Yeah, I got to work in my studio all day! Started at 9a.m. and worked until 8:30pm with time out only to eat and check e/mails a few times. Now that’s a good day. Wish I could do it every single day……

It’s starting to come together. Painted on the two men and the background.

Really had to work on developing Jose because his face was the least developed of them all. Made the shirt more dimensional by adding prussian blue/raw umber/permanent blue violet shadows. Added the button – had to make sure it was on the correct side since I was working with a reversed photo.

Did mostly glazing on his face – permanent blue violet/burnt sienna/burnt umber in the shadow areas. Dry brushed white on top of his beard – later I will glaze over it with raw umber,and then dry brush on more white. Because his face is so…..What? Distinctive? His skin is a nice medium warm color, his eyes are so white, and his head is follicle-ly challenged and I think it makes him look……more realistic or less realistic …than the others?It may look a little too commercial art-ish.

Glazed over Yukio’s hair and eyebrows  with a raw umber. Decided to paint his entire tee shirt red and then add some type of design. It definitely needs a design on it, but the one I had was growing too large and didn’t really having any meaning. I may put on Japaneses symbols for the five elements – wood, fire, earth, metal, water. Okay…but in the Bruce Willis film titled The Fifth Element the elements were earth, wind, fire, water and the 5th element was Love. So – which are really the 5 elements?

Added a few wrinkles on his forehead and neck. I think it still looks like he’s smirking…..

Dry brushed prussian blue and white onto Yukio’s pants to make them look more like blue jeans. His hand is in his pocket, but I don’t think I quite have the jeans folding/bulging in the right places yet.

I gave the background painting a second coat of paint and made the outlines a smooth black. Originally I was going to make the background look less developed. May go back into it and dry brush to make it look less definite. Also, the wall in the background is one solid color – can’t decide if I want to add texture or shadows into it. This is where a definition of style comes into play – am I going for a photo realistic look or more of a commercial art look?  Hmmmm…..who am I today?

My 10 year old granddaughter walked into my studio and pronounced this painting AWESOME. When I get it finished with it be AWESOME-ER? I certainly hope so.

Started out by using painters tape to mark off the edges where I want the black picture frame to be – just the blue tape that you use when edging walls. I want to get the black line straight before I start trying to give it dimension.

Glazed over the girl’s dress with a mixture of forest green/alizarin crimson. That mixture makes a very dark black. Also reworked the jacket to give it more shape and make it look like a metallic gray. Created values of gray using the forest green/alizarin crimson mixed with white. Trying to make sure the ruffle ruffles and stands up.

Also glaze over Nukio’s jacket except that I used a mixture of ivory black/prussian blue for it. Dry brushed white on the pants to start giving it a denim effect. Added raw sienna broken lines to represent the stitching along the seaming. I used a pair of my dark blue jeans as an example, but think I’ll look through Tom’s to find a more faded pair. Worked on the tee shirt with cadmium red light/alizarin crimson but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Don’t exactly know what to do with the design on the front. I like the randomness of it but still want the design to represent something. Yesterday I got online and looked up Japanese symbols to use. I’m just afraid that I’d make one wrong brush stroke and I’d spell out a naughty word!!

Worked on developing Nukio’s face. The photo reference that I’ve been using has too much light on his face – I can’t tell the bone structure well enough. I searched through the photo session and found a few other face shots that I can use. I think I have the basic structure, but need to start glazing in more color. Unfortunately I think that right now it reads as a smirk on his face, so I’ll have to work on the expression some more. Added some longer hair and more highlights.

Question: Do you think it’s a bad thing for a professional artist to have a how to paint blog? I’m wondering if I’m giving off an air of unprofessional-ism by showing how I develop a painting? It probably looks as though I fumble my way to the finished product……

I’m not a morning person, but the day goes much better when I start painting first thing in the morning. If I start off doing the paperwork side of the business first, well, it’s just harder for me to start painting later on in the day. After a few hours of paperwork my mind is blown……need a rested mind to paint.

With a fresh and rested critical eye, I could tell that the painting had become too Medium. In other words…I needed to make more light and dark tones instead of medium ones. Changed the neutral part of the wall from a warmish burnt umber/naples yellow/burnt sienna to a cooler shade of raw umber/cerulean blue/white combination. Added a thin black frame around the painting and changed the blueish section of the background painting to a prussian blue/dioxazine purple/raw umber mixture………had to run into my studio to get the tube of dioxazine purple. Was afraid I’d spelled it wrong, but apparently spell check has never heard of dioxazine before. Had to teach my computer a new word.

Started working on the jacket and decided that the material on the collar needed to match the rest of the jacket, so I painted in the black pattern. Tried glazing in some orange and red, but have to rethink that. I want the fabric to look metallic with reflections of orange and red – probably have to paint in more grays first, then glaze in the color. Did more texturing on her hair, but will probably have to go darker with it. Right now the lightest parts are white and it doesn’t look right. If I paint the rest of it darker, then the lighest parts can be naples yellow which will look more natural.

I had e/mailed Yukio to let him know that I was using him in another painting. I first met him at a Final Friday at the Pendleton Art Center. At the time he was living in Cincinnati and working for Proctor and Gamble. He e/mailed me Sunday to let me know that he’s moved back to Tokyo. He’s promised to send me some photos of him wearing a kimono….I KNOW those will end up in a painting. Worked on adding color to his skin tone and added highlights to the hair which I’ll glaze over later on.

Glazed Jose’s face with burnt sienna, permanent blue violet, and burnt umber to start developing more bone structure. Added some hair and started on the beard by dry brushing in raw umber/black/white. It will take several sessions to build up the beard with dry brushing starting with the darkest colors and building up to the highlights. This face is the least developed of the three. I seem to paint left-to-right just like Americans read left-to-right.

One of my art teachers said that you should always use the same skin tones on subjects in the same painting – or it will look funny. Jose’s skin tones are definitely darker – he just looks like he has a great suntan. I can’t tell if the coloring is too dark or if it’s because he’s follicle-lly challenged that his head doesn’t seem to fit into the rest of the painting. Hmmmm….I probably just need to develop him more – the head looks too flat at the moment.

I’ve noticed that lately I’m having trouble getting the right values into skin tones. It’s as if I’m afraid to make the shadows too dark. I don’t seem to have that same problem with the clothing – I can make that look 3-D. I may go back to doing a complete underpainting in values of burnt umber/white and then glazing on the colors. I seem to be doing a lot of glazing now anyway, so it might be a better way for me to develop my paintings. I quit doing an underpainting because I would get it looking perfectly and then lose the values when I started applying color – I think I was too impatient to get the colors on the canvas. I always thought my underpaintings looked better than my finished paintings.

I once told a teacher that I was good with VALUES but not so good with COLORS. She said No, you’re not good with colors either. Such encouraging words.

It was with some trepidation that I started squeezing out my paints today. My mind was racing with How do I paint this wild (at least to me) abstract painting in the background? And then an amazing thing happened….I just started painting. For years I used to paint with all of my my teachers’ voices in my head – always do this, never do that, mix your own blacks, paint from life, lose the edges, etc, etc, etc. But now, after years of painting and painting and painting, well, now I just paint. I think that things have become a little more intuitive for me. That comes from a lot of practice.

I find that if I go for several days without painting  – especially if I’m out-of-town for a week doing a show-  then I seem to forget how to paint. There must be a painting muscle in your brain that you have to keep exercising to help keep it in shape. 40-60 hours a week painting and it keeps in shape. Less than that, skip a few days, and it starts to atrophy.

Weird painting, eh? It will definitely be an attention grabber in my booth – which is what I’m aiming for. I wanted the colors in the abstract painting to be muted – I mixed opposites into all of the colors in order to tone (or dull) them out. Orange into blue, red into green, purple into yellow. That’s opposite  as in opposite colors on the color wheel. I did make sure that the colors behind the faces were opposites of skin tones – there are mostly blues behind the warmish orange-ish skin tones. When placed next to each other…opposite colors on the color wheel make the colors POP.

At the moment most of the colors look middle-ish in tone. I think if I keep the background middle-ish and make the figures w/clothing lights and darks, then there will be enough contrast between the two. I like how the taupe on the wall in the background forms an L-shape with the girl standing at the intersection. I like how the eyes are looking down at her. The eyes are bold, but not too distracting from the figures.

I spent the rest of the painting session working on the girl. Yes, I know that her breasts are standing out too much – I’ve been dry brushing the folds in the dress (and, yes, her breasts) to give dimension. When that’s dry, then I’ll glaze over with a forest green/alizarin red mixture to make the dress black. while still retaining the 3-d look. I worked on the jacket to make the ruffle stand up and look like folds. Originally the ruffle was going to be black with gold trim, but I’m leaning towards making it match the jacket. The plan is to give the jacket shape and then glaze colors over the white to make it look like light reflecting off a metallic material. I started painting colors into the jacket, but think it will work better if I hold off and glaze in the colors instead.

I worked on the hair to give it that tousled, layered look. I used mixtures of naples yellow/white, raw sienna/permanent blue violet, and burnt umber on the hair. I also worked on the skin tones, but don’t quite have them yet. The girl’s cheek on the right side isn’t turning back enough yet. Advise from all of my teachers: Never paint teeth. And what do I do? I paint smiles with teeth showing in almost all of my paintings! Usually toothy smiles look too much like a photograph and can be grating over time. However, since I usually have one of my characters smirking or laughing….well, the teeth gotta show.