Vrksa

Painting: Vrksa
Beverage: H2O
Playlist: "Painting" (see below)

It has been a little while. I have been working on commissions and will be posting them shortly as well. Over the last month I focused a lot on the technicality of painting, and this resulted in some interesting color mixes. I have fallen in and out of love with both brown and gray. One thing that Georgia O'Keeffe did when she was re-starting to paint was do everything in gray. I tried that. It's done. I moved on.

I wanted to go back to something more fast and fluid, like the "Snow Shadows" painting. It keeps growing on me. So I was in yoga the other day (my body still hurts) and we were focusing on twists. Our opening moving meditation was very tree-like. We were standing moving our arms up like branches, twisting to the right, returning to center, then twisting to the left. It reminded me of looking up at giant redwoods in California, when you can see the sun shining through the branches and they are so high up.

And the outline of the tree against the sun is a deep dark purple against a bright yellow. So I painted it. I did this whole painting this afternoon and opted to keep it simple with the palette knife. It doesn't look as fluid and blended as "Snow Shadows," but rather it looks like some sort of African batik print. I don't know if that's because of the palette knife or the difference in consistency between the yellow and purple (self-mixed) paint. I will keep experimenting.

Concerning music, the inspiration for painting this today came from karaoke last night. Some friends and I went out to Clarendon for karaoke and there was oh so much 80s and 90s music. Absolutely "frat-tastic" as one friend would say. As someone who lives on the other side of the Potomac I felt very out of place. I also desperately missed my own music. Which, on this playlist, is (on shuffle):

Smile - Lily Allen
Daylight - Matt & Kim
Boom - Anjulie
Je veux te voir - Yelle
Sexy M.F. - Prince
Time to Pretend - MGMT
Play - Kate Nash
Bourgeois Shangri-La - Miss Li
F-cking Boyfriend - The Bird and The Bee
Lisztomania - Phoenix
Work it Out - Jurassic 5 and Dave Matthews
Dreams - The Cranberries (sang this at karaoke!!!)
Fever - can't remember artist
Say Aah - Trey Songz
1901 - Phoenix
Kids - MGMT
Where do you go to my lovely - Peter Sarstedt
I Get it In - Omarion
Money Honey - Lady Gaga (also sang poker face at karaoke... brought house down)
Sealion Woman - Feist
7 - Prince (amazing)
Chillin - Wale & Lady Gaga
She Wants to Move - N.E.R.D.

Carmenere

Piece: Carmenere Series 1-4. Four 12x12x1.5 in oil on canvas.
Playlist: variable
Beverage: Carmenere

I have finished, and finally photographed, the first four pieces of my Barcelona antique tile series. To be honest I can't remember what music I listened to while painting, or whether the wine was a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Merlot. Even so, it was a fun little project.

I took the designs from four single tiles, out of four different motifs, and reincarnated them on canvas with shading and brushstrokes and such. The designs come from late 19th/early 20th century Barcelona. Reworking them in brushstrokes was an interesting challenge. I started by prepping the surfaces, making sure to mix the background layer with the first thin layer of paint so that it has more dimension and age. I drew the designs first on paper in colored pencil to get the design and the proportions correct. Then I drew the basic proportions with charcoal on canvas. Finally, I mixed the colors and put paintbrush to canvas. I added in shading to give them some more dimension, and to make them look like something other than just tiles.

The two most valuable parts of this exercise were color mixing and design-drawing. I have definitely come to believe that using less charcoal is better, since it's annoying to clean up after! And as for color mixing, this was the most important part of this series for me. The colors used in the antique tiles are very unique, and the play between them is rather unusual. That is why I put these four very different tiles together, and chose them in the first place. I am looking forward to taking some of these colors to some new abstract and abstracted architecture pieces I'm working on.

TBD whether I will do more of these. I seem to have other, more appealing ideas lately, and much less time.