Tag: art

The Stick Won’t Throw Itself

ZIP TOOT | Mixed Media on Board | 8×10”

Painting and the creative process has always been a zen-zone for me, even on days when the paint just won’t line up right! When life decides to punch you in the face, painting can be calming, even downright cathartic.   

Our beloved pup, Zip – aka “Zippy”, “Zipster”, “Zipper”, “Toot”, “The Pip” and dozens of other nicknames – took her trip to the Rainbow Bridge a couple months ago. She was a HUGE personality, the boss of any space she occupied, and a precious family member who will be forever in our hearts. She loved food, playing ball, car rides, hikes, and she even enjoyed the occasional trip with me into the landscape to paint “en plein air”. But more than anything in the world, she loved to swim, especially if a stick was involved. ZIP TOOT is a nod to her larger than life personality doing what she loved more than anything else.  

As to the artwork itself, this is another foray with spackle, but leveraging the unique opportunity to create textures that simply can’t be done in oil paint – at least not by me. The spackle was laid down in multiple layers, oftentimes so thick that it created a lot of cracking when it dried, which actually played well with the subject matter. Once the shape of the tail was done, I used a dark gray layer (almost black) as the base, then textured in lighter grays and whites. The effect is to give the impression of various hair colors intermixed, even in the areas that are dominated by black or white. Zip was a spotty dog, so getting this right was tricky, but manipulating the spackle while it was still soft made for an effective outcome. 

The final step was going back in with acrylic paint to make the entire tail look more vibrant, which is a weird comment given we’re dealing with black, white and grays. The background is intended to represent her swimming days, the last of which were on Lake Austin at a boat ramp next to Mozart’s Coffee. If you look closely you can see some blue glittery bits splashed around the tip of her tail, reminding me of her need to shake thoroughly between throws and her all-out rush back into the water to recover her favorite stick. 

Go play with your dog cuz the stick won’t throw itself.

RIP Zip

The Zip!
Layer 1 – Spackle
Layer 2 – Spackle + Cracks
Texture!
Shake Effect
ZIP TOOT
ZIP TOOT

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by Categories: Mixed Media, RescuedTags: , , , , , 5 Comments

Barns, Bluebonnets, and Barks

COMMONS FORD RANCH BARN | Oil on Artboard | 9×12”

This is my first composition of an old barn and it was an absolute blast! I came across this barn exploring a metro park near my home called Commons Ford Ranch. My initial goal was to simply find a new place to explore with my dog, and I was surprised to find this metro park on the map near my home, of which I’ve lived in for decades.

Commons Ford Ranch parkland was donated by Bradley and Wooley, Inc. in 1983, but the historic buildings, including the barn, were from the Resaca Ranch, which was a working cattle ranch in the early 20th century. If you live in the Austin area, I strongly suggest exploring this small park, which has riverfront, hiking trails, and obviously historical elements to enjoy.

After my plein air recon visit with Wolfy, I returned a few days later to do some quick field sketching. Having no experience with barns, I took some time back in the studio doing a more formal drawing, trying to figure out how best to simplify the elements of the barn and ensure I could get the whacky angles figured out. When I finished the drawing I realized the better angle was going to be from the other side of the barn because the tree was a distraction no matter where I put it, seemingly popping out of the barn like a jack-in-the-box gone wrong. But this is why we do sketches and practice drawings, right? 

I spent about 3 hours painting on-site the following week. The weather cooperated for the first 90 minutes, then the clouds rolled in, which threw off some of the preferred lighting. Luckily I took a few reference photos when I first setup and was able to use those back in the studio. I really focused my plein air session on highly contrasting values, something I feel would help improve the realistic nature of my landscapes. 

The studio work went very quickly, which I’m convinced was due to the strength of the values throughout the piece. I was able to convey a more realistic composition with depth. At least that’s my impression. The most tricky bits, which were honestly a bit maddening, were determining the colors for the wood. The gray of the actual barn wasn’t going to make for a very interesting painting, so I went with 20 versions of reddish brown. I used almost exclusively painting knives for the barn, finding ways to maximize wet-on-wet technique to get swirls and variations in the wood panels, giving them (hopefully) a more aged look. Lastly, using the edge of the painting knife, I applied somewhat random crisp black lines to get a more realistic look to the slats and slight gaps between the wood.  

The addition of wildflowers was a suggestion from my wife, which I think adds a nice pop of central Texas spring to the piece. These were also done with a knife, using scraping and splotching techniques. 

Overall, the Commons Ford Ranch Barn was a great introduction to this type of landscape feature that lends itself nicely to en plein air. 

#artbern #berntx #crashboomzip #painting #art #abplanalp #austinartists #atxartist #atxart #atxlife #contemporaryart #bernabplanalp #pleinair #pleinairaustin #commonsfordranch #getoutside #hikeaustin #austinparksfdn

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The Texture of Porter

PORTER | 4×4” | Mixed Media on Wood

My recent foray into mixed media, courtesy of plaster and acrylic, has opened up a new perspective for my still life compositions. A good place to start was with my favorite adult beverage, a tasty Porter.

This is a very small composition, 4×4”, but in large part thanks to the 3D-ish impact of the thick plaster, it has a lot textual appeal. I did this without a reference photo, or beer model for that matter, going from memory of similarly themed past paintings. This one is most notably related to Last Sip, but oddly enough it was infinitely easier to create for a couple of reasons. First, the smaller size makes things go much faster. But more notably, the use of colored plaster and the simplicity of the subject make for a quick creation.

I might have just gotten lucky, too, and nailed it on the first try.

I might return to this specific piece and do some direct painting using acrylics on the plaster, which would add more vibrancy and get rid of the slight chalky effect.

Thanks for reading!

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Bob Ross Goes Skiing

FRESH TRACKS | Mixed Media on Canvas Panel | 5×7”


This is project #2 from the aforementioned Textured Painting workshop at The Contemporary at Laguna Gloria. This was a real Bob Ross experience, as my original plan was to simply experiment with texture and some pottery tools to see how they manipulated the joint compound, as well as experiment on canvas board with my newfound medium. Lo and behold, I discovered ski tracks in the snow – an abstract painting exploration turned “real” composition.

The coloring of the snow is actually tinged with yellow and muted with purple, which is very hard to see in the photos. The first step was to paint the canvas panel all black, let it dry, then cover it with the off-white spackle. The pottery tool was some kind of metal prong with a very small, circular tip. Dragging this tool through the soft spackle exposed the black board underneath, sometimes closing back up over itself in the thicker sections, much like skiing through fresh snow. 

On day 2, after the initial spackle had dried, using a water spritzer, I applied some kind of sparkly dust provided in the instructor’s box of goodies, which created a very cool reflective effect, like sun on snow. The last step was to apply a sky-blue acrylic mix to some of the wider tracks, which added color and the effect of the sky reflected in the snow. 

Overall, I’m very happy with this abstract turned ski tracks realism piece. I think it would be a very marketable piece, too, at a larger size in a black frame for someone who loves skiing. Thank you, Bob Ross!

Virtual Frame
Fresh Tracks Zoom
Texture
Texture, Sparkles, and Blues

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Spring Point in Spackle

SPRING POINT LEDGE LIGHTHOUSE 2 | Mixed Media on Wood | 8×10″

I recently attended a 2-day workshop at The Contemporary at Laguna Gloria. The focus was textured painting, which ultimately boiled down to playing with joint compound (gypsum spackle) and acrylic paint. I was amazed at how easy and fun it was to adapt to this medium.The technique is very straightforward, whereby one mixes acrylic paints into the joint compound, which is an off-white, and do whatever you want provided it’s put on a hard surface, for which I used wooden boards.

Most of the class did abstract pieces, which make sense as you get to play with pottery tools to get cool shapes and textures. It’s very forgiving, too, because you can simply wipe it off and start over again provided you don’t wait more than a day, at which point it hardens. I chose to do still life and landscape pieces, taking advantage of the impasto nature of the spackle. The instructor said she hadn’t considered doing landscape compositions with this technique, but to me it seemed intuitively suited for the textural nature of the real world. 

I intend to add some vibrancy to this composition with acrylic paint… I think. This is definitely the start of a new and exciting medium! Stay tuned for a number of new pieces in spackle and acrylics.

#artbern #berntx #crashboomzip #painting #art #abplanalp #austinartists #atxartist #contemporaryart #southportlandmaine #abplanalp #bernabplanalp #springpointledgelighthouse #lighthouse #maine #portlandmaine #getoutside #fortgorges #contemporaryatx #texturedpainting 

by Categories: Landscapes, SeascapesTags: , , , , , , 3 Comments