painting chaos
the corner of this painting is the only bit i really like so far. the lines on the chocolatey brown makes me feel somehow cosy and warm.

the first layer of painting was an abstract i did in my city college painting class. i'm not much good with abstraction, so it didn't go anywhere. from time to time i put paint (and other bits) on this canvas. it's becoming quite the jumble. but when i draw that way, sometimes it works out. we'll see if it works out here. i'm also forcing myself to work much larger (total canvas size: 4ft-square).

the sketch is from my late-night ride home on bart last night. everyone looked so tired. or mebbe it was just me at the end of a very long day...
Labels: art, dogs, doodle, oil painting, one-a-day, painting, sketches

:: ewee 12:47:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 ::

sketchy: kehoe (day 14, bit late)
been fending off a touch of a cold/flu and doing my best to get work done through it. so i've a bit outta commission the last three days.

haven't been keeping up on my drawings either, so here's a painting from a city college class ages ago. interesting how i've been painting for most of my life, but there's still so much for me to learn. this bit was when color changed for me completely--before then, i thought of naples yellow as wimpy, and had no idea that prussian blue could be anything other than domineering and overpowering.

lately, i've been churning and not very happy with my paintings. i'd like to get them to a point where i can post them here, but i'm a bit stuck. mebbe the sketches will loosen something up. the more i think about it, the more i think it might be time that i go back to that tedious exercise and make a grid of all the combinations available to me in my palette.

also, i'm itching to get some sketches of the buildings around us from the empty offices in our suite. ('course i think of this right before they're gonna fill them with people...ain't that the way it goes?) hopefully i'll have some to post soon, and will catch up as well.

[just noticed! this is my 900th post...might be inaccurate due to the saved drafts i have lingering, but still! woohoo!]
Labels: art, doodle, oil painting, one-a-day, painting, sketches

:: ewee 12:35:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 ::

painting chaos, dining room style

lovely day, part 2.2: more painting nonsense...couple paintings in progress. (and there's more where these come from too! but the ones on my easel are even earlier than these, so you'll have to just wait and see...) this is our dining room table. other than the carrot-tops i've planted (just curious to see what'll happen), the container of nuts (you are what you eat), and the bottle of wine (neglected, and now only sufficiently good for cooking), this table doesn't get much dining action. guess that's one good thing about eating in front of the tv. and thankfully miz sy is pretty forgiving about my crap out and about (unlike me. poor miz sy...)
Labels: art, bay area, belly palace, go stay come, homey, oil painting

:: ewee 5:24:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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painting chaos

lovely day, part 2.1: painting nonsense...and this is just the tip of the iceberg. you should see the horizontal surfaces in our dining room. (wait... why explain what a cameraphone can show?)

some of these little paintings are part of a little gifty for kc from kc (a surprise started a year ago). i think she knows about the gift by now, but hopefully she won't suddenly stumble across my flickr and blog posts ).
Labels: art, belly palace, oil painting

:: ewee 5:12:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Sunday, April 06, 2008 ::

happy me

(happy birthday to me) it's not an iphone, but mebbe that's the point.
Labels: 38, art, birthday, colors, inspiration, naples yellow, oil painting, prussian blue

:: ewee 4:19:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Friday, February 02, 2007 ::

naples yellow
let me tell you a story about naples yellow.

at some point, i thought very little of naples yellow. and to be fair, tending to purchase pigments on the cheap, i doubt that the pigment i've got is the real deal. but in any case, the naples yellow i've been using seemed to get swallowed up by any color i mix with it. it took a painting class that forced me to mix all the colors i own together (in a big grid) for me to learn the power of naples yellow.

and now, i'm finding that any pigment that i scorn (and trust me, on my budget, there's lotsa flimsy colors in my palette), are the ones that stun me when i mix them with other scorned colors.

take prussian blue, for example.
(ahem. as an aside, free the color! don't link to the hateful band by the same name. link to the color! up with the color in google! dismiss hate to lower page rankings on google! push it to page 3 and beyond! ok, i'll link to different articles now, i promise...)
but yes, prussian blue was the least favorite of all the blues in my palette. unlike naples yellow it aroused my ire for exactly the opposite reason, but with the end same effect. pb overpowers most of the other colors in my palette. and where ny is opaque (irritating at times), pb is translucent/transparent (also irritating at times). and mixing it with reds, depending on the red, would result in greenish brownish purples that only further irritated me.

now, and especially when mixing pb with ny, i find that these colors are simply sublime. i can't imagine shadows without pb, and i've found that white is often much too garish next to ny. it's gotten to the point where i'll start painting (ok, rarely, but it happens) with an idea in mind, but then --WHAM!-- suddenly, it's all about the colors. how they mix, how they don't mix, how they feel.

and in case you missed the links above, lookit -- pb's good for treating internal contamination with radiation and for data storage! just goes to show what i know...

(did you really just read all that...?)
Labels: art, colors, naples yellow, oil painting, prussian blue

:: ewee 2:07:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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