very discomfortable failure

"But at first, and even for some time, you must be prepared for very discomfortable failure; which, nevertheless, will not be without some wholesome result."
- John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing

"Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up."
- Batman Begins





I have been having a heck of a time of it lately with the painting, and it seems as if I cannot get through a single one without errors abounding. Every painting that I foul up will be redone, because it's in the errors that I get my learning in.

Besides the paintings, I am often doing these small watercolor studies, wherein the aim is to get down, in a short amount of time, the arrangement, structure, colors, and values of whatever is in front of me. Sometimes it's difficult --- a tree is a very complicated item --- but if the enjoyment is there I usually get something out of it. But if it isn't there, I'll come home with a bunch of duds. I don't throw them out, though. Good or bad, they often get me thinking.

August was pretty busy for me with my new assortment of watercolors, heading out to Prospect Park in Brooklyn for these small watercolor studies. I'll use these in developing bigger paintings this winter when all the leaves have gone. It will take more drawings and paintings, though, to have enough visual information to rely on. I avoid working from photographs.

So the three little watercolor studies are along the lines of what I've been doing, 4x6", and using the eight color, 19th century-based palette I put together recently. I'm really enjoying the results. Lot's of beautiful, muddy colors. I've included some mixtures here.

to see a colour

“Colour is the most sacred element of all things.”
--- John Ruskin

“Do we see colour before shape; or do we see the two together? And is it possible to see a colour without realizing what its shape is?”
--- Lynton Lamb, Preparation For Painting



^Study of a Stand of Trees, Prospect Park, Brooklyn (July 2009)



^Study of a Storm Cloud, New Jersey (July 2009)



^Study of an Industrial Landscape, New Jersey (July 2009)


So last month I wrote that my paintings have been hampered lately by problems, that I was unsure how to navigate through some paintings I’ve wanted to start, and that I wasn’t “starting in the right place”.

These blog posts, no matter what date they show, are always a bit behind whatever is actually happening since I take my time writing them (going over them repeatedly, refining what I’ve written). And during the time I was writing last month’s post, I finished assembling a new color palette for my watercolor paintings. It may be the very solution I needed.

I’ve based my colors on those used by the eighteenth-century watercolorist John Robert Cozens (1752–1797). His reserved, quiet paintings have an incredible strength and simplicity which he achieved with a limited palette consisting of only eight colors, avoiding a primary yellow in favor of a yellow ochre. I’ve been mixing these eight colors and achieving muted, sophisticated results. I think they are beautiful. I’ve been working with only this small range of colors for the past few weeks and have been very happy to see all these subdued, quiet colors that seem visually sympathetic to my subject matter. By mixing two colors together I can achieve an additional twenty-eight colors and, by mixing three colors together, at least eighteen more on top of all that.

I assembled this palette after becoming frustrated and overwhelmed with the twenty-four colors I put together last year. I needed to scale things back and contain my reach a bit more. There can be a great ability to express oneself within seemingly narrow parameters. Ironically, the limitless can be limiting, if only because one benefits from a demarcated area to build in. Without boundaries, there is nothing to push against. A flat land with no sign posts or defined horizons in any direction would force the question “where am I?”

My palette for the foreseeable future will consist of:
- green earth (schmincke #516)
- burnt umber (schmincke #668)
- prussian blue (schmincke #492)
- ivory black (schmincke #780)
- bright yellow ochre (schmincke #655)
- burnt sienna (schmincke #661)
- indian red (schmincke #645)
- alizarine crimson (schmincke #353)

I cannot easily imagine doing without cobalt blue and may have to add it. Otherwise, this palette is enough to work with, but not too many to get lost in. I’ll be matching my egg temperas and oils with this palette in order to coordinate all my work.

Three small landscape studies using this new palette are posted above.

I take off for August every year, in true New York style --- see you in September!

patience and impatience

"Now I am again in such a period of struggle and discouragement, of patience and impatience, of hope and desolation. But I must struggle on, and after a time I shall know more about making water colors. If it were easy, there would be no fun in it. And it is the same with painting."
--- Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, January, 1882
The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh: Vol. I, New York Graphic Society, 1959

I have focused my efforts on watercolor lately (besides drawing, which is always a part of what I do) because of its appeal to me as a more immediate type of painting material. No painting material is not immediate. But my approach lately feels particularly suited to watercolor. There is a sort of reverse thinking that comes into practice with this technique, leaving the whites white and working down into other colors and values, which is in contrast to the way oil painting is often handled where one works up to white (though I don’t usually work that way in oil, anyway.) But along with this process of starting out with the lightest values and working towards the darkest, I am also trying to simplify the composition without losing anything important.

It can be difficult to control this medium and push it to its maximum effect without going over the line and losing what has been worked on. I am experimenting with different papers and there is a lot of information to keep track of, besides simply putting in the time on it every day (which doesn’t happen, I admit). Painting seriously is a lot of hard work. To do it with sincerity, with a desire to learn and improve, is a great effort.

Besides this I’m often left with the sense that I haven’t started at the right place, that something critical has been overlooked, that I have to return to an earlier point to find the place I should pick up at. What I haven’t gained is a sense of a logical progression, or reduction (these aren’t contrary to each other), yet I do feel I have a better handle on my work than I used to. The past two years have been beneficial.

The outlying areas of central and southern New Jersey, where I grew up, afford some really beautiful views --- broad, flat, almost abstracted patterns of various muted colors and values, especially on those really lovely overcast days. I’ve always been fascinated by them and have been trying my hand at painting their essential visual qualities. I may continue to work on this, as I haven’t really determined what is essential and what is extraneous.

to forms around us

“Drawing can accommodate all attitudes, whether we are reacting directly to forms around us, refining forms from memory, inventing new forms, or even planning complicated relationships.”
- Bernard Chaet, The Art of Drawing

“We should talk less and draw more.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I want an entire year that I can put all my focus and effort towards my artwork. But with time often being dear, I try every day to put some effort towards drawing. The immediacy of drawing, that ability to pick up a pencil and just go at something, free of all the preparation that other mediums can demand, is one of the things I enjoy most about it. I have an easier time getting right to the heart of it with a pencil rather than a paint brush. Drawing is the basis of all the arts and, for me anyway, a continuing and, hopefully, endless effort to describe and make sense of what I see.

The drawing I’ve posted here was very enjoyable to work on. I was staring at this orange inside a plastic bag and suddenly it was not some mundane object. It was full of interest - - - there were both solid and transparent areas, physical weight contrasting with the light, crisp emptiness of the bag. I like these contrasts and they were fun to draw.

the exceeding simplicity of what is to be done

“(E)verything you can see in Nature is seen only so far as it is lighter or darker than the things about it, or of a different colour from them. It is either seen as a patch of one colour on a ground of another; or a pale thing relieved from a dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And if you can put on patches of colour or shade of exactly the same size, shape, and gradations as those on the object and its ground, you will produce the appearance of the object and its ground. The best draughtsmen - Titian and Paul Veronese themselves - could do no more than this; and you will soon be able to get some power of doing it in an inferior way, if you once understand the exceeding simplicity of what is to be done.... If you will not look at what you see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colours than are there, if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper with ‘vigorous’ lines, or to produce anything, in fact, but the plain, unaffected, and finished tranquility of the thing before you, you need not hope to get on. Nature will show you nothing if you set yourself up for her master. But forget yourself, and try to obey her, and you will find obedience easier and happier than you think.”
- John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing (1857), ch. I / 1.(44)

(Well, yes and no on that one, Mr. Ruskin.) One of my favorite passages from Ruskin, it is entirely truthful and, yet, almost misleading. Anyone who paints and draws with any seriousness knows it doesn’t always fall neatly into place. Experience might suggest that Mr. Ruskin is oversimplifying just a bit, but how, really? He’s right. This is all we do. We “put on patches of colour”. That’s all it is, really. But he leaves out that strange alchemy which comes into play with the great painters, that certain element which cannot be measured or described. But he is absolutely correct in making clear the critical and direct connection between painting and seeing.

No one reading these quotes on my blog, quotes from Ruskin, Vasari, and others, should think I believe my work measures up to these standards. These mark the level I aspire to, not the level I have already achieved. But I keep at it, painting and drawing. Like prayers to God which are small and imperfect, I make them nonetheless.

Here are three recent, small works of mine. The watercolor of the onion measures 4 x 6”, as does the watercolor of the blood oranges, which I did after the graphite drawing, which measures 6.5 x 10.5”, of the same arrangement. While drawings and watercolors are a natural way for me explore ideas prior to starting a painting in oil or egg tempera, they often end up being the culmination of my efforts.

daily a stone

“I really have but a few moments to devote to it daily; yet daily a stone, small or great, is laid upon the pile.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It seems that most days I have little time to put towards my painting but I try to grab even 30 minutes or an hour here and there. So the other day I worked up this color study of a group of buildings. Unfortunately, I have no idea of the location of this view. But I wanted to just get down the general effect of these forms and the light that was pouring across them as the sun broke through on a blustery March afternoon. I worked on this at home from notes I made earlier in the day. It measures 8 x 12” and is more than just quick color notes but less than a complete painting. And there are problems with the perspective.

On these March days, when the air is really wet, the buildings liquefy and puddle as the distance pulls them away. It was really beautiful to look at and I wanted to get some of that effect down.

a bad painting

“What shall I wish you: good studies made after nature, that is the best thing.” - Paul Cézanne to Charles Camoin, 13 Sept. 1903

“Paint is worth attention even in a bad painting.” - Lynton Lamb, Preparation For Painting

A few months back I mentioned a watercolor painting I had started that was much larger (19.25 x 26.75”) than any I had previously done in that medium. I also said that, good or bad, I would post it . I’ve been finished for a while now and here it is, perfectly nice and perfectly boring. (The image will be cropped later.)

The subject is a roof line and water tower, visible from the intersection of East 17th Street & University, and is typical of the many thousands in New York. Water towers fascinate me. The plaster and brick walls, weathered and discolored, along with the random accumulation of antennas, vents, ducts, and other objects, make each one entirely different than the next. It’s fascinating, like people or snowflakes - - - you wonder how there can be so many with no two the same.

I have a growing amount of sketches and watercolors of these water towers and their adjacent roof lines. I also take photos, for backup. This painting was worked up from one of those small sketches and other notes. I see now I should have made more sketches and more notes.

But I didn’t want to get caught up in detail. Rather, I wanted to approach it in a simple and straightforward way. I am fascinated by the work of the English watercolorist John Sell Cotman (1782-1842). The simplicity of his paintings is almost deceptive. They have such beautiful, broad handling. That’s what I was attempting - - - not his effect, since that is his own, but his approach. This may appear to conflict with my ongoing efforts in (so-called) “realism” but it doesn’t. Really.

And I failed. This is a bad painting. But even failures are valuable. I will have to do it over. Despite my original intentions, I spent too much time on it and tamped the life right out. This was an attempt to work in watercolor at almost four times larger than I normally work at. The size of the brush, the relation of the brushstroke to the size of the image, is entirely different here than at one-quarter the size, as you can imagine.

When I paint it again I will further simplify my approach. But, for now, here it is, overdue and full of problems.