Paintings in Early December
I’ve been mesmerized by Sergiu Ciochina’s work lately— his violet, orange, and lime green palette adds a surreal touch to his shadow studies. I made a few quick passes at copying his style, but the main focus this week was on a still life in which I tried to copy his cool shadow effects.
I set up a still life on my old red chest that I picked up in the laundry room of Casa Sanchez right before I moved—the room was repurposed to be a sort of “buy-nothing” space for the few residents of the complex. My first pass at the composition wasn’t compelling because I put the vases directly on the red chest, but after throwing an old bedsheet over it, I can see the vision.
I considered adding a cloth background to enhance the subject, but I thought that it would detract from the crisp shadows that make the still life so interesting.
I made a rough draft in watercolor and I planned to do a large study after the draft. Rough drafts are important because they teach us to not be so attached to our work—it’s tempting to want to make everything right the first time, but often we miss and learn.
I decided that I’ll do a large study after the watercolor is complete. My Monet dupe had lost its momentum, so I eventually chose to blast over it in gray. My Picasso pigeons dupe has also been done for over a month, but I wasn’t in love with it, so it’s time to cover it up.
Watercolor rough draft of a still life.
Them’s the breaks with art—anything that doesn’t scratch the itch is destined for the scrap pile. Many of the pieces that I’ve made which I consider my best work were cover-ups of pieces that I hated; why not start with a piece that I don’t hate, but I consider lacking in sufficient merit? Surely the final piece will be a step up from those pieces which began on a low note of “I hate this stupid painting.” (A real internal monologue, but not to worry—self-disparaging thoughts are OK if we recognize that they are ruminations of the brain and do not represent us.)
I acquired some new flowers after working a breakdown gig for a florist at a corporate event, so I modified my still life setup. The flowers were on their way out, but they were good enough for me to get a nice composition:
Composition for a still life with two faceted vases and flowers.
Ultimately, I’m fairly satisfied with the iterations that I made, both on the level of rough draft -> plan -> coverup, and within the coverup itself. The Monet dupe was a good candidate for a step up from the watercolor, and I had no drive to work on it, so it was time to add some radical energy to the panel. I used mostly grey for the underpainting: a mix of quinacridone deep pink, french ultramarine, and cadmium-free yellow pale, if I remember correctly. The painting had a first iteration as crude as I could make it to capture the placement of the flowers with their shadows against the wall.
Primarily grey covering of a painting panel for a preliminary still life layer
I used a roller to apply the paint; I wanted to paint as broadly as possible without getting lost in minutiae.
The piece is almost done. Eventually I covered up the greys with more quinacridone deep pink and a little bit of India yellow. The result is getting pretty close:
Still life of two faceted vases and flowers.
Many of the flaws are apparent to me now, but we live and learn!
I’m also working on a piece for a commission that I consider to be about 80% complete. I did a TikTok live while I worked on the more "mechanical” process of filling out the sky—this section is relatively uniform so it didn’t require the intense focus and creative wandering that I regularly require to make compelling abstract scenes. I don’t yet know where the lower half of the landscape is going, so I’m going to leave it for a week and come back to it later.
I’m still feeling mixed about trying to integrate social media into my artistic process and goals. For a long time, I have considered TikTok and other social media terrible for the brain and for creativity, as they provide cheap dopamine which saps motivation to simply sit and create, and they pollute your brain with things that often have no right to be there; why should I be thinking about goofy sound bites or advertisements? I think that posting probably has merit, but I don’t want to use social media. It appears to me that TikTok rewards creators who also engage in the content of others—I don’t want to do that, though, if it detracts from my ability to produce.
Still, I think that advertising my art on social media will inevitably invite people to surround themselves with my art, which is one of my main goals for this period of my life. I’m hoping to 1) learn and 2) to cover my expenses through art. Commissions gained via exposure would be huge.
In other news, I got a membership to the Phoenix Art Museum. I think that between this and the botanical garden, I have a great repository of information through which to wander and walk and build inspiration. I think these serve better than social media as landscapes with which to fill the folds of imagery within the mind.
I spent much of last Thursday night working on figure drawings. I’m really inspired by Arlene Diehl who does these charcoal pieces with wild movement— her reduction of what’s not important to simple lines is insanely effective at giving the impression of a complete piece despite minimal detail. I did a few copies of her pieces and some original attempts at photos—it’s clear to me that to emulate her style, I need to perform significant reductions to narrow down what’s important. This concept applies to most pieces; I’ve heard of the 30-70 rule for retaining visual interest and detail in just 30% of the piece. Worth practicing!
