Design and color

Something about Red

it changes everything O happy day

I sometimes feel that I'd like to take the same painting and paint it 500 different ways. I'd like to change the color harmonies, change the technique, change the medium, do mixed medium, change the substrate, o my so many ways to change it up. The key, of course, is the design. Lots of style can hang on a good design. Every time I put my brush to the canvas I am keenly aware of having made a decision which ipso facto eliminates other directions I could have taken this painting.

As it happens with this one I was just messing around browsing on pinterest and saw a collection of work by Linda Arthurs who incorporates patterns everywhere in her design much like Vuillard. But that's not what I was taken by....it was the pure red....I wanted to do red with a passion after I saw her painting of a silhouetted bed frame so I took my current "design" and layed out the red side on my palette and then put down pthalo green and veridian because, of course, they are the opposite on the color wheel and went to town working on this one. I had to add some blue, too.

I tried to paste the red painting that inspired me but it wouldn't work. There must be a copyright restriction so you'll have to look her work up. It's lovely and busy and colorful.

Now let me add a caveat. There are many times when I use pure color and then notice upon drying and looking at it a few days later I find it too bold and too harsh. I think this will work because it's over a burnt sienna and also I think because it's surrounded by modulated grayer colors. We'll see.

"Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces."  Parcel Proust


Very honest fellow

Keeping it Simple

The teapot with no lid

SOLD

A simple object, one source of light, and a limited palette

I recently discovered the website dailypaintworks.com and although there is a closed membership there I found the daily challenges which I think are fun.  It fits in really well for me since I often do several paintings (small ones) a day.
  
I set this up in my studio with one light source and lovingly sculpted it with paint.  Once again I discover the longer I work the more feeling I seem to illicit in the piece.  It's a dear little teapot thrown and glazed by Bernard Leach's son, David in England.  My sister brought it back to me years ago and I have always cherished the beautiful little celadon teapot.  Unfortunately in 2001 there was an earthquake in Napa and it rocked the entire house and threw all the cabinet doors open in the kitchen and heaved everything to the ground.  I lost the lid of this one as well as all of my Waterford crystal that I seldom used......O well....no structural damage so I'm happy for that!
I will always keep the teapot even though the lid is long gone.  I even have shards from other "dear" bowls I lost that day which I still keep.  I'm funny that way.

Promotions with a book Sally Rosenbaum

Sally Rosenbaum Paintings by Sally Rosenbaum | Make Your Own Book

While compiling and burning images to dvd for my publishers I noticed that I was out of ink on my printer.  I always like to print up thumbnails to accompany the dvds so I can have some authority on the final results.  Not all images come out like you want on someone else's computer.  SO being out of ink I decided to make up a small colorful booklet of some of my favorite paintings on blurb.com where I've been cataloging and documenting all of my kids' travels and favorite snapshots for fun.  Here is the end result.  What a fabulous way to send a compilation of your paintings and very economical too.  I would have spent a lot more doing it on the computer with good paper and archival inks! 

Summer Notes

Summer Notes

$1800

Sometimes I wonder what to talk about but I'm so excited to post a visual that I go ahead and post and leave it in "draft" stage before publishing.  I posted a version of this last night and came back this morning to check my masterpiece and couldn't live with it, so out in the studio with my pjs on (and before coffee) working again on little areas where my eyes stuttered and were "bugged" by shapes and colors.  I spent more time working on the face getting more bone structure going on in the lit side of the face.  I added a blue purple component to balance out the orange and the green and tried to create more "shoulder."  I find it difficult sometimes to get the roll of the shoulder especially when the figure is backlit.  My first inclination is to go straight for the light on the turn of the shoulder and what appears dark behind it is simply too stark. This morning I blurred out those edges and brought more of the golden greens into the shoulder and more of the dress into the back ground and then redefined the shoulder.  I may still work more on bringing the front of her chest forward with more saturated color.

My first inclination when approaching a painting is to ram pure color into it.  Later , when I view it after having had some "time off," it ends up looking too garish..  Then the marvelous nifty neutrals come to my rescue.  I started installing them in and around all the foliage in the background and it helped a great deal to give air and relief to the background.  I guess the long and short of it is that it takes a few go rounds to come to the place in time when it is pronounced done. There's something about living with a painting for a time period.  I might even go so far as to say that as long as they are in my line of sight they are never done.  I have painted more than 4000 paintings in my life and I can only think of perhaps, 4, that I was really satisfied were done, as in DONE, wouldn't touch them again. Pierre Bonnard, I read, had a certain painting hanging in his room.  He used to paint directly on canvas stapled or affixed in some way to the wall but not stretched.  It was the day of his death and there was a certain leaf on a peach tree in the painting that was agitating his enjoyment of viewing it.  He struggled, got up, went over and touched it with some color, went back to bed, and later that day died, met his maker, and passed away. Discontent is a by product or side effect of painting and has to be tolerated, respected, and given accommodation, I suspect.

Post script:  I should remember the nifty neutrals and value and treasure the monotony of routine in the midst of dramatic times.

Last summer

Last Summer SOLD

16 x 20 from the series, Girlfriend

Two colors, two roses

Indian Yellow Rose 8 x 10  SOLD

The wonderful thing about painting is that I am  continually reviewing all the lessons I've ever had and getting hit on the head over and over again  in a way that feels new.  It's hard to get bored with painting if you're willing to change it up a bit now and then.  I don't think an outside observer would even notice the changes but I carry in my head a mission with each new painting whether it's a new color palette or revisiting old subject material with a new hand.

Tea in the Orchard SOLD 8 x 10

As my blog attests, I have been experimenting with color harmonies and trying to keep a somewhat limited palette while studying the color wheel and integrating my knowledge of the wheel and the manufacturers of the pigments, colors, and incorporating a memory of the transparency and the opaqueness of colors.  I really feel that the more I limit myself the more satisfied I am with the outcome. On the roses I used primarily indian yellow, ultramarine blue and indian red......and white, of course.  I don't know if anyone relates to this, but I feel more painterly, or more like an "artist" when I am mixing from a smaller palette. The one below, "Tea in the Orchard," is also the same palette but with prussian blue instead of ultramarine and including magenta.
I adore the power of Indian Yellow and its transparency.  

split complementary revisited

Summer of Innocence 16 x 20

   SOLD

 I decided to start with a composition from last summer that I had photographed and have painted in small quick sketches a few times.  I drew in the figure and then painted with burnt umber most of the linear aspects of the girl and the still life so that I could hold the drawing when I started painting.  On this one in particular, I decided to paint all the values in a mixture of black white and thalo green.

     I set it aside for a few days to dry and then decided to use a color harmony that I used last week with a rose still life.....split complementary of viridian green, grumbacher red, and orange............the first day I stuck only to those colors.  After drying I worked again on it adding some brights, dulls, richness and darks and felt compelled to add in a violet shade....it really helped in many ways to make the painting sit down on the canvas.

The final day of painting is the most exciting.
$1800.00

Thoughts from July painted in January

When you paint from photographs you can always revisit the summer!  I have painted this pose in a 30 x 40 but handled it completely differently.  First it was a full body pose and I had a very dark prussian blue, indian yellow and alizarin background. 
This one is lighter.  I am loving the 24 24 format and the symmetry that it provides. I feel like it makes the eye travel more quickly covering all corners of the canvas.  I painted it first in raw umber with a line in drawing, then completely painted it with ivory black and white and a touch of green.  After drying I added the color.  I think I will revisit the flesh after this drying.


SOLD

prints and nature

I am mesmerized by the patterns of nature and especially loved doing this dress against the background of the garden with all of its radiance.  Nature gives to us the perfect backdrop for our figures and our intense colors of costume.  The background nature serves up is always low key with lots of neutrals and warms and cools.  No color in nature is ever  pure yet the ornamentation of our clothing, hair and table always suggests purity and intensity...it's kind of a

choices of frame

unframed $3,200.00 framed in gold $3,600.00 framed in black $3,600.00

slam dunk...light vs. dark, dull vs. bright, soft vs, hard, etc...you know the drill

Precious Imagination

I have a painting right now sitting in my studio against the wall completely dry that I laboriously and lovingly and meditatively underpainted with a verdaccio palette last week that is ready to be finished. It's 30 x 40, my favorite size. It has so much life in my imagination because the possibilities are limitless. It thrills me to think of getting to it and yet each day I choose to start or finish another because once I begin the first step I eliminate the boundless possibilities and a part of my imagination has to close the door to the others... It's like watching the price is right and choosing door number 2 which is wonderful but means that door number 1 and 3 never get opened.. I have to admit that it's a wonderfully buoyant feeling to carry that richness of bounty around in my imagination all day long. I have many many doors waiting to be opened and all are eager to take a form. I walk through my tasks and errands of the day consciously aware of the treasure I hold...It's a wall of fortitude around the assailing problems of real life and it gives me courage and promise.

The process of painting is full of choices. A choice is made during every second of the painting process whether it's the color you choose to dip your brush into or how you choose to drag or lay or smooth in the paint. The brush I reach for each time is a factor in the mix as well. If I start on the background first the harmonies in the face will be effected. If I deal with the flesh or figure first it changes the power and impact the figure will have. Using a lot of medium or using a little will set a mood or alter a mood. I like comparing the process of painting to dancing with a partner....or playing chess. I'm only a part of the process. After I lay something down I have to follow the lead or base my next move on what just happened. Unlike many descriptions of the creative process I do not always know where I will end up. I respect the fact that "my vision" doesn't always become the finished product...It's a wedding of myself and the constraints of the physical organic world. Some call it the muse. I like that and it's real. There is a muse and I always hope and pray she's in the room with me because it takes two to make a painting. I'm alert and present all the while but I have to make decisions all the time that affect the next fork in the road. It requires a fortitude of energy much like getting ready to run a race. Do I have the ingredients with me today to run the course? Sometimes I encounter people who work a "job" and tell me they always dream of painting...the first thing out of my mouth is that you have to give it your best energy, not your left over, end of the day tired and whipped energy. It has to be top of morning...thrilled to be allowed the opportunity to work with color, form and line energy...........grateful thankful energy.
Like most choices in our life once we've committed to a direction the possibilities still continue and we begin the process anew....there's a dream stage, a cultivation period, a foundation, and a finished product and the finished product is often the stepping stone to the NEXT WORK...

You gotta love this art life!

Mixing it up

16 x 20 Purple

Always looking for new inspiration.  This is from a painting (photograph) I took years ago. Technology allows me to see in the shadows where I could not see before and I feel that 10 years later I have some new skills I can throw in the mix.  I used to reach for color and bat it around and always be in a conundrum of trying something...if it didn't work, fixing it. 

I'm loving approaching life (painting) with a plan.  It's the whole thing about not having to invent the wheel every time....that really really gets old after a few decades.

Turns out there are some great tried and true methods to approach things, mix it up with a little personality and still have a unique work of art.

still thinking

YES, Still thinking

I wanted to post this painting but wasn't in the mood to write yet so when I came to the title of the blog piece I simply wrote still thinking.....and it stuck for me....(which I am thrilled to report is all that matters) so I am officially naming this piece "Still Thinking" which then starts to remind me that the big celestial cosmic clock is ticking away and I'm yelling back at it YES I am still thinking........and painting, and lots of other things.   HOWEVER I do think about the sand in the hour glass running out...a little more than anyone wants to hear about ....but I daresay we all think about it.  I know I've been thinking about it since I was five... I remember looking at my parents and feeling sorry for them because they were further down the timeline than I was....and remember the wonderful feeling of having all of my life ahead of me instead of being in the middle or as it's becoming more and more, behind me. 

Andrew Marvell wrote TO HIS COY MISTRESS which I read in probably 1969......thinking hmm...that's interesting.......but now I reread it and yes, it resonates.

I want to paint every painting I've painted again .........and do it better.  I want to try different color schemes.........different backgrounds, .....different treatments of the flesh, lose the edges, find the edges, hi contrast, low contrast, figure in shadow, figure in the light, large, small, colorful, somber, and on and on....Painting is so very wonderful.  Let all the days of the rest of my life include color, design and drama!  Time's winged chariot is coming so it's time to make manifest!

Here is Andrew Marvel's (no not a super hero) poem

Hope I don't get in trouble for posting it....ah but he's dead and it's over 50 years so it's public domain I think.  

To his Coy Mistressby Andrew Marvell Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk, and pass our long love's day; Thou by the Indian Ganges' side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood; And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow. An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate.         But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long preserv'd virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust. The grave's a fine and private place, But none I think do there embrace.         Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may; And now, like am'rous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour, Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power. Let us roll all our strength, and all Our sweetness, up into one ball; And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life. Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Working Large

This is the first stage of this painting..........now that it's dry I'm going to scumble some glazing over it to unify and lighten it up and better control the triad color harmony.  I'll post it at the bottom of this post.

I really like working large....speaking of large...O my god...I went to the de Young museum last week to see the Musee D'orsay exhibit on loan to the De Young in California.  The size of many of them took my breath away, especially the breath taking  lovely Bouguereaus.. They were at the beginning of the exhibition to introduce the historical context for the beginnings of impressionism.   Looking at the Bouguereaus and the figures of Fantin Latour makes me commit more and more to the really developed more fleshy approach which is time consuming and full of technique and procedure....IT'S HARD TO KNOW WHEN TO STOP AND WHEN TO KEEP GOING!  I am constantly reminded that every painting has so many possibilities......Now that it's so easy to photograph them as you go it's really enlightening to reflect upon the various stages that you pass through and yet choose to go on....

Connections through time

Communication.........I think that’s why I enjoy reading so much…and why I like to paint the figure reading.   I think of it almost as a sacred meditation connecting to the long linkage of the essence of individual souls.   There’s the capacity for raw honesty in writing and the possibility of true intimacy.  We can be that other person or at the least know what that person is feeling and thinking.  It's a door into another’s soul present and past,  alive and dead.   Not only are we  allowed to say things in books and writing that  we could never express privately or publicly but we are also available to hear secret things that one cannot say.  There was a movie about CS Lewis...I forget the title.  Sir Anthony Hopkins I think was CS Lewis.  And he said something to the effect of "I read so I'm not alone."

If I painted a solitary figure not absorbed in an event one could say she looked lonely but I dare say that all my figures though they are solitary do not look lonely.

The inner judge

This is  my most recent finished product ...dare I say done?  I have come to realize that I am not often done when I think I am.  The paint dries, I catch a glimpse from the corner of my eye from a different angle and there's a feeling of unsettledness that strikes at my gut.  I try to listen to my FIRST response with a fresh eye...What part of the painting is bothering me? Is it balanced? what would FEEL better? When I can walk past it with a smile on my face I think I am done.  If it nags me or puts me in a grumpy mood I know I have to revisit something and usually the FIRST thought that comes to my mind is the area of investigation.

This one is almost there. I am going to position it in the hall so I have to look at it as I come around the corner and listen to my inner judge.  Something is bugging me

WAY COOL

I am ecstatic. I just discovered how easy it is to link to the books I read and put them here on my blog.  I adore reading and always consider my daily art and my daily reading to go hand in hand.  I personally would love to be reading someone's blog about a book and or subject and have the link right there without having to hunt it down and remember all the information.  I am dedicated to the reading of biographies of the great artists (visual as well as all the others) and will be referencing them a great deal in the next postings.  I remember when I was 7 my mom used to drop me off at the local downtown BUCKHEAD library (I'd give anything to see it again and I pray to god they didn't tear it down) while she grocery shopped at the local A & P.  I headed straight for the Blue bindings of the biography sections and lost myself reading about all the amazing people published there in that juvenile 3 rd grade section.  I think my first was Sacajawea and then I went on to read them all.........Now I still do it.....you name a new biography of an artist and I'm on it...in fact at the end of the hall I have my biography bookcase and I cherish it.  I hope when I 'm gone.....(gulp) my kids will either cherish it or donate it to an organization that will.
WAIT I must link to a book!  I will talk more about this one later but it changed my life.  I remember when I was considered trying to "go for it" and be only a self supporting artist, I found my mind wrapped around the idea of "well, let's see how it goes the first year."  Naturally there were ups and downs, enough ups to keep me tantalized, enough downs to  go deeper into cc debt.  After I read this book, I said to myself, "now I get it."  You either do it (as Pisarro did) or you don't. There are no wait and see's.  If the times get tough, the tough keep going and you can be sure it leads some where.   Then of course there's the great Tony Robbins who taught me to reframe my thinking......when the times are down it's an opportunity to be reaffirmed of my committment....ooh ooh here's his book too!  I can see this is going to be a blast.....Eating lunch now in 75 degree California weather and smiling.

Decisions

Decisions decisions.  I'm noticing that today I am chasing my tail whirl pooling but still sinking in the abyss of indecision..  I encountered the first decision in the morning and put off eating breakfast, then it was how to finish off my mohair shawl.  I ran out of yarn and needed to make some important color and design decisions. I went one way and then the other and even followed the fools errand and went out looking for more yarn and came home empty.   Now I'm sorting books on the NY times book review, Amazon, and Audible.com looking for the perfect listening material for working in my studio.......as if this is a life changing decision............I have a headache from weighing out these heady decisions and still haven't decided.
Painting would be a welcome respite where one decision seems to guide the hand to the next decision and there is an orderly sequence of motions to reach the end.  I have painted long enough to know that decisions come while we're laying the foundation....Begin and their WILL be a painting.  I start the ritual. I prime the canvas, I lay out a challenging, intriguing palette.  I made a decision about my palette a few weeks ago and sticking to it for a month or two........ lemon yellow, cad yellow medium, prussian blue, indian yellow, alizarin, napthol crimson, and veridian and titantium white......maybe a little ivory black.  .(makes it easier and I like the control.)    I  pick up the mess on the floor from yesterday and then the beginning starts to hatch.  The  size, the colors, something I glimpsed on my way to the studio, a flash of a scene from a photo on the wall, even the putting on of the little apron I wear, start to propel me toward the first stroke and the laying in of a proportionally pleasing arrangement...............I KNOW in a painting it doesn't have to be a significant  life changing decision. As I begin, I know that I will go somewhere.  Part of it I know and part of it I don't know.   There is a weighing of my sensibilities more from a feeling level than from a thinking level that serves as the compass once I start.  Part of the intrigue for me is the dance that you do with your own intentions and the accidental or imagined  directions that the medium creates.  I think I'm inspired now...going to the studio for awhile to just START.

Visiting another time

I've recently taken to driving over to my outstanding STARBUCKS with my little adorable bulldog and sitting outside in the sun ( and getting him used to scary noises) sipping my latte, indulging in something sweet and reading through the pages of Eugene Delacroix's journal that he maintained throughout his life.  Fortunately it has been edited so I am reading his thoughts mainly about painting and living life  in his day.  His best pals were Chopin and MMe. Sands.  I am heartened by his thoughts and feelings  and his analysis of society and the meaning of life.  He references feeling like an outsider most of the time but  feeling alive when he visits his medium of the composition and the color and the treatment of problems in rendering form and light.   He was just another guy in his time doing what interested him, worried like all of us about sales and frugally making it to the end of the month, budgeting, selling, and thinking about what to paint next.   He painted, enjoyed the analysis of other's work, good conversation and FOOD with some of the most creative people of the time and always set aside time during the day for self reflection.  


After a while the sun gets too hot, I've finished my last sip, and Howard is panting so I know it's time to go home now that I'm sufficiently inspired to lay out my palette and resume my work with a slightly new perspective on the significance of representational art.

Hence, "Pensive Moment," a quick 10 x 10.

We have now

This is a year when my kids have left home, I'm working at my painting alot and finding I have some time to spend on organization, reflections, and planning.  I hope this is showing in my work as I contemplate the direction I'm taking in each painting with more control and purpose, revisiting old compositions and reinterpreting them in a new way.

In my attempt to make a little sense of all the loose papers, photographs, and mementos that I've stashed in every nook and cranny I labeled 4 boxes...one for me only, one for each son (2) and one for their posterity that might interest them both.    I'm thinking that if I move or god forbid die (I'm not delusional)  the boxes are labeled for each child to take for their own memory store.

As I sorted and categorized I came across a book of dreams that I meticulously recorded during a very very hard time in my life and the thought of anyone, especially my children, ever reading them made me sick.  I scanned through it and decided it was over, been there, done that.........and tossed it..............BUT I did save a few paragraphs.  Out of the reams of writing there were a few statements that still held water, a few other lines that were poetic enough to describe my depths of feeling without being too particular and then, this simple description of a dream I had one night of my most beloved childhood home on Moores Mill Rd. in Atlanta, Georgia, a place that my mind often visits. 

 The street of my favorite childhood appeared in my dreams but the beautiful facades were found to be supported in back by mere scaffolding and rusty fire escapes.  The expansive backyards which supplied dimension and privacy were subdivided with new foundations and the beginnings of new homes.

I think the message I take from this picture is that I am  always new...that today is the most important day of my life and that makes me smile.

 Publish Post