ClemensArt

I finished the white coat last night, and when I looked at it this morning, it looked really, really gray.  Blah!  No matter how good your artificial lights are, they can’t compare to daylight.  Granted, we’ve come a long way from the days when Goya painted at night with candles strapped to his hat, but I’ll bet he made some changes too, the morning after.  So, I worked on the white parts all day and tweaked surrounding areas as evening fell.  I’ll  fiddle with it some more tomorrow, but it’s pretty near finished.  I’m going to keep you in suspense tonight and put up a photo of these changes tomorrow–the light isn’t good for a photo.

I concentrated on the red part of the horse’s coat yesterday.  Here is a closeup before I started working.

My goal here was to sharpen it up some and bring out his muscles.

So here’s the big picture.

Now it’s time to move on to the white part of his coat.  White is fun, but it’s a challenge.  You have to make the subject look white, but you can’t just open up the tube slap it on.  Pure white is the last resort, because once you have a  pure white area, it can’t get any whiter!   All the white on his coat will be shades of white, in fact, the only area in the painting that will be pure white is the highlight in his eye.

I worked with the background, which really means I painted everything that wasn’t the horse.  Today I will concentrate on the horse and start tightening up on the details.

October 30 wasn’t a productive day.  The best laid plans of mice and men…I was involved in rescuing two cats, and it was our wedding anniversary.  October 31, painting-wise, much better!  On top of the thin starter coat, I laid in a heavier coat, using the palette knife.  Normally, my palette knife never touches my canvas, but I decided to try a more painterly approach to this project, and the results have been interesting.  I concentrated on the horse and today I will work on the background.  I want to keep it looking loose and impressionistic.  I’d like to get it finished and out of the way.  Then I can put all my energy into making the horse really beautiful and wild.

I finished this coat of paint last night.  I’m pleased with the colors, but I think I’ll simplify the horse’s coat a little and get rid of the chesnut patch on his withers and make it all white.  The darker colors are dry already, since I painted thinly and I live in Arizona, where the dry air helps this process.  Colors mixed with white take longer to dry.  When painting in oils, you have to develop a strategy based on the drying times of the various colors.  I’ll try to work around the white today, if I can resist!

I don’t blog as often as I should, mostly because I get obsessed with my art projects.  So, why not obsess and blog at the same time?  I’ll post pictures every day to show how I have progressed on this project.  So here goes…

My gallery in Scottsdale has requested a large painting of a horse.  I love horses.  I was a horse freak when I was a kid.  I drew horses all over my schoolbooks, all over my homework, all over my desk.  I’ve never forgotten the pleasure of painting horses, and I realized this project would be a lot of fun. 

I stretched a 46″ x 36″ canvas, and drew in my horse, a magnificent fellow that I photographed at a riding therapy school nearby.
 
Since I want this painting to have a Southwest feel, I went back through my files and found photos I shot in Florida of some American Paint colts that would give me an idea of how to turn my galloping horse into a paint horse. 

 Tonight I’ll start, my objective will be to get the entire canvas covered with color.  I’ll paint in oil and it will be a thin coat that will dry overnight.

The first weekend of October I was Artist Guest of Honor at Silicon in San Jose, and a good time was had by all!  These guys really get into costumes, not just your standard stuff, we had a 50’s lady, a Progressive Girl and a couple with Princess Leia buns and t-shirts that said “Organa”, to mention a few.  Silicon is everything a smaller convention should be, thanks to Maurine Starkey and Dann Lopez and a lot of other people who volunteered and made the weekend a wonderful experiece for Ray and me.

Skirmish in the lobby

 

Uhland Award presented

 

Pirate family

He was at Trader Vic's but his hair wasn't perfect

Wicked

I’m happy and honored to say that I will be the Artist Guest of Honor at these conventions:

Silicon 2009, October 2-4, San Jose, California
http://www.siliconventions.com/2009/guests.html

Arisia, 2010, January 15-18, Cambridge, Massachussets
http://2010.arisia.org/

Willycon, 2010, April 9-11
http://wildcat.wsc.edu/clubs/willycon/

Mobicon 2010, May 14-16, Mobile, Alabama
http://www.mobicon.org/index.php

Miscon 2010, May 28-31, Missoula, Montana
http://miscon.org/

Bubonicon 2010, August 27-29, Albuquerque, New Mexico
http://bubonicon.com/

If you can make it to any of these conventions, please say hi!

Tomorrow it’s off to Westercon.  Since it’s just down the road and it’s easy to put original paintings in the car and take them to the art show–I will!  It’s not that I never send out originals, it’s costly to do so and I worry when they’re in the mail.  I love the look of 50’s science fiction, which made doing my latest painting “The Mechanic’s Cat” a real pleasure.  I think I’ll try to do some more paintings with this kind of landscape, otherworldly and populated with slender, upright rocket ships.  The term ‘rocket ship’ is old-fashioned, if you think about it.

A little voice inside my head (not the one that tells you to convince the Dauphin to drive the English out of France, the other one, the small sensible voice) was saying that this painting should done in oil, unlike the one I finished before it, “The Skunk Affair”, which was 95 percent in acrylics.

Perhaps the hardest part about a Magnus & Loki painting is coming up with a good idea! The Skunk Affair hit me out of nowhere, and I started by sketching the two of them.

Final drawing on board

First coat--except for the bottles

Once I have sketched the whole picture, I project it onto gessoed board, which I like because it’s smooth and lets me paint in a lot of detail.

Starting with acrylic, I cover the whole board with color.

I detail the background first, painting in the plants, finch, skunk tail, tiles, etc.  I don’t worry about painting into the foreground. You can see the overpainting in Loki’s wing on the left.

Now it’s Magnus & Lokis’ turn.  Since the background is done, I can paint over it where I need to with my foreground subjects.

It’s time to tighten up the details and add water drops and suds.  The black lines are border tape, which guides me in painting the shower spray. 

After adding the shower spray, it’s time to use a toothbrush to create small droplets.  I start with darker values and work up to white, which adds more depth.  White should be used sparingly or it takes over.

 I finish off the painting with oil, which brightens some of the color and allows me to do smoother details, like the steam and the towel.  Done!