to make the changes. Now that I've made the changes I feel like the painting is more interesting and 'painterly.'

BTW, the top image is a bit too contrasty and the bottom image is more faithful to the colors and tonality.

Two-Minute Drawings

2009-05-03T12:35:00.003-04:00

This is a great warm-up exercise for any drawing session. But you have to approach it as just an exercise. If you take any trace of an attitude that you are actually trying to create art you will probably have some degree of difficulty. It seems that only when you approach this as just a warm-up exercise (think of runner's stretches before the 10k) then, without the pretense of 'making art' one is free to fine-tune the hand-eye coordination and sometimes, mirabile dictu, you end up creating a bit of art.

One secret seems to be to just keep your drawing hand moving all the time.

Things I've noticed after doing these exercises over the years: In the first pass I tend to make the head too large and in the subsequent minute and a half, almost always end up reducing it. Sometimes it helps me to add the head last, after fixing the rest of the torso. It helps to think of these drawing as 'gestural' that is aiming to capture the gesture of the body, where the weight is borne and where the muscles are working and where they are at rest.

Sometimes our progress is measured in baby steps. In the drawings above, I was particularly pleased to have caught the position of Robin's fingers in her left hand in the drawing that is second from bottom.

After doing about ten two minute drawings, spending five or ten minutes seems like an amazing luxury!

Gulls just wanna have fun

2009-04-27T20:01:00.002-04:00

They don't hold still long but they do return to earlier poses -- frequently.

This page of sketches is from last summer, but the weather here on Long Island is getting warm enough to sketch at the beach again.

Starting with the highlights

2009-04-26T15:21:00.004-04:00

One of the interesting aspects of working on a neutral ground is that, if you choose, you can begin with the highlights. I find this to be a very refreshing way to work. We are so used to putting dark marks on light surfaces that to do the opposite kind of forces me to stay engaged in a way I might not when beginning a painting like this.

This one is large (see comment from my mathematically inclined son on my earlier post) at 36 x 48 inches. And while Chris can tell you why that not only seems much larger than 30 by 40, but in fact IS much larger (by about 44%), for me, it's the practical consideration that in my crowded little studio I can just fit this baby on the easel.

Robin again

2009-04-25T20:31:00.002-04:00

Done this afternoon in James Lancel McElhinney's class at the Art Student's League in Manhattan.

Are you peeking at my underpaints?

2009-04-24T20:21:00.005-04:00

There's a conscious effort on my part here to create some interesting colors and optical effects by laying in some complimentary colors as underpainting. You can be the judge as to how successful this is when I'm finished.

I did this kind of underpainting in the composition at top. You can see traces of the orange underpainting peeking out from beneath the pale blue surface on which the two shells sit.

Finito?

2009-04-23T19:51:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I sign these things and then a few days later come back and add another couple of daubs...

And speaking of signing, I have used only initials here. Can you blame me? With a name like this? On a canvas that is only 9 x 12?

My son, Chris, is going to a reception tonight at the Chicago Public Library which is exhibiting, among others, the poster design he did for them. In an email to me he made reference to his incipient fame as a graphic designer on his way to becoming a 'household name.'

"With a name like ours?" I replied.

Ready for Spring

2009-04-19T10:07:00.003-04:00

In preparation for the warm weather, plein air painting and, in particular, for a trip we are taking to Little Cranberry Island in Maine at the end of May, I've been priming small canvas and linen panels with gesso toned a neutral gray. The advantage of working with toned surfaces is that one can go as easily toward highlights as toward shadows.

In fact, I found that once I started working this way it was more fun to start with the highlights. If the top two panels look like a different shade of gray, they are: those two panels are linen that came from the art store already oil primed white. Because they're oil primed the toning in gray has to be oil based as well, so that's a different mix.

I still tend to tone these things a bit too dark. One doesn't really want an exact 50% tone. It should be a little toward the light side ideally because all the subsequent glazing later on will tend to darken the canvas anyway. But at worst that will gie it all that warm, old master look.

Robin

2009-04-19T09:49:00.003-04:00

From the model Saturday afternoon, Art Students League NYC.

The shameless promotion of one's offspring

2009-04-17T09:43:00.004-04:00

My son, Chris, a web-developer/entrepreneur and math teacher in Chicago, has never really thought of himself as a graphic designer but the above image is a finalist in the Chicago Public Library's poster contest.

Some of the photos in the collage were taken by the wife of a friend and Chris took the rest to fill out his idea that combines architectural details of the main building with some of the city-wide transportation signage that spells out the library's web-site address. The outer rows of photos are black and white while the library 'comes alive inside' in color.

Chris is quite pleased to have made the cut to the final 30 (out of more than 160 entries) and has been invited to the opening reception of an exhibit of these posters. He professes to be practicing up on his art-world jargon so he can go head-to-head bantering with the windy city's most effete designers.

You can vote online for the "People's Choice" at http://www.flickr.com/photos/notwhatyouthink/3426491411/sizes/l/in/set-72157616580862699/

The Next Big Thing

2009-04-13T20:31:00.006-04:00

The canvas is 36 by 48 inches. The last one was 30 by 40. Doesn't sound that much bigger but somehow it feels much bigger. Maybe because at this size it barely fits on the easel and in the studio. And it's more noticeably awkward to maneuver around.

About the studio: It was once upon a time (under a previous owner) one large bedroom in what was a four bedroom house. This room at some point got subdivided and a wall put in creating two smaller rooms each about 10 by 14 feet. More or less. (So it's now a five bedroom house for this couple who have no kids living at home.)

How I use the space: I use it messy. Just ask my wife. I am Mister Piggy with a capital P. She is Missus Floor Scrubber. All caps.

The first room has a computer and old printer's case. There are built-into-the-wall bookshelves here on either side of the window which is over the radiator where I assemble many of my seashell still life arrangements. The second of these subdivided smaller rooms is where I paint and store the most recent two or three dozen paintings I've done. The rest are in the basement. (It's an essentially dry basement with a linoleum floor.)

Anyway, there is something appealing to me about painting these little seashells on a scale much larger than life. Reference photo above. And, yes, as a matter of fact I do like the back-lit look of these still life arrangements.

Do I use photography and projection to paint my pictures? Yes. So did Thomas Eakins and if it was good enough for Eakins, it's good enough for me. Actually, the sum total of the degree to which I use any sort of projection is here in charcoal on the canvas, and that does not include the horizontal and vertical lines which I drew in with a straight edge.

But you might be surprised at what a hot button issue this stuff is to traditional painters. Just mention David Hockney's book, "Secret Knowledge" now a number of years old. Mention it to artists who work in traditional representational modes and see what varied reactions you get. Be prepared to hear some long harangues.

Personally, using a photograph and a projection device is no big deal. And this was Hockney's point: it's just a tool.

Almost every artist, if he or she lives long enough, will be using an optical device to aid in rendering a picture anyway. But nobody gets upset that I wear glasses, so why should anyone get upset that I have used a projector to quickly scope out some large-scale proportions.

As Hockney points out, a projector doesn't make the brush strokes.

Finished - This is why they call it 'Slow Art'

2009-04-12T13:17:00.007-04:00

I believe I started this at the beginning of March. The first photo of the monochromatic under-painting (drawing really) was taken for this blog on March 20. Slow art.

Almost finished

2009-04-09T16:46:00.003-04:00

I still need to adjust the highlights in the smaller shells. And that cone shaped whitish shell in the lower center is still too bright but I'm fairly happy with how this has gone. A little more work and it might be signature time.

Sketching in Starbucks, painting in the studio

2009-04-05T19:05:00.003-04:00

The drawing was done at Starbucks on 8th avenue and 53rd street in Manhattan late yesterday afternoon. The painting, well, if you've been reading these posts you've seen this painting in various stages as it moves along. I think at this point I just have to define the beach grass in the lower right foreground and I'm finished.

Embroidered Portraits

2009-04-03T21:24:00.002-04:00

The title says it all. They're by an artist named Cayce Zavaglia and they can be seen at the Lyons Weir Ortt Gallery in Manhattan which specializes in showing the work of young artists who work in representational styles. Here's the link to Zavaglia:

http://www.lyonswierortt.com/Cayce_Zavaglia/index.html

Monica

2009-04-03T11:46:00.003-04:00

Sometimes even though the model is nude, the most interesting drawing is still the face. This is Monica, an actress who also models at the Art Students League in Manhattan.

2009-04-02T16:06:00.002-04:00

Colors not all there yet but this is just one layer of glazing in most spots. The far right edge has two layers of Indigo glaze and I'm going to experiment with a few more to see how deep and rich I can make this dark shadow. One of the things I'm going to try is glazing a layer of clear medium between each layer of pigment glaze - to try to heighten the optical illusion of peering into some depth.

In the highlight areas I want to get more color as well. Initially I'll do that by glazing but ultimately I'll replace the glaze with a thoroughly opaque equivalent.

A pretty good Alibi

2009-03-29T14:26:00.001-04:00

The actual boat in Huntington Harbor on which this painting is based is in horrible shape. One can barely read the name of the vessel because the paint is so faded and chipped on the stern. But I liked the lines of this old timer and the audacious design of her name.

It's more better now

2009-03-28T10:09:00.002-04:00

I think I've made it 'more better' as my kids used to say when they were little. But it's still not there yet. This is why people call this 'Slow Art.'

The thing about sketchbooks

2009-03-26T17:45:00.004-04:00

Keeping a sketchbook is like having a jogging routine. It keeps an artist in shape, literally and figuratively. I went through some years buying sketchbooks but not putting much in them. You really have to get used to carrying them around with you. Then you have to get used to opening them and making marks there...

A great deal of what I do in a sketchbook is what I would call stealth sketching. That is, the people I'm drawing are not aware of what I'm up to. The guy above was sitting about 15 feet from me in a Starbucks while he read a tabloid paper. The young woman was farther away on another day in the cafeteria on the lower level at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The baggage train was observed out a plane window as we sat out a delay at an airport in Alaska.

The thing about all these subjects is that you get used to drawing pretty quickly and economically because you don't know when someone is going to get up and walk away. Or, as is frequently the case, they just shift and alter their poses enough to make things difficult.

Many life drawing classes have a routine in which they begin with very short poses. some as brief at 30 seconds. I like starting with poses that are somewhere between two and five minutes. After a few rounds of this moving to a ten minute pose seems like you've got all the time in the world.

I like drawing on simple white paper with a soft (2B to 6B) pencil. I like the pencil soft so that I can use the smudgy quality of the graphite to some effect in the drawing. A small piece of chamois helps.

I fill up a sketchbook about every four to six months and the books I've been using in recent years now fill up the better part of a shelf. I still join other artists on the weekend at the Art Students League in New York to draw from a model on weekends but it's important to me to keep going during the week as well. Some days ten or fifteen minutes is enough.

But without it, I feel my rendering skills begin to atrophy.

Half-finished

2009-03-26T11:22:00.000-04:00

A gallery in Michigan expressed interest in my work and suggested I prepare a group of paintings for this summer. "Anything having to do with boats and the water," the dealer told me. He had been attracted by the seashell paintings I've done, of which there are many. But I thought about what he said and thought I ought to do more boating landscapes and seascapes.

Somewhat surprisingly I've had difficulty building up a backlog of these kinds of paintings. I had three and was working on this fourth but a friend of my wife bought two of them before Christmas.

This one is 12 by 9 inches and entirely made-up, except for the perspective of the rowboat itself which I took from a photo of Huntington harbor. The setting and background are off the top of my head.

This is a Belgian linen that is primed with clear acrylic so you see the color and texture of the linen as you work the painting. I have no idea whether this has any archival soundness but it makes for a great tone under the painting.

Things I want to do with this painting as I try to finish it: I want to manipulate the color of the rowboat away from the monochromatic sand color that dominates at the moment. I'm thinking an opaque pale bluish gray overpainting with some of this sand color peeking through in places. The weeds in the foreground need to be more specifically delineated but I'll leave them for last.

Paper or Plastic?

2009-03-25T12:16:00.001-04:00

Do you know Yupo? I've just discovered this modern, space-age miracle.

"Oh, is that the Japanese paper that's really plastic?" someone asked me at the Art Students League in Manhattan last weekend.

Yes, Yupo is 100% polypropelene and although it takes a bit of getting used to, it does seem marvelous. I got a pad of 10 sheets of smooth finish, 74 lb., 11 by 14 inch sheets from Utrecht Art Supply for about $20.

The great thing about Yupo is that you can reuse the sheets over and over until you have a masterpiece on each sheet. If you're not happy with the results, just dampen a cloth and wipe it away. You've got a brand-new sheet ready to start over. Since it's not really paper but plastic, the surface does not degrade when you wipe off the painting.

My wife commented that the sheets seem awfully bright white (unlike the impression given here by my photo). True enough. The label says "suitable for all watercolor techniques." But unlike paper, Yupo doesn't buckle and curl when wet.

My recycling center

2009-03-24T12:39:00.000-04:00

Some years ago, I switched from using turpentine to Turpenoid, an odorless version of the same thing. Then James McElhinney at the Art Students League pointed out that "just because you can't smell it doesn't mean it's not doing harm."

So I switched again after reading some of the warnings about solvents on the Gamblin website. Gamblin advocates the use of odorless mineral spirits which I have now been using for several years.

The nice thing about OMS, as it's often called, is that it's 100% recyclable. At the end of each painting session I pour the OMS into this funnel and the dirty OMS sits there and gradually decants itself from the paint particles which settle and even partially solidify at the bottom of the bottle. After sitting a while you can pour off the OMS into your palette cup and reuse it.

So I'm not breathing bad vapors and I'm not pouring toxic stuff down my drains. Al Gore would be so proud of me.

New toy for spring

2009-03-22T15:37:00.004-04:00

Were you ever so excited about a trip that you practiced packing for it? I guess I'm that way. My wife and I are renting a big old house on Little Cranberry Island in Maine at the end of May. My brother will come with us. You leave your car on the mainland and take the ferry to the island. I've been practicing packing my art supplies. I want to make sure I have everything I could possibly need but I want to travel light nonetheless.

The smaller, newer box sitting on top there is a thumb-box. You can't quite see it but there is a thumb-hole cut into the bottom. Those brushes are tucked into the thumb-hole for the moment.

I'm a sucker for these kinds of things. The flat palette is a tray that slides over the tubes of paint. The box lid has a slot for a 6 x 8 inch canvas panel on which to sketch.

The older, paint spattered box on which it sits is called a pochade box. Pochade is a French word for paint sketch. The french impressionists got painters out of the studio and painting outdoors. But they couldn't have done it without the American invention of the tin paint tube.

That older pochade box was made of recycled wood by a handyman in Canada from whom I bought it over eBay some years ago. But pochade boxes require tripods. And I'm thinking I could use something even smaller and more compact.

Last year I saw this new thumb-box deeply discounted and I grabbed it, but I haven't had occasion to use it yet. It's made by Jullian, the French outfit that made the first portable sketch easels with collapsible folding legs that the impressionists used in the 19th century. Those so-called French easels are big and somewhat heavy, but, yes, I have one of those too,

This thumb-box gets eight tubes of paint so I have to be judicious about what I choose to take along. Right now I'm sticking to two versions of each of the primaries, plus a red/brown and a white:

Ultramarine Blue (Williamsburg handmade paints)
Cobalt Blue (Old Holland)
Vermillion Extra (Old Holland)
Perylene Crimson (Williamsburg)
Burnt Seinna (Old Holland)
Italian Yellow Ochre (Williamsburg)
Indian Yellow (Gamblin)
Quick Dry White (Gamblin)

The Portrait Project

2009-03-22T10:43:00.003-04:00

For lack of a better name, seven of us are calling this the portrait project. We study at the Art Students League in Manhattan on Saturdays (myself, Claudia Monaco, Helene Balzarini, Michael Elsasser, Kurt Tatum, Myung-ja Chun, and Kevin McCaffrey) and we have joined together in a project in which we will each paint self-portraits and portraits of at least two others in the group. We each drew a random portrait assignment and we will each also paint (or draw) a portrait of at least one other in the group.

Most of us met six years ago while studying in Sherry Camhi's figure and anatomy class at the the League. We are all roughly middle-age and most of us returned to fine art after working on the fringes in areas like advertising, design, art direction etc.

In these two cases, I sketched the figures in charcoal and then began the underpainting in terra verte, a weak green pigment. I'm working on canvases primed in a neutral gray. In the case of Claudia's portrait, as is often the case for me, I found the charcoal drawing in some ways better than this underpainting. The charcoal makes her look younger than she is, but seems to capture the contours of her face better.

The first glazing for each of these two is a mixture of a great deal of yellow ochre with just a bit of vermillion. According to Jonathan Janson, this is the color Vermeer used for his skin tones. Janson's Essential Vermeer website is a real treasure for those who enjoy Vermeer and Rembrandt. He also has a self-published book, "How to paint your own Vermeer." Although the book has a good deal of valuable information, one quickly sees the pitfalls of self-publishing and why we need editors to keep authors on track. (Sequences of entire pages are repeated, sometimes only a short distance from their first appearance.)

Problems I see with the two portraits above: I need to keep my eyes in the self-portrait from becoming too cartoon-like. Claudia's portrait needs a background and more of a setting.

The members of the portrait project have given themselves a year for this project, after which we will begin to look for a venue in which to exhibit.

My contribution at faculty meetings

2009-03-21T10:26:00.001-04:00

That's Dr. Paul Mihailidis, top and Dr. Kristal Zook, bottom, both members of our journalism department during yesterday's faculty meeting in the school of communication at Hofstra. Neither were asleep at the time they were rendered.

For the record, neither was I.

2009-03-20T20:28:00.000-04:00

Wasn't sure I'd get control of this

2009-03-20T19:42:00.004-04:00

I wasn't sure I'd really get control of this one. I had sketched the image in so roughly in charcoal that I wasn't sure I could get the complicated relationships of the shells right. But last night, after having set this aside for at least a month or more, (I've lost track) I was able to come back to it and get it to a point where I might be able to get excited about finishing it. It's large (for my studio, anyway) at 30 by 40 inches. A nice Belgian linen, which I like for the irregularities in the weave, stretched over a heavy set of stretchers.

This is the underpainting. It's an old master technique that really simplifies things: Get the drawing done in a monochromatic color scheme and then, when you have that done to your satisfaction, glaze the color over it.

I usually do this under-painting in burnt umber and Gamblin's quick dry white (really just white with some alkyd mixed in to speed what would otherwise be a slower than normal oil.) Lighter colors always take longer to dry, and especially the whites.

This time, in addition to the burnt umber, I used a second color made by Old Holland, called Extra Sepia. True sepia is a color made from the inky secretions of the cuttlefish, a very 19th century kind of color. I didn't think this was really true sepia but I looked on the label and found to my surprise that the color is actually a version of bone black. This is another 19th century color in which the color was arrived at by burning animal bones.

If you find that kind of creepy, go look up the color that was known as mummy. Guess what they used to make that color!

Who I am

2007-10-18T13:03:00.000-04:00

I'm Daniel van Benthuysen, an artist, graphic designer, art director, director of design, journalism professor and freelance writer. As you can see from the self-portrait at left, I don't take myself too seriously. And in fact, I enjoy painting portraits of others who feel likewise. I am in my mid-fifties and live with my wife, Renee, in Huntington, New York, about 35 miles east of NYC. Far enough away to be able to enjoy a big old house and the greenery of the suburbs and close enough to NYC to enjoy the notable goings on in the center of the art world.

More of my own paintings and drawings can be seen at http://www.danvanb.com