New and large

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.

No hard edges so far

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.

Altered states

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.

Are you peeking at my underpaints?

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?

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

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.

Almost finished

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.

Half-finished

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.