This was the painting that was chosen by Les Amis de la Grande Vigne for their collection. Unfortunately, I believe this is the only photo I have of it.

While in Dinan, Jen and I had no television, no internet and no phone to speak of, so we spent most evenings either reading or watching one of the four movies we had uploaded to her laptop. I would also take advantage of the fact that I had a still model to do some drawing, and occasionally some painting.

The piece above is stage one of a painting that is still not finished, but that I will get around to working on soon.

Some more wonderful images from the Musée d’Orsay. Represented are Cottet, Sorolla, Homer, Manet, Van Gogh, and Signac. There is also a collection of Art Nouveau pieces which is really lovely.

Above: Van Gogh, L’Arlésienne

One of the beautiful things about Paris is of course the art history and therefore, the richness of their museums. While the Louvre is great, it can be overwhelming and as any artist who frequents museums knows, the way to get the most out of a collection is to sample it small sections at a time. Unfortunately, when you’re in a place for a limited time, you feel a certain pressure to absorb as much as you can. This usually results in not absorbing much more than a headache from navigating crowds and flitting one’s eyes over so much visual stimulus. I usually troop through a museum as large as the Louvre with a sort of search-and-devour demeanor.

Fortunately, the Musée d’Orsay is a place where the collection can nearly be consumed in one viewing. That’s just in the sheer number of pieces, which is a nice collection, but manageable. However, the quality of the collection is another thing entirely. You have under one roof a collection of some of the strongest work by Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Sisley, Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Corot, Courbet, and Degas. Not to mention fewer pieces by people like Klimt, Sorolla, and Hoedler.

Here are some shots from the Musée d’Orsay that you might find interesting:

Below: Ferdinand Hodler’s image of a woman on her death bed, Madame Valentine Godé-Darel malade.

Below: Gustav Courbet’s La falaise d’Etretat après l’orage. His take on the cliffs of Etretat, made so famous by Monet.

Below: A beautifully done orientalist piece, Le Port l’Algier, by Jules-Alexis Muenier.

Below: Some of the fine, yet somewhat stylistically interchangeable sculpture sharing the main corridor with works from Rodin. This one is Femme piquée par un serpent, by Auguste Clésinger.

More to come tomorrow.

This is a color sketch of my idea for the piece I’m calling “The Antediluvian.” Now I just need a patron to commission a version that’s 20 feet high.

Here’s a close up of the figure, which measures about an inch across:

Same model as yesterday, this is a study for a larger piece. Done in less than 3 hours.

Submerged Rocks, 6×8″, oil on linen panel.

Quarry Wall, Diagonal Shadows, 5×7″, oil on panel.

I’ve been doing some self portraits lately, because I’m a cheap model and I’m trying to work in a figurative mode more than I have in the past. Figures are what I really enjoy doing in drawing and painting, but the necessary equipment (a body willing to stand still long enough to paint) is somewhat harder to come by than the stationary scenery or the knickknacks around the house.

A couple of people have seen this in progress in my studio. Those that know me have commented things to the effect that “it’s too serious” or that I look scary. What can I tell you? Artists are always staring down the canvas, just in case it decides to attack us.

Jenny Saville

Lucien Freud

Euan Uglow

Antonio Lopez Garcia

Alex Kanevsky

First: I’m convinced that there are the seeds for a strong “school” emerging from various unrelated people. They are: Jenny Saville, Lucien Freud, Euan Uglow, Antonio Lopez Garcia and I’ll toss in Alex Kanevsky, though I think his work is more tangential to the thrust of the first four.

Second: some excellent metaphor here for anyone who’s been in a bad artist/client relationship before:

Here we have the painting after two days of work. I filled in the background with rough scratchy brushwork a few days ago, and let that dry so that it wouldn’t interfere with the subsequent layers. Then I laid in the outline of the working drawing by tracing the lines projected by the Opascope in various colors that I felt the edges needed to be. From here it will be filling in and modeling the form with as much interest and variation in the paint and brushwork as I can muster. More to come soon.

Since it’s been over a month, I thought I would show some work on the drafting board as I type this.

Here’s the same drawing Photoshopped for use in the opaque projector, to transfer the image to the canvas:

One of the things I’ve learned for myself is that I work best with a strong linear underdrawing as a foundation for the painting to come. Not only is this good basic painting practice, it’s the best working method for me.

I’m working on a new series of self-portraits in strong lighting situations, involving poses that I couldn’t possibly paint from life. Yes, the camera is involved. There are two schools of thought on the use of the camera in fine art: one thinks this is sacrilege, and the other thinks that you should do whatever it takes to get the best painting. I’m of this second school of thought, though I’ve had my struggles convincing myself that this is the way to go. My rationale boils down to this: if you’re tracing over a photograph, using it as a substitute for good drawing skills and observation, then yes, you’re not doing yourself any favors, and your art will ultimately suffer for it. (If you’re doing art [not student studies for training] that is merely copying slavishly whatever is in front of you to exactitude, what is the point of the piece?) However, if the photos are being used as reference, or an expedient way to get the drawing done quickly in the face of inhuman deadlines (illustrators know what I’m talking about) then go ahead.

My use of them here is twofold: I wanted to do a series of self-portraits which are about a mood other than “the artist stares into a mirror, concentrating” and I want to make the paintings all about the application of the paint, in surprising and hopefully wonderful ways that while they coalesce into a realistic image, are not about that on a formal level. They’re about me putting the paint on the canvas in daring and unexpected ways, adding layers of enjoyment for the person who sees the painting in person. After all, the person who comes to see your painting in front of their face should be rewarded with more from the experience than looking at a reproduction in a book, no?

Anyway, with all of that aside, this is my working drawing for the first of this series. It’s a diagram, a correct drawing, but not a very “good” drawing from a pure drawing perspective. After all, I’m using it to tell me where the landmarks of light and shadow and shape are in the painting, and I don’t need a lot of artsy nonsense getting in the way of clear thinking.

Still Life with Weathered Bottle, 12×16″, oil on canvas panel.

Well, this is another experiment, I’m playing with the space perceived in the canvas, and with flat shapes and hard edges. I’m pretty pleased with how this turned out, but I consider it more of a “proof of concept” painting. I intend to apply this technique/style to narrative and figurative paintings. We’ll see where it leads.

In other news, please note that I have a new link at the top for classes. I’m going to be continuing the Art Bootcamp that was begun by Rob Howard of the Cennini Forum, and adding a drawing course and plein air course to the offerings. The first class will take place in July, and I’ll have one a month through October. See the link and website for details.

Another posting to update you on my paintings on view around town.

Flatrocks Gallery sold a couple of paintings over the weekend, so I will be replacing them for this weekend. On view will be Motorboat, 5×7″, and Mud Flats-Annisquam River, also 5×7″. Stop by and check them out in person.

The blog has been sort of silent of late as a busy schedule and a new direction for my paintings have intervened. However, I wanted to post a note that four of my quarry paintings will be on display for a while in Gloucester. The large one, 36×48″, that I completed in December will be on display at Passports Restaurant at 110 Main Street in Gloucester. Three very small paintings, 5×7″, continue to be on display at Flatrocks Gallery at 77 Langsford Street, also in Gloucester.

I should have a completed painting in the new style/direction soon, so stay tuned until then.

I also have been looking for a studio/teaching space so I once again offer the bootcamp courses that were developed by my mentor, Rob Howard. I will let you know here as soon as I know if that will be a possiblity this year.

Second day of work on the painting. The subject is somewhat limited, because there’s very little range of motion for her most of the time. However, I’m not sure if that’s just my self-imposed parameters getting in the way of something more interesting, or if I need to stick with this line of inquiry until I suss out whatever interesting bits might be there. The hands and arms are working well, I think. The repetitive forms really give a sense of the motion and space while becoming abstractions. Other parts are much more static, but that’s how the subject behaved…

Hmm….

More to come later.

Third study from my wife working.

This is the first day of working in oils. Some interesting things are beginning to happen, especially with the hands. This is by no means a completed painting. I plan to work on this for several days in a row, constantly layering bits of observation over one another to hopefully realize two goals: one, to distill the figure into a concentration of observations, (which will hopefully reveal more than a single-image picture) and two, become an image that pops in and out of illusionistic space to create the simultaneous sensations of realism and a flat abstract surface, which should play with the perceived “depth” of the canvas in a new way.

More in a while…

The second ink study. Tomorrow, the beginning of the first painting.

Here is the first of two ink sketches of my wife working during the day. This is pretty satisfying because the ink flattens out into abstraction easily and starts to play with the concepts I have in mind.