New Painting: On the Pier

New painting just finished titled On the Pier; this is the one I have been working on for over two years; the main dilemma was how to recreate the energy of the water without copying the photo or being realistic. I finally settled on the solution by the difference between value changes and using the palette knife.

As with the painting of the boardwalk cart pusher, this painting is meant to show movement across the picture plane. The needs of the painting outweigh the need for proportion and description. This means putting composition first. one of the consequences of putting composition first is that the standing are compressed vertically; but the fellow in the beach chair is elongated in comparison

The main lines were set out first: the pier floor is established on the bottom line tripartite canvas division (line #1) making the pier a stage but not as strong as lines created using the bipartite power lines; the distant shore and woods are established using the upper quarter-line of the bipartite canvas division (line #2); the three figures play off of this upper line.

The seated figure slumps into the half-third line (#3) on the right which is reinforced by the piling; his knees anchor to the line of the first third (#4); This line is reinforced by the second pier piling and the empty chair. The piling on the left sits directly on the one-third line and is the main anchor for the pier(line #5). The female figure’s ankle is secured to the center vertical (line #6) as she steps away from it moving to the left. the male figure’s back right foot is anchored on the left side’s one-fourth vertical (line # 7) as he steps to the left of the picture plan; his forward left foot steps onto the half-fourth vertical (line #8); his head is moving between these two verticals.

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New Painting: Woman in a Red Shirt

Woman in a Red Shirt: Oil on 300# wc paper

I just finished this painting a few days ago.

I started this painting as a response to Picasso’s Woman in a Blue Veil the version of a young girl: I understood his painting to be the Annunciation to Mary: the blue veil alludes to the blue commonly associated to Mary in European art history, the image is a young girl not fully developed, and the light falling upon the face from her left and her concentration on it.

I wanted to make an image that would allude to the quality of Eros: in European painting she is the Lady in Red juxtaposed to Love in the painting by Titian: Sacred and Profane Love. The idea was to keep the painting simple in the manner of Picasso’s painting; but I got more and more deeply involved with appearances and detail as the painting progressed: so, under the original terms the painting is a failure.

The distortions are an effect of compositional decisions. The skin color is  variations on the color copper. The background colors are the fifths to the clothing and the skin colors.

Van Gogh’s Wheat field with Cypresses and Painting the Vitality of the Object

I have been stumped over the past three weeks as to how to portray choppy water of a river. I finally decided to base the sign on shallow scrolls and bringing any brush strokes out in the rhythm those scrolls: I did capture the energy of the water; but the result was so far out of my normal painting that I questioned its “truth” or even whether it worked: in my view, it looked too much as though it was made for comics. I had a trusted friend – who is an artist and a theater set builder – come over to look at it yesterday: the glyph did capture the energy; but it was like a comic book rendering; and it failed in terms of regression into space.

This morning, with my failed attempt in the back of my mind, I came across on Facebook a link to the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection of Vincent Van Gogh. I followed the link to the collection’s online catalog and selected Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses.

What am I looking at? Van Gogh’s successful attempt at capturing energy in his brushstrokes and painting. He understood that the brushstroke carries the intent of the focused artist: One can perceive the wind blowing through over the wheat field, not just because he bent the image of the wheat, but because he held the form of the wind energy and the resistance of the wheat stalks in his mind as he put down the strokes. The same can be said of the tree in middle of the field. The strokes of cypresses convey their living energy. One can go through the entire painting perceiving his recording of the energy or vitality he perceived.

One has to stay on focus to be able to do this sort of painting: this is proof that he did not paint in a frenzy; rather, he painted slowly, as his pigment laden stroke reveals; and he painted each stroke meticulously as he conscientiously recreated the energy in each stroke.

I apologize for the delay in posting. The past few months have been consumed by clearing and moving out of the family home and moving to Greensboro, North Carolina. The studio – what there is – is still coming into shape; but the apartment is small and it is a humid August and poor air conditioning. That being said, the painting below was completed in May.

I originally meant this painting to be only a sketch; to be a quick study of creating the sense of movement across the rectangular field; at the time, I was bouncing off of Gerome’s “Duel after the Ball” wherein the artist used the grid of the rectangular force lines to create a stage and dramatic movement. Gerome played the tripartite canvas division against the bipartite: the former was the stage and the latter contained the action and interaction of the characters. Similarly in my painting, the background is placed within the context of the tripartite system and the characters and the jitney are laced within the bipartite system. The painting was to be done with think strokes of paint; but, I soon became concerned about the quality of the piece; and I also became more interested in how areas of color melded into related adjacent areas. Finally, I began to experiment is glazing in order to more intense colors.

As to the piece’s structure, the cart pusher initiates the movement. His back foot is planted on the vertical force line of the left (the bipartite system has three major lines dividing the rectangle into four sections). His forward foot crossed the leftward major dividing line of the tripartite system; and his head is just on the line. The pusher has set up the rightward movement. The back cart edge is released from the tripartite force line and comes under the influence of the center force line; the strength of this center line is increased as the back cart wheel is directly on the line as the head and torso of the female passenger. The forward struts of the cart’s cab come under the influence of the right side tripartite division line and, combined with the legs, increase the sensation of rightward movement. Because the eye seeks like relationships, the viewer’s eye is also cast back to the head and forward foot of the pusher. The forward section of the cart is elongated in order to increase the pull and release from the right hand force line on the quarter mark.

Overall, I think the painting achieved the initial goal of creating a sense of movement across the canvas.

In terms of glazing, I was able to increase my ability to predict how a color will change when overlaid by another. I was able to accurately predict the changes using the color mixing triangle.

The shadow under the cart was reworked four times in order to get a smooth transition from one color to the next. My initial thought was to use diagonal brush strokes as I applied the paint in order to recreate the planking of the boardwalk; but the result proved to be clumsy and distracting.

I also made extensive use of color fifths.

Color Chords: a Root Color and Its Fifths

For the past few years, I have made use of a color’s fifths. By that I mean using the color triangle (as I wrote below in the entry “The Color Triangle: Mixing Pigments”) to determine the fifth colors from a root color and use that relationship to determine pigment mixtures.

The color-triangle_Yellow-Blue-Red-Orange; note that the colors purple, violet, red-violet, and red would be adjusted so that their intensity would lie along the edge of the shaded triangle.

Using yellow as the root and basing the chord on the Pythagorean right triangle of 3, 4, 5; the other chord colors are red-orange and blue; red-orange is three from yellow, blue is four. On the color/note wheel, yellow is A, blue is C#, and red-orange is F#. This gives us the following right triangle:

The yellow, blue, and red-orange chord with yellow’s fifths: red-violet and purple; the fifths of the other two colors are indicated.

it is also possible to keep yellow as the root color; but make the four side yellow to red, and the three side yellow to blue green. In this case, red-violet possesses the relationship purple had in the above figure; and purple now possess the relationship red-violet had.

The right triangle shows yellow at the right angle and the movement is clockwise to blue and then red-orange. Let’s call the right angle position the root position; therefore, yellow is the root color.

I then indicated with red lines the two colors that are fifths of yellow: red-violet and purple. As can be seen in the above figure, the fifths of the other colors in the triad are:

• the fifths of blue are red-orange and yellow-orange;
• the fifths of red-orange are blue and green.

Note that the fifth red-violet divides the hypotenuse – five color range – in a natural manner into three and two. Whereas, purple seems to be in a relationship to blue as though it was its sharp : C to C# so to speak. The natural division may be a reason why the yellow-red-violet relationship seems more attractive.

I played “put the fifths descending from yellow.”

I discovered in one of my failed acrylic paintings that using the fifth of a color gives air or breath to the painting at the same time it is creating distance between colors.

In painting these fifths, one’s eyes become accustomed to the relationship between a color and its fifth; so, it becomes easy to determine when one has mixed the true fifth. Here is a key understanding: one can train his eye to recognize the particular relationship he is seeking: the color relationship, when achieved just seems to harmonize; there is a visual “yes”; in fact, many times when the right color is found, the color just seems to disappear.

The relationship creates an implied line between the two colors; in fact, the color intensities withing the relationship can be adjusted to incorporate an emphasis on a compositional power line or intersection of the implied power lines.

My use of the fifth has become an integral part of my painting, not only because of the breath the fifth seems to give; but also, because the painting seems to come alive

Acrylic Paint and Color Change

As a colorist, I am disgusted by the color change acrylic paint undergoes as it dries. the image below demonstrates the change:

RGB representation of the scale of raw sienna to raw umber plus two steps just before gray.

The color scale is based on the RGB scale of Raw Sienna to Raw Umber: the A corresponds to Raw Umber; A# and B are two steps below it short of gray. Raw Siena is analogous to C.
This means I will have to return to oil paints. I will finish the two I am currently working on, but most of the work done in the past four years is worthless.

Color Chords and Music

Digital Composition
October 2012

I began doing digital compositions as a way to make quick compositional and color decisions: Photoshop enables the artist to make rapid decisions over a few minutes that might take days or weeks when done in paint. I began doing compositions of arranged abstract elements put together to create a meaningful composition.

Beginning in 2008, I was inspired by two musical references: the first was an off hand remark by some commentator that a renowned composer had recommended to the composer of “Porgie and Bess” the use of the diminished fifth; the second was listening to Leonard Cohen’s song, “Hallelujah” wherein he sings of “the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, and the major lift” (up to now, I thought that was “the fourth, the fifth, the minor fourth, the major fifth”; so my compositions were worked out accordingly).

I continued my experiments in composition and rhythm but now included using the color triangle to realize what I thought corresponded to Cohen’s musical reference. I began doing research on the musical chords using the piano keyboard as a guide. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to ask a rocker musician, friend Tom Chaffee about the color chords. He quickly drew a circle and laid out the twelve chords around it. This was major revelation for me; I had never seen them laid out in this manner.
Tom explained how a musician might decide to play with the intervals between the notes to arrive at unique styles. I took this chart home and superimposed the color over the notes:


One can come up with a different layout, but I was interested in relationships and intervals.
After creating this color/chord wheel, I decided to experiment using my favorite country singer Emmylou Harris: I was curious about her statement about “singing the three chord blues” from her song “The Road.” I then located on line lyrics to a few of her songs and noted the chord changes and experimented with corresponding color changes.
Below: my most recent piece: