The Naked Silo

Another video of me working on those two watercolours (Inside a Broken Clock 1 & 2) that I started in a video  from a couple of days ago. This video is also very silent as I didn't have much to say, so feel free to listen to some music as you watch. Visually, among much else (like when I take a painting away to use a hair dryer on it to speed up the drying process and also to "lock-in" certain bits so they don't bleed into other areas and make a bland mess), there's a whole lotta denim going on... My camera set-up is pretty hilarious when I do these Facebook videos because I have to elevate Krista's iPad high enough for a good view of the painting. Documentation of my documentation. The only thing that differentiates my set-up for recording my painting sessions and my normal painting sessions is the tall stack of books supporting and iPad. Behind that stack is my laptop for break time entertainment, illustration work, etc.

For this live painting session, I decided not to prep too much before starting, so you can see exactly how I start a painting, therefore, the majority of the video (just under 2 hours) is me blocking in shadows with violet (actually, technically, Permanent Magenta). My commentary is sparse, as I spent the morning stacking firewood on the front porch (and was, therefore, pretty tired), plus, beyond "blocking in shadows," there's not much to say. Instead of silence (or worse, forced blathering) I had musical copyright-approved accompaniment from Supposubly . The same technical issues from the previous Facebook video return and I manage to invert the camera before too long so you can actually see me painting (rather than seeing the back of my hand), but the reversed view continues, so I, again, appear to be left-handed (not that there's anything wrong with that). The paintings being worked on are Inside a Broken Clock  and Inside a Broken Clock 2 , both featurin...

More selections from Sketchbook #19 (2001-2002). Scarborough power/telephone lines. Most likely at Eglinton. One of many sketches I did for Uncle Seth's Lame Suburban Poetry CD package. Ashley in the red dress seen in AW-023 and Ceci n'est pas un shiraz . I've drawn this skull a few times, and painted it  once (but from a different angle). Aisha again (have I used this shot for a painting yet? Maybe ...). When I first started conceptualizing my Interiors  series, I thought I'd include people (like Ashley, above). It turns out there were no people at all (except for this one ...which had Ashley in it, but only to fill a dark void). On the right is the companion piece mentioned in this post . Punny. Small brag: the reference I used for the woman on the couch was from some magazine where she was facing the other way. I flipped her in my mind while drawing her. Never done that before (or since) to such a degree of success. ...

Some time in early 2001 I was talking with a gallery owner in Toronto (whose gallery closed about a year later) about exhibiting some of my watercolours in her gallery. Although she liked my paintings, she asked if I had anything in a larger scale (my largest watercolour was 30" x 22"), maybe something on canvas. At the time I was only painting in watercolours, not having much experience or proficiency in acrylics or oils, so the size of my paintings was limited to the paper available, but she told me of a special kind of gesso that behaves (i.e. is absorbent) like watercolour paper when applied properly to canvas. This excited me since I wanted to paint larger works, so I ordered some and gave it a shot once my expensive order came in more than six weeks later. I prepped two 36" x 36" canvases and began painting as I normally would with watercolours, by blocking in the shadows with violet. It didn't work and the paint just sat on the surface. I guess I di...

30" x 36", oil on canvas, 2001 One day, years after I'd painted this, I thought I messed up the legs of the chair by somehow misaligning the front legs and even forgetting one of them. What I had forgotten in that moment was that the leg that you can see to the left of my name actually belongs to the table behind the chair; the chair itself is supported on a central metal post (visible to the right of my name) on a circular base (just outside the frame). Even after realizing this, it's a weird illusion and still looks like a mistake. My favourite part of this is the extreme highlight caused by sunlight coming in through the window and blowing out the couch and much of the furniture on the top half of the painting. The contrast of that and the deep black of the chair is kind of exciting. Here's a close up painting of that ashtray .

18" x 28" (diptych), oil on canvas, 2001, private collection I love the mirror-like reflections and distortions in polished stainless steel, chrome, whatever, and they're really fun to paint, whether in oils here or in watercolours in some of my paintings of classic cars . Of course, combining several objects with reflective surfaces and adding transparent glass to the mix makes it kind of tricky for me to keep track of everything while I'm painting, but the end result is worth the extra concentration required.

Steps 40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2001, private collection The Top of the Stairs 40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2001, private collection My portable lamp couldn't light the stairs as well as the hallway, so I used a number of tea lights on the steps. Obviously, that's the same door in both paintings, and the bottom painting is the reverse angle of cinq photos . The wood grain turned out quite well, I think.

30" x 40", oil on canvas, 2001 Another from my early Interiors series. Here, the lighting was provided by a small portable lamp and the photo taken with a long exposure; I wanted to get a nice hot spots and interesting shadows when shooting this house, so all my lighting was minimal. This painting shows the tops of the doorways seen in Stairway , is a slight leftward pan of the camera from cinq photos , and the left doorway leads into the bathroom seen in bougies et serviettes .

Doorway , 14" x 18", oil on canvas, 2001 Gong and Window , 14" x 18", oil on canvas, 2001 These two are from my Interiors series from 2001 when I took up painting in oils. These are based on photos I took of the house a couple of friends were living in at the time on Donlands Street in Toronto. For more in this series, stay tuned for the next few posts or click on the "interiors"  label at the bottom of this post.

  36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2002 Rather than using the background in the sketch below, I decided to just paint Ashley with the actual background of my studio. I did, however, play around with that background: on the left,  Tides  is actually a 22" x 22" watercolour; I adjusted the dimensions of the painting on the right to better frame Ashley; and the bookshelf on the bottom left was scaled down and slightly repositioned for balance. After painting in oils for about a year, this picture was the one in which things seem to come together for me and I was (and still am) very pleased with the results. I think this painting has great overall composition and there's nothing that I would adjust, and, for me, this one's all about her right arm. I painted a companion piece using a photo of Ashley in the same outfit but in a slightly different pose, but it was a disappointment and it'll never be seen again as I've reused that canvas for another pai...

30" x 40", oil on canvas, 2001 This was one of 15 of my paintings on display at Dinkel's in Belleville as part of the Quinte Arts Council's Art in the Community project. The show was quite diverse as there were other paintings from my Interiors series, my Green Chair series, and a few one-shots in the restaurant. The show ran until 29 October. This painting is a "tilt down" of this painting . The light source at the top here is a floor lamp I specifically positioned to light the far room --something I didn't do in the picture I linked to, therefore my needing to come up with a solution, so I put Ashley in the background. Sometimes I don't see things until the picture is developed. But I can almost always "fix it in post." The light source at the bottom of the stairs is a bunch of tea lights --the same ones (and the only things) I used to light the scene in this painting . The objects above the candles are some shoes of the ladie...

30" x 36", oil on canvas, 2001, private collection Here's the painting that's in the background of this painting  from my previous post. The photo ref for this (and my other Interiors paintings of this house) was shot some time in the year 2000, I think. The room with the blue wall can be seen from the reverse angle in this painting , which is the opposite wall of the one with the window in this painting .

30" x 40", oil on canvas, 2002 For this Interior I lit the bathroom only with the tea light candles I placed around the rim of the sink and used a long enough exposure to get me the image. I never keep records of my camera settings (f-stop, etc.) so I'm always winging it with each photo, usually going by the camera's internal light meter. Once again, I used a blue filter to colour-correct the image --otherwise, it would have been extremely yellow because of the low light and the candles as the light source. I particularly like the way the light's reflecting off the door on the left and the tiles on the right.

30" x 40", oil on canvas, 2001, private collection This painting is one of my First Four oil paintings (along with this one and this one and one more which isn't good enough to be shown and will be painted over once I get my hands on it again) done just before my Interiors series. There are bits and pieces here and there I think are successful (the intense highlights on the hair and glasses just below the light, and the sharply-focused glass against the blurry background) and there are others I'd like to paint over and fix with the benefit of now having eight years' experience. I did go back and touch up the light flare, making it less pink, and I fixed the hand a bit, but this here is an earlier photo of the painting before the changes. This painting is also not in the Runnymede Library show which ends this Saturday (28 March).

30" x 40", oil on canvas, 2001 This is the wall of the dining room (opposite the wall in the cat picture ) facing the front of the house and looking into the living room. As I metioned in this post , I'm now reckoning my oil paintings as having begun in this century because of the huge gap between my two or three actual first ones and my serious first ones which have now grown into a substantial body of work. I don't know where the mask is from or which records are above it, but the thing on the ledge just left of the records is a roll of film which is casting a somewhat transluscent shadow.

4' x 5', oil on canvas, 2002 The largest painting I've done so far* (not including two murals in high school), it's the same window as in this painting (just pan right and tilt up). For extra angles and interruption I opened the door on the right. I enjoyed painting this one very much because of all the little fiddly bits like the ribbons and the stained glass; working at this scale enabled me to really get in there and play around in the space. I think it turned out very well and I like how there's a lot going on without it being busy. *I have a companion piece sort of begun for this (at the same size) which is a close up of the plants, ornaments, and ribbons, making it sort of an abstract painting. I prepped it at the same time as the one above and started painting it a few years ago but never continued (partly because of laziness, partly because I forget about it). I should really just finish the damn thing... UPDATE: Here's that big one, now called ...

14" x 18", oil on canvas, 2002 These vases were set up in the same kitchen window as in this painting. Glass is tricky, but I think the second painting works quite well, what with the refraction of the plant's stems just above the water line. The intensity if light coming in from the window also made these paintings challenging because of all the white space and fading out of the sill. Someone once commented that I was "breaking a rule" by making the vase on the left so dense and dark in the shadow part, but I was just going by my reference photo and my interest in high contrast images. I'm not sure what "rule" she was talking about beacuse if it was a "rule of optics," my photo ref proves her wrong, and if it was a supposed "rule of art," then who cares?