On Painting & Art: Another Look at an Old Problem

"Boats" Golden Open acrylic on canvas, 46cm x 38cm, 2009

As promised, here is a photograph of the painting from last week after I did more work on it. I’m still not terribly pleased with the result. Sometimes it’s like that. It depends on what I have for breakfast.

In thinking about the difficulty with this painting I realized I changed part of my process. The painting was started using a large bristle brush. This brush brought more water into the Golden Open. It seems the Golden Open is quite sensitive to an addition of water. If you were attempting to work in a watercolor technique I’m not sure how well it would work. In any case, my preferred method is to work direct and fast even if I have more than a single painting session.

Published in french as Une autre peinture

My modified table-top box easel

The last couple of days I’ve been preparing for a trip to Provence. Every year in February or March we head for Provence and the côte d’Azur, weather permitting. As soon as we get a break in the weather we are gone.

My latest project involved an old Lefranc-Bourgeois table-top box easel I’ve been moving around the world for close to 30 years. Several years ago I adapted it to fit on a camera tripod. The one you see is relatively light weight and extends so that the canvas (size 8 to 20) is at eye level. The box itself weighs nothing compared to my French easel (a free-standing box with attached folding wooden legs) and holds more stuff. I’ve reworked the easel part so that it works flawlessly. The tripod has a quick release which is attached to the bottom of the box. It takes me about 20 seconds to set-up and be ready to paint. In short, it is a very fine box. I love it.

Published in french as L’art d’aimer ses outils

"Untitled" Golden Open acrylic on 100% cotton paper, 24,5cm x 18,5cm, 2009

The last 2 days have been spent for the most part working on images in Adobe photoshop (and Adobe Lightroom). Over the years in the photographing of paintings I’ve had my best results photographing in direct sunlight. For me, simple is best. In the past, I’ve been the proud owner of sophisticated electronic umbrella lighting. And if you like to play with “stuff” this way this may be your cup of tea. The drawback, however, when we depend on sunlight is that for a good part of the year, it does not cooperate. As well of course, the sunlight changes of quality.(temperature) throughout the day and then it gets dark. Not to speak of rain and wind. Often conditions are not correct at the time we are ready to photograph a painting.

Enter photoshop. The ease of digital photograph includes the complexity of photoshop. In order to correctly render colors there is a fairly steep (for most people) learning curve to learning photo processing with photoshop.

Most painters, me included, have some difficulty with highly technical stuff of this sort. But the freedom to photograph and quickly post your work on a web site makes all of the effort a small price in my estimation.

The small painting above was done after the struggling with the larger one on canvas the day before I struggled also with this one as well.

Published in french as Photographier la peinture

«Untitled» Golden Open acrylic on canvas, 46cm x 38cm, 2009

As I’ve indicated in recent articles about Golden Open Acrylic, my struggle with learning acrylic has gone on for some time. About 10 years ago I decided to dedicate one year to acrylic. For one year I would paint only in acrylic. Well, this program lasted for about 2 months as I recall. A lot was learned but it was not sufficient for me to become comfortable with acrylic. The word comfortable is used here in a special sense. For me there is always the element of struggle in painting. Look at it this way, if it was easy everyone will be doing it! I think that I may struggle more than most with the material.

Read the rest of "Learning to paint Golden Open Acrylic"