Finding Figure Drawing

I've recently had a breakthrough of sorts.  I must backtrack.

I was farting around on Tumblr one day a couple weeks ago and I came across a painting that nearly knocked me out of my chair.  This painting, a HUGE portrait of a girl's face, completely took my breath away.

(To view, go here: http://www.elly.ca/)

I nosed around her website for a while and not long into said nosing did I start to feel bad about myself.

I know, I KNOW.  It is so stupid to compare your art to someone else's.  You can never make someone else's art.  There mere idea is fundamentally impossible.  However, I still could not keep my insecurities from bubbling up to the surface.  They don't very often, with art, but that day they bubbled quite violently.

I think part of it is this artist's work embodies something I would love to be able to achieve in my own work: painting emotionally and loosely, with careful and beautiful use of color.  

I moped for a while and then started thinking.

What do I feel my work has been missing lately?

Where do I feel I'm not exploring enough?

What kind of feelings am I trying to communicate?

How do I communicate those feelings?

To answer my own ponderings, I feel my work has been lacking an energy, a vitality, a movement that it once had years ago.  The gesture and brushy quality that launched my interest in texture and light.  I've swayed the other direction into a more careful and illustrative approach -- I don't believe "too far" the other direction is the proper way to describe this, as all explorations into an idea serve a specific, useful, and grand function in the overall body of work and pursuit of ideas -- but this stirring of insecurities I now see clearly as marking a shift moving back the other direction: painting more expressively, accessing emotions more, responding and reacting openly to the material and the surface, placing less judgment on a mark or expression, being able to laugh at myself and keep trucking on in a very "air" kind of way. 

I really do need to credit Jamie with helping me realize these things.  We were chatting online and she slapped me with this:

[Regarding stumbling upon other good artists]

I hate that so much. But we are who we are. We can't change it. 

But we can take bits of other people and make it our own

[and what to do about it]

Girl, your talent is better than tht. You DO have it in you. You gotta work it out! 

Keep pushing. Play with color. Spend a day mixing color even! Make a color wheel in your sketch book. Definitely find a figure group. This girl has great gesture an emotion and is good with color. 

You can be that too! But better cuz youre you. And f her website. It's better than mine lol

I cannot describe how much I love this girl.  She always knows exactly, precisely, what to say.

But her mention of figure drawing lit me up inside.  THAT'S the thing that's missing.  THAT is the key to communicating the energy and gesture in my paintings -- getting my brain moving, thinking, buzzing with form and movement.  FIGURE DRAWING.  Drawing from a live model, in a room with other people drawing, something in which I am so expert yet haven't pursued for... five YEARS?  Jesus Christ.  That is five years I've not done what my soul is telling me to do. 

Hipbone Studio has three sessions a week for $10 per session.  Two of them I plan to attend on a weekly basis (the third is during the workday).  I went to my first session last Wednesday and it appears I've still got it in me...

Pics of my most recent painting to follow!

Meeting Degas

I had a painting lying around forever and ever that I hated intensely.  It had been through so many permutations I couldn't bear to think how to resolve it.  For more than a year it sat.

Then suddenly, today, out of nowhere: sudden inspiration.

I have misplaced the process photos from the original painting, so I must begin where I began today, with the first overlay.

Sometimes, there is nothing you can do to resolve a painting

other than just paint the fuck over it.

It freaks me out a little that I can still see her face in this one.

Channeling Degas and fellow artist S. Bertino...

S. Bertino

Acrylic

August 2012

It feels like the old lady is still in the painting, like her spirit contributes to the entire communicative experience of the painting as a whole.  I love that.

J-Chanandle put it quite nicely:

"That eye line is pure sex."

Thanks, J.  

Feeling really good about this one.

<3

Sunflowers & Sweet Vermouth

I painted a little painting last night but I rightly detest it.

I texted J this morning after I'd slept on it.

I painted sunflowers last night and discovered the same thing I always discover: I do NOT UNDERSTAND FLOWERS.


Dude, me either.  Too much consistent inconsistency.

I think that's it.  The structure is too consistent and rigid but still, somehow, surprising and inconsistent.

I don't understand anything that's not a FACE.  Just give me a FACE.

Well, I guess it's okay now that I look at it on here.  But it wasn't what I was going for.

It's been a rough couple weeks.  I had a strange stomach ache for over a week that, no matter how I treated it, stayed and stayed.  Kept me up at night, wouldn't let me eat anything, distracted me and wouldn't leave me alone.  All I wanted was soup and crackers and 7-Up for days...

It feels allergy related.  I've only developed allergies since I moved to the big O and they're sneaking their way in gradually.  Each summer they're a little bit worse, a little more inconvenient, and little more Hmmm, is this what allergies feel like?  And I know it sounds weird, but this stomach ache was so resistant to anything I did I can't help but wonder if it wasn't your typical "bug."

Oh yeah, then my birthday rolled around (more to follow on that) but, wah, it was on a Monday and WHO in the WORLD wants to have a birthday on a MONDAY?  NOBODY.  Mondays are inherently stupid, even if you do go to a killer breakfast at Gravy when nobody is there, and the food is just as awesome as it is on a busy Saturday.

I guess there's just something... "off"... about having a birthday.  Even if you have tons of fun and surround yourself with people, as soon as you get a moment alone all these sad/weird feelings start creeping in.  A reminder of the swiftness of time, perhaps?  I think so.

Anyway, enough of that.  The weekend before my birthday was splendid, particularly my Girls Breakfast on Saturday.  When we do Screen Door, we each order our own meals and then put Fried Chicken & Waffles right smack in the middle of the table to share.

Don't be afraid.  I was skeptical at first, before I discovered the magic...

It's the thing I keep telling everybody: it's all about the Salty + Sweet.  The ice cream shops are finally starting to figure it out.  There is yet to be fried chicken and waffle flavored ice cream, but Pear & Bleu Cheese is certainly a step in the right direction (ten points for Salt & Straw).

[diversion]

[saltandstraw.com]

[Seriously, check out these flavors. You'll just crap.]

[...Pretty sure my mom's like "Ooooo, Coffee & Bourbon!"]

My lovely and adorable friend Nelle gave me a bundle of fresh sunflowers that now sit perkily in my sunny kitchen.  I've never had sunflowers before and I'm starting to understand the appeal.  They prompted the desire to paint and are just so darned HAPPY!

The next day, I had a coffee date at my house with Brother and that was as delightful as delightful can be.  I really do have the best kitchen for coffee-ing.  He mentioned the dangers of having a tall comfy stool next to my java station, however, and ever since he mentioned it I've begun to understand the perils.  Not to mention the "station" has slowly become home to not only the hot tasty beverages, but the tasty "adult" beverages.  I'm sure you can clearly see the perils of having a strategically placed chair of proper height next to the place that dispenses happy juice.

(Tonight was especially happy.)

Oh, that reminds me -- I need help thinking of a name for the beverage I invented.  Well, at least that's what Brother told me.  If it actually exists somewhere and he said that just because, then I'm going to be really mad.

Mystery Drink a la Summertime

Rocks

Vodka

Vermouth

OJ

Splash tonic

YUMMMMM.

I have this problem with blog posts.  I just start going on and on, as if they're going somewhere, and then I don't know how to stop them.  I don't know how to tie it up neatly at the end, to make it feel "whole."

How about,

Buh-BAM.

A Painted Process, Courtesy of Micheline

There is a wonderful blog I look at from time to time full of art and paintings and beautiful stuff.  It's the kind of blog that makes me feel bad about myself for a minute or two, but then I quickly begin to feel inspired and want to make things.  Even with that, though, it is obvious this lady is hogging all the Awesome.

The other day I was nosing around on her site and she periodically posts photos of her paintings in process, start to finish, and talks about them and the process a bit.  It's really fun and I enjoy so much getting to see everything from the beginning.  

Though people always say they like my "style," I don't feel much like I have a style.  And while I don't know what my style is, I know that this lady's style is very, very different from mine.  But because I can look at each step of the painting all the way through and she talks about each phase, I got a real sense for some of the techniques she uses.  And her paintings are beautiful -- bright colors, lots of contrast, interesting and gorgeous and fun.

I got to thinking.  

Well, I don't paint landscapes, but I can use some of these techniques painting portraits.  Why can't I paint portraits using some of these techniques?  Will it work?  Can I make it work?

I decided to make it work.  I spend 7 hours painting yesterday and 3 today, and I still have a lot more to go.  Two paintings are finished, two are in process, and I still have one blank canvas waiting.

So, here we go.  The fruits of my labor, process included.

Jamie Redeaux
Acrylic on canvas
March 2012

I was so high while I painted this.  Okay, not literally high, but I felt high for hours and hours.  I found an entrance to the Zone and stayed there ALL DAY LONG.  For anyone who has trouble getting in the Zone or finding that sweet, buzzy head space required to make things, you probably know

a)  how hard it is to find, and

b)  how hard it is to freakin' STAY there

The fact that I was in the Zone for about seven straight hours is kind of unbelievable.  I am as mystified about it now as I was yesterday.  I won't ask questions.

Peej Redeaux
Acrylic on canvas
March 2012

These two days have been kind of a breakthrough for me.  Things I could never understand before suddenly make sense.  Things that freaked me out or I felt like I couldn't utilize in my paintings I suddenly felt totally capable of doing.  And this feeling, the one that has carried over into today and will last for days, is one of the best, most accomplished and most euphoric feelings I know.

On Art and the Inherent Preoccupation

Making bundles of balloons out of white price tags
colored with pink and green, inked with wandering chicken feet
and bouquets of flowers and wise words:

Live
Rinse
Repeat

What good advice I gave myself when I drank until six AM
and pieced myself together enough to get to class by eight;

I boiled the eggs and bought the milk and la-dee-dahed the day away
unable to get it off my mind, even tried a nice salty float
but had a hard time --
she's weird about things in her ears --
and my mind kept going back to that stuff;
plagues every train of thought
every avenue of existing comfortably in my skin
and comes back every time
like it did back then when I used to drink a lot
and make things --

What is different?  Have I changed?

I'm still me, pretty sure,
I have the same ailments, same mental emotional retardation
and latent anger I keep thinking is destructive a little
but GOD DAMMIT it feels good sometimes;
I drank some wine and that made it worse or maybe better
depending how you look at it,
maybe better like it used to make it,
but J. Chanandler Bing would say it's fucking awesome
'cause I think she wants to drink the wine with me too;

I feel in love and alive and level and clearer than I've been in a while
even though my dreams are nuts and grossly epic,
I still love when Bear ponders the emotions flitting across my face --
'cause there are thousands, just thousands of them --
because it lights up his and I love
when his face looks like that, so sweet and eager,
and damn that fucking charming beard.