Time Lapse from today's work

white washed

I plan on doing some time lapse videos here and there, I have done a handful during other sessions last week but none were very interesting.  

Painting notes:

-Started with Ult. Blue glaze, then switched to Ivory Black glaze.

-Began painting thin layer of off-white on the clouds, ended up glazing entire painting w/ the white mixture.

-defined shapes w/dark outline.

More paint and some detail photos.

Today's work 5.24.11

Some notes from today:

-painted with lim. palette: ult. blue, burnt umb, bright red, hansa yell deep. 

-purposely "destroyed" segments of the painting I was already feeling happy with.

detail

-feel like the next session I'll need to be more careful and establish stronger (more definite) shapes.

detail of a head

I already want to quit...

...and I think it is a good sign.  Here is the start with some paint on the canvas.

First day block in.

tools of the trade.

I am also keeping a little notebook during the project where I take shorthand notes along the way.  Here are a few excerpts from today:

-Already want to quit, good sign

-Trying to paint differently than what feels instinctual. 

-Block-in approx. 35 min.  

Sketch - the start.

Here is the start of the painting.

The surface is a 36x36 inch, smooth Russian Linen.  I started the drawing sort of loose with vine charcoal.  I plan on making many changes so I didn't mind jumping in and starting the composition without too much forethought.  I painted a similar painting last summer as an 18x24 and I expect this one to be very different.  

Here is a shot of the reference I am using.

I purposely chose a bad photo to work from, it is small, black & white and grainy.  I want to use my imagination to work on this painting and don't want to be a slave to my reference.  I will probably paint most of the painting without the photograph once I get it going.  Since this is an experiment, it wasn't really important how I started or how accurate my drawing was.  It obviously isn't a very accurate drawing but it is enough to get me going.  

p.s. I won't be writing this much with every post...most will be just an image upload and a brief description.

One painting One year - Day One

I was sitting in my studio this morning not sure of what to do for the day...

This blog will document the changes that occur during the creation of a painting.  I will work on this painting for at least 1 year and will document the changes after each painting session.  I find that with deadlines it is difficult to live with a painting for very long.  So I am experimenting with this painting for an extended period of time to push myself past the point of "it is good enough to show".  During this process I know I will get to a point where I will begin to treat parts of the painting too precious.  I think this is a problem that a lot of us artists have.  We don't want to mess up something once we get it right.  But I have found that if I go past just "getting it right" I learn a lot more.

I am not doing a daily post, because I won't be working on this painting daily.  I will just post whenever I do work on it.  Part of working on a painting is being around it so the problems can be noticed.  All too often I have left the studio at the end of the day thinking I did a good job on a painting until I come back the next morning and notice many problems with the painting that I hadn't seen the night before.  There have been several paintings that I have kept in my studio for longer periods of time and those paintings always seem to turn out better.  I worked on a painting on and off for 8 months this past year.  It was really wild how much it changed during the process, I wish I had documented that one.

If you follow along you will notice the painting go from being good, to looking pretty bad.  But that is interesting to me.  Hopefully in about a year or so the painting will be complete and I will feel like it is in a good enough spot to sign it.  By me making the process of this painting public, it will make me keep my word and work on the thing for at least one year.

Hope this is interesting to you.

-Logan Maxwell Hagege