Bored and happy all at once.
Bored and happy all at once.
And how I choose colors to paint.
I spent all my November Saturdays and Sundays painting dots. I estimate it was about 50-60 hours of dots in pursuit of achieving that Texas highway pebble panels aesthetic across the triptych.
Like just for the big side panel below, I marked on the side of the canvas how far down I got per movie. (I have ~20 DVDs on rotation I listen to while I paint). It comes to about 1 vertical inch per hour for this section of dots.
The thing that kept coming up while I sat there for hours is how all there ever is to anything is just doing it. There’s no magic wand I can wave to shortcut this tedious work. There’s no computer program or robot that can make this texture in paint in this way. I just have to sit there for many hours, patiently placing small dots next to each other. It requires my devotion.
Through the dots I want to show you how I choose colors. All of my oil paintings begin with a picture inside of Photoshop. When I begin a new section, like the dots, I eyedropper the picture and pull out a handful of colors. Below, in the circles off to the right, are the 5 colors I pulled to use for the dots. (In any section there’s always dozens of colors to choose from, but I pull a few that feel the most dominant.)
Then I mix these colors in paint to match. Here’s those colors on my palette:
I placed those 5 colors (plus a few others you see above) randomly, trying to only place different color dots next to each other. You can see I warmed up B in paint with more yellow to help infuse warmth into the panel overall. And then below is a peek into painting the dots in shadow, a whole new set of 5 colors.
This work was dull, demanding, and slow as hell. Yet when it was time to switch the DVD or make another cup of coffee I had to tear myself away from the easel. All while painting those dots two things remained true: I was so bored and happy all at once.
Here’s where they are now, as I head into December when I hope to finish them:
20% off all prints
I’m running a discount for all prints in the shop through Friday December 1. Coupon is automatically applied at checkout.
All 5x7 Prints are $20,
normally 25All 8x10 Prints are $38.40,
normally 45What We Have Lost Poster is $52,
normally 65
things worth sharing
VIDEO: Artist Ed Ruscha’s Career-Spanning Retrospective (6 min) — A CBS Sunday Morning video showing off a bunch of his work. As you can see from the painting above, Ruscha is my kind of artist.
QUOTE: “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” -Mary Oliver