Temporary Titles

I'm going with the rather bland name, Ridgeline until I can think of a good one for this. It's only about halfway finished, but my technique is similar to the previous painting, Desperately Wanting. The difference here is that I used a better camera and a tripod. I plan to get the rest down for posteriors, but wanted to get this up in the meantime. Next time I will get video. Okay, let's go behind the curtain once more.

I should probably explain the red canvas.
These canvasses came from a friend of my roommate's.
I think they were some sort of DIY modern art project.
3 Red canvasses.

I like a warm undertone to my paintings, but I usually go more orange or yellow,
Unless it's supposed to be around dusk or something. Not much really shows through, but it
presents opportunities to, and, depending on the paints used, can remain softly in the background.

 

As you can see from these two, I apply the paint directly from the tube onto the canvas.
I do this for a couple of reasons, but mostly because it always seemed silly to put it onto
another surface and paint it up while mixing. I know the colors I want to use and I hate wasting all that paint.

After pushing all that paint around.
I think it would have taken me at least twice as long and would have used more paint
if I had squeezed the paint onto a palette first.

Redefining the structure of the image a bit.

Tweaking it a little more.

Reworked some of the sky, adding some violet and brick red to grey it down some.

I'd say it's about halfway done at this point.
Overall it needs to be lightened up considerably, at least in the foreground.
The middle ground to the right needs some attention as well.

I Remember Running Through the Wet Grass

One of the problems with painting is deciding you are done. This is a relative concept, of course. It is only done when you decide it is, and in many cases, a piece can be considered done at many points in its development.


The decision about when to stop, for me, tends to land near the decision on the style of the piece.The more abstract I want the image, the earlier I stop laying shapes and colors and start refining them. A few more passes at the canvas and it's a passable Impressionist piece. The further I paint, the closer I get to Realism.

The poor quality of the images don't help the argument, but these are some in progress shots:

The canvas started out rather Kandinsky-esque as
I blocked in sky and laid out color tones for the field.
The canvas came to me already painted red, which is nice, as I like the undertone.
It helps the image stay warm with all those cool blues and greens.

I almost stopped at this point. I may even try to recreate the feel of this image.
It has a bit of a Diebenkorn feel, without the vertical angularity.

A little more refined. Totally could have stopped here.
Like a Chase landscape

The finished piece.

Desperately Wanting
2012 Guy Gondron
24"x36"
Acrylic on canvas

I could probably work on it forever if I didn't get tired of seeing it on my easel.

A Problem of Social Media

Too many outlets and not enough time.

I've been so engrossed in networking, marketing and gossiping on Facebook that I neglected to post my own artwork on my own blog. Reprehensible! Like my blog was raped by Black Hitler. Literally!

Anywhats, without further dudes:

Phalanx is my new favorite among my landscapes. The detail and lack thereof and the flow of the image and texture came together perfectly. The change from red poppies to yellow blooms highlights it within the series, and the brighter, anonymous flowers have a cleaner provenance than poppies, letting the mind see only flowers or flashes of color.

 

 

 

Phalanx
16"x20"
Acrylic on Canvas
Sold

The first two entries in the Dana Project:

Dana No 1
Until I think of a better name.

16"x20"
Acrylic on canvas

Dana No 2

16"x20"
Acrylic on canvas

Somewhat less marketable on Etsy, these are of Dana DeArmond, AKA The Internet's Girlfriend (links likely NSFW). Yeah, I know. She's a porn star. I stumbledupon her tumblr blogcastbook and saw some of her self-pics and loved them. That and I'm a sucker for brunettes. I'd been looking for a subject for a series based on self-pics, especially webcam or phonecam pics and her's were perfect. I asked her if she minded if I painted a few and she said "no problem". Problem is, I've been trying to get her attention to at least show her the finished product, but as far as I can tell she has no email address and my questions on her Tumblr have gone unanswered.

Long Gone Day

The name for this painting was inspired by the poppies, of course. I wanted to go a different route than the usual, and I was looking through song title to get an idea for a lyric or something that could inspire a name. My brain drifted to favorites and fell on Mad Season, Alice in Chains' singer and guitarist's side project. The band tied in because of their infamous heroin use - poppies, and the lyrics fit the mood of the painting pretty well.

11" x 14"
Acrylic on canvas

See you all from time to time
Isn't it so strange
How far away we all are now
and I'm the only one who remembers that summer
Oh, I remember
Everyday each time the place was saved
The music that we made
The wind has carried all of that away

Long gone day
Mmmm, who ever said
We wash away with the rain

I had painted it mostly because the poppy series has been very popular, and my friend Ivonne had the last one bought out from under her, a situation most artists would be very happy with. I am happy to be painting and selling, but I definitely don't want to fall into some weird niche where all I paint are poppies.

Either way, I was happy with the way the painting turned out, for the most part. and Ivonne bought it right away. She's happy, I'm happy. All is right with the world, for about ten minutes.

Working Man

Been busy trying to get stuff done around here. Actually, been getting it done for a change. I finished the mythology series for Colleen's scrapbooking biz, painted a smaller Poppy painting for the series which wasn't a series until I saw the response to the painting on the Facebooks.

I admit it was both cool and upsetting that two people both wanted the piece and it went right away. So it's a series now. As long as people understand that I am going to try very hard not to just copy the painting over and over. Ask my mom, I hate her favorite (besides me) artist, Rodrigue, for his canned and repetitive hackery. Or Kinkaide. I respect the guy as a business man, but not as an artist.

The cable is staying off until something I give a damn about comes on. Probably sometime in April.

I finally finished the portrait of my niece, River, that I had promised my cousin, Tara, all the way back in December. I'm happy with the results, though I'd probably peck at it forever if I didn't ship it out.

Probably going to head to my roomie's work to watch the game. Go Giants?

Migration

After becoming a bit disillusioned with Cafepress (though I'm still working with it), I decided to migrate most of my stuff for sale over to Zazzle. This includes prints and giclees as well as tshirts and sneakers.

Yeah, I'm all over the place. Anyway, here's the gallery, and as always, it's a work in progress. New stuff will be added, hopefully on a regular basis, as with the other shops as well.

Loose Ends

Back to basics.

I finally got off my procrastinating buttocks and finished a couple of paintings that have been sitting, waiting to be completed since before I got sick. One of them is the last of the popular Skelecrows©:

Murderwall

The other one is a moth I've been working on for the insect series:

Hyles-lineata

The last piece I worked on was fresh on the canvas, from a photograph I took. I turned my canvas to see my computer monitor. I stayed about 10 feet away so the details would be a little lost:

Pools 2011
Guy Gondron

Here's the photograph I took it from:

It's not exactly a verbatim landscape. I was looking for something even more elemental, actually. I added more details than I planned to. Actually had to make myself stop. I also left out the buildings and the sidewalk to lessen the human presence in the image. Futile to a certain degree as the park itself is man-made.