Another New Year

I apparently haven’t written anything in over a year. I’m not sure how that happened. Lots of things happened in 2023, culminating in my having to shut down my studio and move everything into storage. I’m not sure what the immediate future holds for me with regard to my art work. I’m having trouble getting motivated to even draw, which I can do with a pencil and paper (no need for a studio) and yet I’m finding that the pencil weights too much these days.

I’ll try to get myself together with charcoal and hopefully have something interesting to write about. We’ll see.

New Year

It’s a new year and I hope it’s filled with peace and prosperity for all. 2022 had many challenges and I expect so will 2023. My goal is to meet them head on and continue to pursue art and truth and connection.

Sadly, I went to my first memorial of the year for a friend who died a a few weeks ago. I’m hoping there won’t be any more to attend, but you never know. In the mean time, I plan to keep painting.

Mud

“Mud” is something a lot of artists talk about … usually negatively, as in, “don’t be a mud mixer”, or something similar. But what is mud? I’d like to share my thoughts on this from the perspective of oil painting. I believe the issue may be similar in terms of results with water color / gouache, and even acrylic, but I have no experience with those mediums. I will also restrict my opinions to direct painting, or “wet-on-wet” as indirect painting usually involves layers of transparent colors on top of each other. The “mud” issue for indirect is likely similar to some degree though.

So, what is mud mixing? There are usually three common ways people describe this. The first is in terms of temperature relationships. I’ve heard (and read) artists claim that warm shadows need cool highlights and warm highlights need cool shadows or you wind up with mud. I think this is a strange definition though. If the quality of light in the shadows is warm, and the quality of light in the highlights is warm, and your goal is to faithfully reproduce that in your painting, than changing color temperature isn’t probably going to be very satisfying. If this is “mud”, then so be it. However, if you choose stylistically to always use temperature contrast between light and shadow regardless of what you see in life (or in a reference photo), then that’s fine because it’s your choice. That doesn’t mean anybody else should follow that like a rule though just to avoid “mud”.

The second is having desaturated color, usually because of mixing complements together. It seems like a contemporary ideal to try and use the most saturated colors you can and anything that knocks the saturation down is mud. Again, if that’s a stylistic choice, fine. But if you want to faithfully match the colors you see, most of the organic world is pretty desaturated. If that’s mud, so be it.

The third is overworking your painting. This is probably most directly related to wet-on-wet because you are working new paint into existing paint on your surface. I’d imagine this can be done indirectly as well, but I have no experience with that. Overworking your paint, even on only a part of the picture plane, can definitely make it look “flatter” than just putting paint down and leaving it. Again, it depends on what you set out to achieve but the word “overworking” seems to connote that you’re working it more than you wanted.

Which brings me to my conclusion on mud. I would say that if you intend to keep your colors saturated and they get desaturated during mixing, that’s a bad thing. If you intend to have contrasting temperature between light and shadow but you wind up with consistent temperature, that’s a bad thing. And if you want your brush strokes to look like you made them perfect the first time and left them alone but you wind up obliterating the nuance by overworking, that’s bad. Otherwise, if you achieve what you set out to — even if that means you fit into one of these “mud” definitions — then you’ve succeeded and it’s good.

The key here is intent. There’s a quote that I’ve heard attributed to Pablo Picasso. I have no idea if he said it or in what language, and I’m paraphrasing anyway, but the quote is “if you make a mark by mistake, even if you love it, wipe it off.” That’s pretty severe but it speaks to intent being key in creating authentic art. If you achieve your intent, who cares if somebody else thinks it’s mud?

Anyway, I’m still going to keep painting.

Star Trek Fan Film Series

I recently completed a series of 15 portraits of Star Trek Fan Film captains. These are people who make films for free, because they love Star Trek. They do an amazing job with little to no money, using cell phones and green screens for the most part. They rely on creativity and character driven story telling. It’s really inspiring to see creators doing such amazing work just for the love of it.

You can find these portraits on my instagram which is linked below.

Juried Exhibits

I recently submitted some of my paintings to some juried exhibits, sometimes called painting competitions. It’s kind of a strange concept though — painting is not a competitive endeavor. Nevertheless, I submitted and actually won two different “bronze” awards, which is actually fourth place in this case, instead of third (first is “platinum”).

It was a fun experience, but I can’t help but feel like competitive art is kind of missing the point. My paintings aren’t going to defeat a competitors, so the whole thing is a little strange to me. Still, I’m grateful that the jury considered my work worthy of a bronze. One thing I did find odd though is that for both awards, I submitted two paintings each. The one that got the award in both cases was what I thought was the weaker of the two (from a technical standpoint).

I’ll probably continue to submit work into these types of juried exhibits, at least for now. Maybe it will result in some wider recognition. Until then I’ll just keep painting.

Which Black Is Best?

Strangely, black paint is controversial in the oil painting world. This was a total surprise when I first started painting. I didn’t know there were different kinds of black, and I didn’t even think of mixing one.

The first black I remember using out of the tube was Ivory Black, made from charred bones. It sounds gruesome. Then I discovered Lamp Black and Mars Black. Neither of these are made from charred bones. Lamp black is from carbon remains of burning oil (hence “lamp”) and Mars Black is Iron Oxide (the same element used in many other pigments).

Of course, there’s still painters who refuse to use black and their reasoning tends to vary. Usually, artists who don’t use black just prefer to mix their own. Obviously, they’re still using black, just not buying it that way. Instead of a single pigment (e.g. iron oxide) to get to black, they mix multiple pigments to get the same (or similar) result. I often do this myself.

Some of the reasoning around not using black has to do with some other painter not using black, as in “well my favorite Old Master never used black, so I won’t”. That’s as good a reason as any, I suppose. However, if your reason for not using black, or for picking one black over another is based on a faulty assumption or bad science, you may want to reconsider. For example, I’ve heard claims that carbon based blacks “may not be archival”. which has no science behind it.

I tend to use black as a color on its own, and to mix with other colors. I like the fact that it muddies my colors. That’s actually the effect I’m looking for. I prefer using slower drying blacks when I’m painting because I like to keep the paint workable for as long as possible, being a direct painter. I’m fine with mixing my own black as well, and see no real difference in doing this vs buying a tube. I really don’t care about the color temperature of black paint. Most black paint is cool (turns blue when you add white to it). Some claim to be “neutral” and Mars black in particular is said to be “warm”. I’ve never found any black to be warm, but I have other colors on my palette to mix with to push things cool or warm as needed, so I’m not worried about that.

Drying times and transparency are definitely things to consider though. The fastest drying black paint is Mars Black, but it’s the most opaque and has the strongest tinting strength which can make it harder to handle in mixes, but to be honest, it’s not that hard to handle.

I think the bottom line is use whatever black you want. Use it however it works for you. Just keep painting.

Plumber’s Block

I’ve often heard this term when writers try to talk themselves out of having “writer’s block” or artists having “artist’s block” (or whatever the artist phrase for this is). It’s a situation where you feel stuck, or you just can’t get motivated to write, or work on art, or whatever. The response to this is “have you ever heard of plumber’s block?”, which is supposed to elicit a response like “well, no I guess I haven’t”. This is meant to get you into a mindset of just doing the thing even if you’re not feeling it that day, like a plumber would.

The problem wit this analogy, is that plumbers do get “plumber’s block”, or something like it. I’ve done plumbing for my own home, and believe me, there are times when the last thing I want to do is deal with a blocked drain or toilet, or a water heater that needs maintenance. I don’t just do it anyway, I procrastinate and find almost anything else to do instead — kind of like writer’s block, or artist’s block, or whatever.

The thing is, plumbing, or brick laying (which I used to do professionally), or even engineering, isn’t quite the same as writing or painting or composing music. Sure, there’s opportunity for creativity — especially in engineering. But it’s not the same as the kind of “pure” creation writers and other artists are faced with when blocked. Plumbers don’t always just go to work no matter what, because many of them get sick days and paid vacation days, or just plain take a day off because they can’t stand the thought of crawling around under somebody’s sink that day. Engineers definitely have to be creative, but usually for a specific purpose with stakeholders helping to drive direction. It’s not the same. But feeling blocked and needing to take a break is universal.

Writers and artists don’t often have paid time off, so it’s harder to feel good about taking a personal day. But it’s also super important to do that once in a while. Take along walk, watch a movie, do something for yourself other than working on your art. Just don’t stay stuck. If you have deadlines, communicate with your customers or editors or collectors. They’ll understand as long as you don’t stay stuck for too long. Taking a short break for a day or two might actually result in better productivity afterwards so you many not even lose as much time as you think.

I don’t actually have writer’s block (or artist’s block in my case) at the moment. I do have “tax filing block” right now though, and I’m going to take that break and still be OK for my deadline.

In the mean time, I plan to keep on painting.

Happy New Year

It’s been over a month since I’ve posted anything. The new YouTube channel is taking up some of my time, but not enough to justify the lack of updates here. I’ve been painting a lot, and thinking a lot about drawing. I’m trying to work out something more useful in how I explain my drawing method and may decide to do some dedicated videos or other beginner friendly material on it sometime in the near future.

I’ve been keeping pretty busy with the Captains series of portraits I’ve been working on for now though, so once that’s completed, I’ll see about dedicating some time to the drawing idea. I don’t know if it will be in the form of a “workshop” in some form, or a series of blog posts, or whatever. The working title is “Drawing the head from the inside out”, because that’s basically how I do it and I think it’s comparable to other methods, such as grids or relying heavily on construction. It’s not likely to be as accurate as tracing, but it can be used with live models, where tracing can’t. (Note: Alberti Grids or Dürer Grids can be used when working from life, though I doubt many people still do this.)

Anyway, I’m going to try and work this into my rotation of Stuff To Do when I’m not painting, or not doing other life stuff. I hope this is something I can complete before the end of the year.

New YouTube Channel

I finally got with the program and joined the “ArtTube” scene on YouTube. I started my channel with you time lapse video demonstrations of alla prima portraits.

One is the first in a series of “captains” I’m painting of Star Trek fan fiction actors. I’m planning on painting as many of these amazing people as I can over the next few months. These are people who make fan films for the love of the genre and do incredible work with near zero budgets. I’m a huge fan and it’s a small way I can give thanks to them for their contributions to the Star Trek fan community.

The second video is of a horse portrait, demonstrating the power of shadow in what’s almost tenebrist in its final appearance.

Because the channel is new, I don’t qualify for a cool looking URL, so it’s a random crypto string at the moment.

Here is a link to the YouTube channel: Roberto Suzuki Art

Left Brain? Right Brain?

I’m sure you’ve heard somebody somewhere, especially in the art world, refer to right brain people and left brain people, where one is supposedly creative and the other analytical, one is “good at art” and the other “good at math”. I’m going to ask that we all just stop this silliness. There has never, ever, ever been any evidence of this, and no actual neuroscientist or researcher has ever believed in it.

This is something that was propagated by an uninformed and unethical media in the late 1960s and kept alive by a willingly credulous public. Brain lateralization by function is a thing that neuroscience has been trying to understand, and they have even made progress, but nobody outside the sciences seems to actually care about how the brain really works, especially not in the arts.

We seem to want to hold onto this silly notion of “right brain vs left brain” and refuse to acknowledge the truth, which is that in order to create, you need to be analytical and in order to analyze, you need to be creative. Studies of healthy brains using continuous scanning during a variety of activity show no significant difference in brain activity or lateralization when doing creative tasks vs analytical.

Things that may result in lateralized activity include things like language function and visuospatial processing — not drawing vs measuring, or math vs poetry.

It really pains me to hear artists I otherwise admire use this brain lateralization myth as the basis for how or why their “method” works, or as the foundation for some other philosophy of art, or whatever. Often times, this just renders the entire rest of their philosophy or method invalid, at least for me. Some of the time, it’s just an unnecessary distraction that makes an otherwise useful or insightful art lecture sound stupid.

In all cases, it’s factually incorrect and always has been, so please, please, please, just stop already.

New Studio

I’ve been moving into the new studio space. It’s going to take a little while longer to get everything setup to paint. In the mean time, I’ve been trying to get in some charcoal drawings from home, because I can pretty much do those from anywhere. It’s been a struggle finding time but in the next two weeks I should finally be in a good place.

I’ll follow up with more regular posts once I’m all settled in.

Drying Times

In the past two posts I discussed “fat over lean” and “sinking in”. In both posts, drying has been a part of the discussion, but it wasn’t discussed directly. Today I’ll share my understanding of this often confusing topic.

Different pigments dry at different rates, naturally. This can be influenced with different additives, but in general, titanium white dries very slowly, earth tones dry much faster, cadmiums and artificial pigments are somewhere in between. There are two classes of additives that can influence this. One is something that will retard the autoxidation process, and the other is something that will speed up autoxidation. This is the mass gaining phase of the paint film formation.

The additives that speed up autoxidation, called “dryers”, usually also have side effects in the mass losing phase of paint film formation, where volatile compounds diffuse out of the film as it hardens. The additives that slow autoxidation typically only affect autoxidation.

So, how and when do we add these, and why? There are dryers that you can add directly to your paint, but this is not usually recommended unless you know what you’re doing. The risk is adding too much and destabilizing the paint film as it forms. There are also additives that slow autoxidation, and these are not likely to cause destabilization of the paint film as it forms, but adding too much may cause separation of the pigment from the suspension medium.

There are also “fast drying” mediums and “slow drying” mediums that already have these characteristics. Adding these mediums to your paints will influence the drying rates. If you are very careful, you can influence the drying rates such that all the pigments dry at the same rate, which can result in a more stable paint film. Adding medium potentially also allows for more uniform autoxidation as the medium creates an emulsion with the drying oil the paint is suspended in, creating channels for oxygen molecules to penetrate. But getting the ratios right for each pigment takes a lot of patience and experimentation, and may even vary from batch to batch of both paint and medium.

There are two paints on the market that have medium already added. One is by Schmincke and is a fast drying medium. The other is Geneva, which is a slow drying medium. These both have the benefits described above and free the artist from having to mix in medium during a painting, fussing to get the right texture, running out of a color and needing to do that over again, etc.

I personally use the Geneva paint. I prefer its slow drying quality, the fact that all of the colors dry at the same rate, and the pigment load is outstanding. If you prefer a fast drying time, especially if you work in layers (indirect method), the Schmincke paints may be something you would be interested in trying. (Note, I have no affiliation with Geneva Fine Art or Schmincke, but I did take a series of workshops with Mark Carder a number of years ago and I’m definitely a fan.)

If you are interested in adding something like cobalt dryer to speed drying time, or clove oil to slow it down, it’s generally recommended that you do so very carefully — like a drop at a time. Otherwise, consider one of the many fast drying or slow drying mediums available on the market, or make your own using one of the many recipes.

There is still a question about how much drying times matter when considering the final paint film. Does uneven drying have a higher risk of cracking? Does it matter if you paint direct / alla prima? I don’t know the answer to these questions. I do think that it’s very likely any oil paint will crack eventually anyway though, so I try to keep it simple and focus in painting instead of chemistry.

My next post is probably going to be about painting mediums. Then again, it could be about clouds.

“Sinking in” and how to fix it

Sinking in is a phenomenon that really all oil paintings experience during their drying phase. There are many explanations for why this happens, most of them are not supported by contemporary scholarship. In this post, I’ll try to explain my understanding of this phenomenon and what I do to fix it (and why).

First, let’s take a look at a painting that has fully dried and examine the “sinkin in”, which exhibits as a dulling of the colors and a loss of “shine” on the surface of the painting.

Dry painting that has dulled, often called “sinking in”.

The effects of adding varnish to the dry painting, restoring the color and “shine”.

You can see in the top image that the black isn’t very black and even the background looks a little dull. When adding a layer of varnish, the blacks are restored and the background regains its shine.

So what’s going on? Many online articles and artists explain that “sinking in” is actually the oil from the paint literally sinking into the canvas, as if the layer beneath, be it oil primer, acrylic primer (AKA modern “gesso”), classic gesso, or whatever, is actually drawing out the oil from the paint, creating the “matte” looking layer above.

However, this “sinking in” effect can be seen even on supports that are 100% non-absorbent, such as shellac sized panels, and even glass. So, we know that’s not the cause of the sinking in. (Note that it may be possible that oil can be drawn into a lower layer in a painting, I really don’t know for sure if that’s not happening on a given support, but I know for sure it’s not happening on shellac, and we still get the sinking in there.)

Another explanation for sinking in is something called “under bound” paint. This theory suggests that certain pigments are very absorbent and paints made from them need to be made with a sufficient amount of oil in the suspension process (mulling or rolling or whatever). If not enough oil is used to create the paste we call paint, then the pigment will absorb too much of the oil and the result will be this matte look we call sinking in. Again, the data doesn’t support this. Firstly, because this phenomenon happens to any pigment given sufficient time and environment. Secondly, the amount of time paint stays in the tube is generally far longer than it takes for paint to dry and “sink in” after it’s smeared on a surface. If the pigment were to “absorb” the oil, it’s reasonable to expect that to happen in the tube.

One common remedy often suggested for both of these causes is “oiling out”, which is just adding a layer of oil to the dried paint surface. This has the immediate effect of restoring the original luster and color richness of the painting, much like the varnish did in the photo above. Unfortunately, since the root cause in both cases is incorrect, this is not a permanent solution. Once that layer of oil dries, the “sinkin in” returns, where another round of “oiling out” is often suggested. This can go through many rounds before final varnishing.

So if the above explanations don’t stand up to the data, what is happening? There are clues in the above explanations. Once the paint is out of the tube and on a surface, it’s exposed to air, containing oxygen. This is where the autoxidation process begins. Certain pigments are faster to oxidate than others. Notably, earth tones are made from clay containing iron oxide, which speeds oxidation, whereas titanium does not, for example. I believe the most credible theory is that autoxidation is the actual cause of the “sinking in”. During the drying process for oil paints, the surface structure of the paint actually changes at a molecular level. This causes the light that reflects off of the paint to have non-uniform angles of reflection across the surface, causing the matte finish. This is how matte varnishes work, by the way. A matte varnish typically has wax in it specifically to reflect light in a non-uniform (and slightly occluded) way.

Since the cause is the natural shifting of the surface structure of the paint as it dries, adding oil only repeats the process, though it may eventually even out with pure oil and no pigment. But each time you “oil out”, you are adding a layer to your painting that becomes part of the final paint film. And you still need to wait for this to dry before varnishing, so you’re really just delaying that final step. Oiling out can be useful tactically, if you need to restore the color and shine to a painting for a show, for example, but it’s not really a durable fix for the problem.

The easiest way to fix this issue in a durable way is to wait until the painting can be varnished, and then let the varnish even out the surface of the paint as in the above photo. There are different kinds of varnish. Some are thicker than others. Some are synthetic and some are “natural”, but all of them do essentially the same job. I personally favor a thicker varnish as I believe it gives me better results. Thin varnishes (like Gamvar) will restore the colors and shine but since they are so thin, they don’t fully even out the surface of the paint and this can lead to having more glare across the surface. This is something that not all artists need to worry about. If you paint using thick paint, you are probably not worried about “flattening” the surface to avoid glare. You just want to restore the chroma and shine to your paint surface. In that case, Gamvar is a good choice for final varnish.

The reason we usually wait so long to varnish is to avoid the varnish becoming a permanent part of the paint film. If we varnish too soon, we won’t be able to remove the varnish at a later date (e.g. for cleaning). Gamvar avoids this as it can be removed easily with a gentle application of Gamsol solvent, so it can be applied as soon as the painting is “touch dry”, which is a bonus for people who choose Gamvar. There may be other varnishes, or recipes to make your own, that have similar properties. But Gamvar is the only commercial varnish I’m aware of that can be applied so early in the drying phase. (Note: retouch varnish can be used as soon as paint is touch dry also, but it’s not considered a “final varnish” like Gamvar.)

In conclusion, “sinking in” happens to oil paintings as they dry. Oiling out can temporarily address this if you need a quick fix, and Gamvar can potentially fix it permanently if you prefer. Otherwise, waiting until the painting can be varnished with your preferred final varnish is the best, most durable fix.

Fat over Lean

This could be just called “your painting is going to crack eventually”, because that’s likely true no matter what you do to try and avoid it. It’s just the nature of oil paint. To understand why, we need to look at the chemistry of how oil paint “dries”.

Although this process varies slightly depending on the specific oil used as the suspension medium for the paint, all oil paints go through two different phases of drying. The first is “autoxidation” where oxygen molecules bond with the lipid structures through the same free radical process you and I take vitamins to prevent from happening to us. During this phase, the oil medium dries to a film and becomes “touch dry”. This is also known as the weight gaining phase where the paint can actually increase mass by up to 14%. The oxygen uptake process creates a three dimensional network of bonds. It also results in the creation of volatile compounds that diffuse out of the paint film after autoxidation. This is the second phase of “drying” where the paint actually loses mass — in some cases more than the mass that was gained in the first phase.

There are a lot of factors that go into how this happens. Linseed oil tends to lose less mass than any other drying oil used in paint. Other oils tend to break down more during the second phase. Other issues influence mass loss over time too, such as metal ionization (where metal ions break down the three dimensional bond structures over time causing more volatile compounds to diffuse out of the paint film). Metal ions are in the paint only if the pigments contain them, or if you use certain additives that contain them (such as “dryers”). Many pigments do contain metals, such as flake white or cremnitz white (contains lead), earth tones usually contain iron-oxide, some contain manganese. Cobalt and copper are also found in pigments (cobalt blue, any pthalo pigments).

There’s also something called “hydrolization” which can continue to damage the paint film over time if the oil in the paint was subjected to water. I know many people think exposing oil paint to water is safe because “oil and water don’t mix” but I’m afraid they do — or at least the interact chemically.

So, this is what happens in each layer of paint. But what delineates the layers? The autoxidation process is what really separates layers. So, if you are working with wet paint and painting wet paint on top of other wet paint, it’s all one layer as far as the chemistry is concerned. If you wait until paint is touch dry then continue working with glazes, etc., then you are adding new layers (that will need to undergo a similar process, depending on the glazing medium you use). So, if you are worried about fat over lean because you tone your canvas and then paint on top of it in one sitting, don’t worry. It’s all going to be part of the same layer once the oxygen molecules do their thing.

I often hear and read that the old masters really understood this “fat over lean” rule and their processes and their materials reflect the great wisdom of their mastery. Unfortunately, this is not true. It turns out that their mastery was in their painting and not in their understanding of chemistry. I don’t know of a single oil painting more than 150 years old (and some even younger) that haven’t cracked. Basically, they all crack — and so will yours and mine one day.

So, worry less about fat over lean in general. Stop worrying at all of you paint wet into wet. If you use any modern “plastic” mediums (such as Liquin), you might be better off than the old masters just because the chemistry is better, but we’ll have to wait a hundred years or more to find out.

If you want to read more about the research on this topic, I recommend this site, and also this paper.

In any case, keep painting.

Coming soon …

I’ve been working on a blog about “sinking in” and drying oil paints in general. I’ve been super busy though so I keep putting it on hold. It will happen in the next few weeks. It will hopefully debunk some of the lore around things like “fat over lean” and “overly absorbent grounds” and “under bound paints” and so forth.

Some of this will undoubtedly contradict a lot of what the art world has been teaching (and is still teaching) about this stuff, but that’s ok. I hope that in the end the information is useful and not too controversial.

Unrelated to that, I’m about to start doing “The Artist’s Way”. I may blog about it. I may not.

In any case, I’ll keep painting.

When is a painting done?

This is something I still struggle with. I can usually tell when a painting is not going to turn out, and call it a learning experience followed by wiping it off. This usually leaves the surface a little nicer to paint on the next time so I don’t mind doing it. In theory, I could continue to work such a painting and try to rescue it by fixing all the things that I don’t like, but I often find starting over to be easier, and the wiping off part has some merit. I don’t know if it’s cathartic or satisfies some other part of my senses, but I’m not hesitant to do it, that’s for sure.

But when a painting is going well (or well enough) and I want to tighten it up or make adjustments, it’s not easy to know when to put the brushes down and leave it alone, despite the little things that bother me about it. I am learning how to separate things that really bother me from little things I wish I’d done better, but finding where that line is continues to be difficult.

Sometimes I wind up stopping because I just get fatigued, or I’m unwilling to put in the effort to fix whatever it is that’s wrong, but the painting isn’t so bad it needs to get wiped. But I’m working on pushing through those times and talking a walk, or even stepping away for a day and coming back with fresh eyes and better energy.

Working alla prima makes this a little more challenging because I only have so much time to paint and once the paint sets up, I really don’t want to go back and try to fix things in a new layer. I will occasionally do some glazing to shift some color or other, but doing anything with edges in layers is something I really just don’t do. Indirect painting is something that I think you need to plan for at the very beginning, keeping everything soft and probably lighter than you need (because glazing always darkens, and soft edges can always be made into hard edges later).

So, for now, I’m working on a compromise where I stop when I think I’m done, or fatigued, or whatever, but I go back while the paint is still workable and see if there’s more I should be doing. I sometimes take notes and go back the next day to see if I still feel like I need to do something about about whatever I wrote down. I try very hard never to do anything so drastic that it either makes things worse or causes me to spend a lot more time to fix it.

Some of this is an artifact of only having time to paint on weekends. If I had a week to do a portrait, I would likely spend a lot more time in the whole process, and have more time to fix mistakes. I once heard somebody describe painting as making mistakes and then fixing them. I guess that can apply to a lot of things.

Summer Heat

It’s hot here in New Jersey. Really hot and humid. It’s the kind of weather that keeps people inside. Going for a walk in the woods is risky to the point of being a real health hazard. So what do artists do in these situations?

I don’t like to paint outside, so plein air isn’t for me. But I do like to walk in nature and take reference photos to use later. The heat is now forcing me to only walk very early in the morning. It’s not quite so hot then and I can stay out longer without feeling like I’m risking heat stroke. But what’s interesting about that is the light is very different at 7AM than it is at 10AM.

I’m almost never out and about in the late afternoon where the light would be different still so I can’t really compare something like 4PM with, say, 8PM or sunset. But the morning light difference is huge. And the light seems to change fast at that hour. I can’t really walk through the woods scouting and then come back to take photos because whatever caught my eye initially will be gone.

Also, the light at 7AM doesn’t seem to really do it for me in the woods. The mid-morning sun seems to come in at just the right angle to create interesting shadows and highlights. This might be different if you’re painting in an open space, like a plain or less dense areas of nature (like out west). But in a wooded area, morning sunlight doesn’t seem to penetrate sufficiently for most of the places where I walk.

There are a few places along the tow path in Princeton where sunrise shines over the canal in a way that is really nice but I haven’t been able to get decent photos of it (yet).

For me, this isn’t really that big of an issue because, as I said, I don’t paint outside anyway. And, at least lately, I mostly paint portraits. I have a pile of photo references from my walks around Princeton that I have yet to work on as landscape paintings, but I’m always looking for more opportunities to be inspired.

I wonder what plein air painters do in places like New Jersey when the weather is unbearable for prolonged periods of time? Maybe that’s why there are so many plain air painters out west and not so many here.

Anyway, lucky me, I get to paint in my studio.

Painting Commissions

I’m getting more commission work lately. This is exciting for me in that I’m painting something directly for somebody else, instead of just for me. It’s also a bit inconvenient as I have limited time to paint, so dedicating a portion of it to a commission is taking time away from me scratching my own itch.

There’s also a different vibe around painting a commission. I have to please the client, as well as myself. I have the luxury of being selective and setting my own guidelines, since I have a day job that I love. But I also want to be accommodating to the client. It’s tricky.

So far, I’ve been able to say yes and still set the ground rules. I am particular about lighting. I take my own reference photos. I don’t ever want to paint the portrait version of a “head shot” or a glamour photo. I try to communicate how I want to see more about my subjects and capture something revealing, even if only a little.

I’ve known people who’ve done a lot of commission work and had to deal with art directors and such, and that sounds like a nightmare. But the work they did was amazing, so I what do I know.

For now, I’ll just keep painting what I can when I can.

Cicadas (redux)

It’s getting warmer and the cicadas are getting louder and more numerous. I am feeling somewhat daunted by their numbers. It’s really quite intense.

I’m at the point now where I’m no longer taking breaks outside when I’m painting. That might be a good thing as I’m not procrastinating as much, but I would prefer to have the option.

Still, the sheer volume of insects makes being outside a little less calming and relaxing than I’d prefer. If I’m being honest, I’m starting to have quite a bit of anxiety about it.

There’s just so many cicadas. It’s like some biblical plague.

Anyway, I’m still painting.

Cicadas

It’s brood X! Cicadas are everywhere!

It’s hot and humid and teaming with insects here. Yet another reason why I have no interest in plein air painting. But I have to say, there is some actual appeal to the sound they make when I can get to a place where their numbers are small enough and the acoustics are good enough. It’s a phenomenon of nature that happens every 17 years here.

The building where my studio is located has a courtyard with a small garden. I take pretty regular breaks to rest my eyes and reset my brain, and I often to out to the courtyard for a breath. Since the cicadas have arrived, their song has been echoing throughout the courtyard in just the right way. Their numbers at the studio are still low enough to make it out. As their numbers increase, the sound just turns into a hum.

When I lived in Tokyo, the cicadas there (called “semi”) were annual and a little larger, and the sound they make there is a little different from what I’m hearing here, but still recognizable. In the courtyard, the sound was as close to “semi” as I’ve heard yet.

So, until the next “wave” of cicadas somes later this month, my studio’s courtyard has the sounds of Tokyo right here in Princeton! Once their numbers get too high though it will probably just sound like a retro sci-fi sound effect.