Paintings in Late December

I went to Trader Joe’s and bought more flowers. I enjoyed the professional skills of a florist for my last composition, but now I’m winging it. Here’s how I started the piece:

I covered up my Picasso Pigeons clone for this. I stared at it hanging above my bed and decided that I wasn’t satisfied. I laid down a large gray layer of quinacridone deep pink, cadmium free yellow pale, and cobalt blue. I have been trying to go course to rough, so I used my largest knife and the ink roller to lay down most of the grays. I spent too much time moving around the back vase, not quite knowing where it went.

On starting, I hoped to do about three or four layers to this— I blocked in what I needed to. I planned a second pass on the vases and flowers, and the third pass was planned to add colors outside of my limited palette, plus texture. Ultimately I found that I did about five layers, and there were always things that I felt like I could continue to touch up. Later, you’ll see the threshold which I passed where I decided “this is a painting,” and was ready to call it at any moment.

In hindsight, I realize that I got too detailed too quick. I should have spent more time on getting the greens laid in underneath the flowers— adding the yellow in proved to be something to navigate around, which is a mistake I would try to avoid in the future. I also would have spent more time unifying the shadow that I would inevitably go over. I planned this from the start, but I had to mix way more of this darkest-gray later, which slowed me down.

I started to address the flowers and middle layer of the still life. I used quinacridone mixed with bright red and a large amount of white for the peonies. I used a mix of cadmium yellow and lemon yellow for the other flowers— I took that mix and gave it some cobalt blue to get the green that I was after.

I also made some watercolors for studies. Quick, fun things to do while musing on an oil painting.

I went to the Arizona Artists Guild orientation as well. I’m hoping to attend some meetings soon—I skipped out on figure drawing the past few times because of laziness plus the holidays. I’m going to go tomorrow, on the 31st.

The final still life.

There was a large jump between the still life being dark, moody, and brooding, and the end result. I committed to a background color which was initially a mistake, but fortunately I added in some richer Cadmium-Free Yellow Pale which pulled the piece together. I had to spend a long stretch of time looking at this piece in the early morning to make this pivot, and I’m glad that I did. Overall, this project took me about 10 days.

I’ve been devoting a lot of time to TikTok. I streamed most of the still life on Live, which was really fun to do, especially after I already knew the direction. I’m finding it hard to stream on Live when I don’t know what I’m doing next—this time should be reserved for artistic wandering, rather than catering to a crowd. I did make the bulk of progress on this peonies still life while streaming, and it’s interesting because I consider progress to be slower than usual and faster than usual, in different ways. I’m motivated to paint for a long stretch of time while on live, and to stick to a schedule, but I get easily distracted and do a lot of talking and flexing for the crowd.

The whole thing is fun, though. I can’t lie. I get some wild engagement and thirsty comments, which I think I’ve swung back around on—I liked it at first, but now I’m trying to focus on my art and consider my long-term vision. I also don’t want to pigeonhole myself—I like being that “flex and paint” guy, but I’m also reluctant to stick to “I’ll flex if you ask me!” and “pushups at 5k likes!” It feels a bit narrow. I’m still establishing the paradigm that I’m most comfortable with; I caution myself against getting in a rut with it.

Ultimately, I was under 700 followers at the beginning of this month. Since I’ve been doing lives, I’m up to nearly 7000. I wonder if I can continue this trend into 2025 and gain enough traction that I can support myself on commissions.

I made a few portraits and started some other pieces. The panel on the left is complete, and I’m doing an abstract wandering for the middle piece. I’ll try to get the teal still life done quickly to finish out the year.

I sold a few things in these past few weeks: one watercolor, one print. I have two commission requests for 12”x12” pieces. I will be doing a sunflower still life and a mountain range in Monterrey, Cerro de la Silla.

In other news, I want to start putting together a fitness course. My documents have had a lot of traction but I haven’t gotten paid for them, nor have I received any feedback. They’re very simple and I hope they’re offering some value to those who have downloaded them. My climbing friend Derrick gave me the feedback that I should split my climbing document— give the more advanced/intermediate document a slimmer feel and just get straight to the training. The “beginner’s” document should contain all of the stuff that I have in there already, but pared down from the advanced training. I went climbing with him a few times and offered him some coaching—I’m finding that I have a lot of technique tips which are non-nebulous which prove useful to him.

I had a few people reach out about personal training as well, but I pushed most of those calls to Thursday after the New Year.

Enjoy!

Climbing at Oak Flat.