A Review of Some Basics

I am going through Robert Burridge's book Loosen Up, with the hope that it will not only give me some good pointers on abstract painting but also will inspire me. The first step was to get some additional acrylic paint at the art store and prepare a color wheel.

A New Start

So I am doing something different, at least for a while: exploring abstracts and abstract landscapes in oil, pencil and mixed media. Here is my visioning board, some preliminary pencil sketches and some early oil painting studies.

Time For A Change

I had a bit of a crisis the other day. I was scheduled to go paint at an event where patrons could come and watch the artists at work, eat some food and drink some wine, and hopefully buy a painting. I have been to a number of these and for some reason, while I always have a good time, I seldom if ever sell anything. This fact usually does not bother me, but for some reason, this time it did. I just couldn't do it, so I didn't go.

I have been painting the same subjects the same way for many years now. Yes, my style has evolved and become more colorful, but I seem to have lost the spark of originality and uniqueness that some of my earlier work possessed. I must have painted the Colorado Street Bridge over 200 times by now. I can do it in my sleep. Is that good? People love it as a subject and I have made a fair amount of money from it, but is that good? I don't know. In any event, I need a change.

One of my heroes is Miles Davis, the jazz musician. He once said that he stopped playing ballads because he loved them so much. He was always changing, innovating and trying new things and consequently, he invented entirely new forms of music. He would try something new and his fans would rebel, hating the new and wishing he would go back to the old. He didn't. He kept pushing and finally his fans would follow too. I loved that about him.

So I decided to work on my Visioning Board. I started it years ago and I grows and changes as I do. It has pictures of Christo, paintings by Robert Burridge, a photo of Alexander Calder in his studio, and some of my own art. Working on it helps me get a grasp on what I want to do, and how I want to change.

I worked on it again this week. This time, I covered up some old images and added some new ones: images of works by Richard Diebenkorn and Franz Kline; a panoramic photo of my studio, a written narrative of what I want to do, and some new abstract paintings of my own.

The Train Station

Many years ago I was looking for a hobby. This was before I re-discovered painting. I had already built a tiny model train layout and spend a year and a half building a model wooden ship and I needed something new. While perusing the local public library I happened upon the book David Gentlemen's Britain and decided to get a sketchbook and draw my city, Pasadena, California.

My original intent was to document the changes I saw every day as buildings were built and others torn down. One of my first subjects was the train station. At that time, back in the late 80's, it was quite active, serving four Amtrak trains a day. Freight trains passed every few hours and there was even a freight station and a siding for deliveries. If I was out with my boys in the evening, we would sometimes stop at the station and wait for the evening long haul Amtrak to pull in for its first stop after departing from Los Angeles Union Station on its way east. We would look in at the dark and cozy sleeping compartments and wish we were on board.

I have drawn the station many times since that first sketch, and have seen it through many changes. One day as I was coming to work, the Santa Fe Super Chief was there for a movie shoot. That was the height of its modern life. Eventually, Amtrak moved out and the freight trains stopped coming. The signs were taken down and the station fell into disrepair.

One day they took it apart and moved it across the street to the park before building a new mixed use retail residential transportation development on the site. Then they completely restored it and moved it back to its original location and turned it into an excellent restaurant. Now it lives on, better than before.

This view is my favorite however: on a quiet summer day, with passengers waiting patiently for the afternoon train.

Urban Sketching Redux

This is a sketch of another famous eatery: Philippe's - Home of the French Dipped Sandwich. It has been there for many years and hasn't changed one bit. The food is fantastic and the parking is free.

I have sketched and painted this scene many times and in many different ways: pen and ink; watercolor with pencil; pen with watercolor; I have mounted a version to a hard board panel, done it in mixed media and painted it as a demonstration for the workshops I teach. I really enjoy the image because it has a lot of texture, it is gritty and full of stuff, it has good darks and lights and it has a lot of colorful signage.

This version was completed last week and is my new favorite. This is slightly ironic because I had done it as a demo last year for the Learning and Product Expo here in Pasadena and was unable to complete it during the class time, so I filed it away. It was an acceptable painting at the time and had done a good job of illustrating my teaching lesson but finding it again and looking at it with fresh eyes, I found it lacking. I decided to try to fix it. What did I have to lose right?

I had done it as a pen and ink sketch on Arches hot press watercolor paper. I liked the original line work and the initial wash of color was not so strong as to prevent me from adding more, so I tackled it with fresh eyes and renewed enthusiasm. (I find that easier to do with a painting that has seasoned for a while; I am not so worried that I am going to ruin it so I am very relaxed and feel free to take more chances.)

I started by redrawing it with my Sanford Uniball Micro pen. (Please note that the pen acts very differently drawing over painted areas.) Looking back at my original reference photo I noticed that I had mis-drawn the awning, so I just drew it again, correctly this time, ignoring the painted awning underneath. I also drew in a third vehicle and left it unpainted as well, giving the painting a very casual sketchy feeling. I added some narrative copy along the bottom edge and made a few color notes right on the painting.

As the original was lacking in color and contrast, I enhanced the darks, but I did it with color: the shadows are a mixture of blue, red and burnt umber. I exaggerated the color shifts: look at the phone pole - it is dark at the top and very light at the bottom. I also boosted the colors and white paint in the signage. Finally, I painted a stormy sky and put some loose reflections in the foreground to suggest a rainy afternoon.

What started as an average painting is now something I like very much. I encourage you to dig through some of your earlier mediocre pieces and see if you can improve them.

Little Abstract Landscapes

Here is an interesting exercise you can try: paint a series of non-objective abstract studies on a single sheet of paper, all at the same time. I discovered this by accident. I was commissioned to do a watercolor landscape of no place in particular and I didn't know quite where to start. So I took a full sheet of 140# Fabriano cold press paper and divided it up into squares. I used 1/2 white tape to make clean a clean edge between images.

Then, without planning anything or having a pre-conceived idea of what I wanted, I started laying down color. I painted large areas of solid color, small shapes, wet paint on dry paper, colors mixing on wet paper, gradated washes, everything. I painted all of the squares, one after the other, all at once, without stopping to evaluate or ponder. I was bold with color, and bold with mixing unusual and illogical colors. I was free to paint like a child who doesn't know all the rules he isn't supposed to break.

As the washes started to dry, I started to sculpt each little image, adding an accent color, scraping out some whites, throwing in a complimentary color, and splattering, still with no idea what I was making, just having fun and playing around.

Gradually, each painting started to look like something: a dramatic storm on a distant plain, a sunset, a beautiful valley in late afternoon, a brilliant sun peaking out from behind a cloud. It was then that I started to add shapes and colors to help describe and clarify the vision: furrowed rows of a farm field, a grove of trees on a hillside, a distant lake. I finished by adding some strokes and spots of white paint on a few of the scenes for some added interest.

White Paint

There are two kinds of water-color artists: those who use white paint and those who are going to use white paint. Just kidding. Actually, there are quite a few watercolor artists who absolutely refuse to use it, and I support them. I even, on occasion, refrain from the good old Titainium. There is an unusual beauty to the clean, pure expression of a transparent watercolor. It's what attracts most people to the medium, both painters and patrons.

On rare occasions however, the judicious use of white paint can be the perfect accent to a watercolor painting. It can clarify branches in the midst of a thick dark mass of trees, create window mullions on a deep blue pane of glass, suggest subtle complexity in the background of a city scene and provide the interesting graphic accent of signage on a street corner.

The key is restraint. Be delicate with your brush. I use a rigger or a swordliner (a long, skinny brush with a good tip). I wait until I have completed the painting and done all I can without white paint, and then I add the little spots and accents. I like to continue a dark painted stroke (let's say, in a tree) with white paint, so the line goes from dark suddenly to white. It is unexpected, illogical and very exciting.

This is a scene of people waiting in line to eat at the Pantry in Los Angeles. It is a classic diner that is always open, and has been since 1924. You don't leave hungry. For this painting, I used Arches 140# hot press watercolor paper. I did a loose in sketch in pen and ink before applying bright colors of thick, juicy paint. I wanted this to have lots of color in the buildings, people and the cafe awnings so I really laid it on. I painted reflections in the foreground to create interest but in reality, it wasn't raining. I also left plenty of white space though out the piece: the door frames, window mullions, random little areas along the street, and the architectural detailing in the skyscrapers.

After all that, I came back in with white paint for a few little touches: the pantry sign, the street sign, a few window details and a little splattering here and there. Not much, but enough to give everything some sparkle and energy.