The very fun, energetic and popular Austin art gallery, Art for the People Gallery, will include 3 of my pieces in the new show called ART SPREE! The show runs from January 29th – April 9th, 2022.
Airstream
Last Sip
Puppy Butts!
It’s always an honor to work with Lynnie, Hallie and of course, Charm Charm Sparkles and Tassel PomPom. Unfortunately the in-person opening reception for February had to be cancelled – damn you COVID! – but the gallery is open regular hours and the staff is as warm and welcoming as ever, so swing by if you’re in Austin and check out the art.
I’ve written blog posts about all of these pieces, but as a grouping they do a pretty good job representing me and my world. Airstream is clear nod to my love of travel (no, I don’t own an Airstream, but I know some very cool people who do); anyone who knows me can attest to my love of beer, especially a tasty porter as represented in Last Sip; and lastly, Puppy Butts! for my adoration of dogs and all they can bring to the world.
If you’re interested in any of these pieces, or anything in the ART SPREE show, you can also browse and shop using their online store. From the Art for the People Gallery store go to Shop > ART GALLERY – All Original Artwork > ART SPREE – Exhibition. I can attest that Lynnie and the AFTPG staff will do an excellent job fielding questions and making any purchasing seamless and fun.
First still life of 2022 inspired by the fun of popcorn! It’s basically the champagne of food if you think about it. And my wife absolutely loves popcorn, so I knew this would make her happy.
I try to do these small still life compositions alla prima, basically in one sitting. I had to do some highlight adjustments the next day after the paint had settled, but that’s pretty typical for me because it seems wet paint is just hard to “read” as final.
I had a lot of fun with this piece, working from a photo… real popcorn never would have lasted. If you like progression details, I made a time lapse of this piece which you can see on YouTube called “Popcorn Playalong” embedded below.
Just the Ripe Size | 5” x 7” | Oil on Paper Board
If you love a ripe avocado as much as I do, you can appreciate the moment you cut one open and just hope that a) it’s ripe and b) the pit isn’t so big there’s no actual avocado to eat. Just the Ripe Size is meant to elicit that gratification. Not quite as satisfying as a great batch of guacamole from Jack Allen’s Kitchen, but it’s a good start!
This piece was a little tricky because it’s painted on a paper-based board – basically a really nice piece of cardboard that you pay a lot more than you should at the art store. I think it will be great for graphite and maybe colored pencil drawing, but it was too quick to soak up oil paint. However, I do like the finished piece and the flat finish it has, which gives something like this avocado a more realistic look in terms of texture. I’ll try to varnish it in a couple weeks and post an update of the outcome.
This small piece is brought to you by caffeine and Carly Simon. I thought painting clouds in my coffee would be a little more straightforward, but it presented some tricky bits that will need to be tackled again in future still life. The resulting composition of this first effort is good, but I’m missing something on the technique and it ended up losing some of the cloudy effect.
This is an ideal composition for practicing the technique of blending wet-on-wet oil paint. While I’m very familiar with the technique, it’s part of the standard tool kit for painting in oils regardless of one’s skill level, I hadn’t really considered the fact that this composition was going to be dominated by wet-on-wet. It became abundantly clear that was to be the challenge once I got started, the realization making me chuckle aloud in the studio… idiot!
Next time I’ll use a smooth surface (board) instead of a canvas, which should make for easier blending. I’ll also make more time to pre-mix a range of coffee browns to give the “cloudy” effect a more realistic look.
This piece was also inspired by all the neighborhood coffee shops around the country and the world, all of which have their own unique vibe and appreciation for a cup well poured. Ignoring the occasional douchey independent shop filled with anti-social Wifi leeches, there’s a lot of great coffee being brewed in these shops.
My neighborhood favorite is Trianon, which has been a caffeinated cornerstone of this area since the 80s. They have dozens of coffees from around the globe and the owner, or any of his friendly staff, will take the time to walk you through the nuances of each farmer’s crop and what makes them unique. When was the last time that “barista” from Starbucks took the time to walk away from the register and come chat with you about the 20 rotating coffee beans on the wall… never!
Small still life paintings are very gratifying because it’s possible to finish them in a single session, which is a nice change of pace after having worked on a number of larger pieces recently.
Juicy is an orange (hopefully that’s abundantly clear) backlit with just enough light to see through the thinner areas. I used reference photos instead of an actual still life setup in the studio, but I think it would have been easier with a real orange slice as the subject.
Lesson learned from this composition was the importance of relative values. I initially failed to darken the reds sufficiently, making it difficult to get the transparent light effect through the thin areas. I went back in and tamped down the saturation and darkened the value, which helped a great deal. I need to remember next time that instead of trying to use the lightest value for the transparency, focus first on emphasizing the adjacent darker areas to make it pop.
Stay tuned for more small still life in the coming months… suggestions are welcome!
Dark beer as an inspiration seemed like a great idea for this quick still life. As you can guess, I do love a good dark porter, #512brewing!
This piece is also influenced heavily by the work of Neil Carroll, who has a great talent for making simple still life transform into beautiful, relatable art. In this case, also quite quaffable.
The Last Sip was a great piece for glassware still life. I liked the challenge of defining the pint glass despite having a dark beer on a very dark background. I thought that would be more difficult than it was, but the dominance of dark values actually made it easier to pull the glass reflections out of the piece.
I also tried to work in some warmer elements of sienna, orange, and out-of-the-tube red to distinguish the porter from the dark background coming through the clear glass.
Say hello to PB&K the latest addition to the Dog Toys series, although it might be more appropriate to start a new sub-category called “Cheeky Still Life”.
The Kong was done with a painting knife to give it the subtle texture of a well worn, go-to Fido favorite. As any dog lover would attest, especially the big chewers, a peanut butter stuffed Kong is a great source of entertainment… and protein. Even the most hearty chewers have trouble putting a dent in one of these rubber wonders, but they do lose their sheen and get a roughed up look over time. By contrast, the (creamy) peanut butter and the remainder of the composition is all impasto-free brushwork.
Ultimately, the intent of the composition is to make every dog parent look, nod, and laugh at the reality of what we’re all willing to do for our lovable canine companions.
Oil on canvas paper, 8″x10″
Palette knife and an array of brushes (rounds and flats)
Key colors
Peanut Butter – Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow
Kong – Ivory Black + Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna + Ultramarine Blue
It’s happy hour time again! Before moving forward, it’s time to reveal the name of the cocktail from the Happy Hour – Roosevelt post from a few weeks ago… the Sazerac! It’s a great drink and the next time you’re in New Orleans I highly recommend a visit to The Roosevelt for the original recipe.
This latest addition to the series should be much easier for you to figure out, although it wasn’t necessarily easier to paint. Happy Hour – Shaken is an iconic cocktail indeed and something that James Bond fans will recognize instantly, although 007 preferred a stirred version.
This cocktail is a top choice in my household – even the dogs like it! Well, they probably would love it, but they just get to have the ice cubes after the drink has been strained. Yes, it’s hilarious – they hear the shaker, come running to the bar, and proceed to sit (without a command mind you) until I’m done, at which point they each get a piece of ice. They are, without a doubt, very lovable booze hounds.
Back to the painting…
I’m very happy with the outcome and feel like the repeated efforts on this Happy Hour series is starting to show demonstrable improvements in the artwork. This was a challenge on 2 fronts. First, the ongoing challenge of glassware in a still life has been tricky to refine, but I finally figured out the right value scheme to make it work – the solution for me was simply being more aggressive with the darker values. Secondly, I lacked experience painting truly reflective metal in still life compositions. Again, a more concerted approach with the darker values made a difference, but more importantly was simply waving the wand of artistic patience and working through the various reflected elements.
A few additional observations and details about the composition:
Reference Photo: As you can tell the shaker is not exactly the same as what’s in the photo. I used a reference photo blending technique, using the real shaker as my primary source, but simplifying the object by looking at other photos and paintings on-line that were, quite frankly, better cocktail shakers.
Brush and Knife: The vast majority of the piece is done with a Flat #4 and Round #2 brush, but the olives are all knife work. They are the focal point of the composition, and as such I wanted them to have some more texture and a reflective quality of their own.
Size: This is more than twice the size of previous Happy Hour series pieces, 8″x10″ vs 5″x7″ boards. Usually when I go bigger, the work is harder technically, but this time it seemed easier. Like I said, progress.
I haven’t figured out what the next cocktail in the series will be, but I’m leaning towards something with a shaker. Cheers!
Sometimes you just know a composition is going to work, virtually able to paint itself. Yellow Ball with Tailswas exactly that kind of composition. Wolfgang and Zip loved this toy because the 2 tails made it tug-a-licious! As the designated thrower, I liked it because the ball made it easy to throw without getting dog slime all over my fingers. Ultimately, this toy stayed inside and lasted about 20 play sessions before parts started to get ripped off and chewed up.
I’ve recently made some adjustments to my still life setup, changing the platform so it’s higher and is at sitting eye level. This gives a new angle that’s easier for me to translate to the canvas.
This piece moved quickly and was done in a couple of sessions this week. As I stated earlier, this composition looked great from the start and I knew it was going to be a fun project when I saw all that bright yellow shredding dangling against that blue background. Definitely going to spend more time on compositional arrangement with future dog toy paintings.
The canvas board was ideal for this type of toy because it has a lot of toothy texture, which easily lends itself to the toy’s material. The only thing I don’t like about a canvas board for this type of piece is the fine detail of the threads. The canvas texture makes it very hard to paint a thin line, so I often had to do some back and forth with the darker background color to get the thread lines just right, basically painting back into the yellow thread line to reduce the width.
There’s a lot of yellow in this piece, and I did some experimentation:
Deep Yellow + Titanium White as the base for the mid-range yellows. Added Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Red Light in small doses for the shadows on the ball.
Cadmium Lemon + Titanium White for the lighter areas.
Indian Yellow, which I don’t typically use often, here and there to vary the lighting along some of the longer sections of the tails.
The blue cloth was Ultramarine Blue and TW with variations of green made from Cad Yellow Deep and Cad Red Light.
Originally, I had included the tag on the toy, but once the piece was 90% done the tag looked too distracting and didn’t add a lot of value, so I took it out.
For those interested in the toy itself, it came from BarkBox, a monthly dog toy subscription service. Our dogs destroy toys, much to my artistic delight, so BarkBox has had to adjust what they send us to try and find toys that are good for tugging but also very durable. Supervised play is the best solution for our fur balls because once they’re done tugging, it turns into keep away, which devolves into a game of “I’m going to eat this so you can’t have it”. Somewhere between keep away and vindictive chewing is when I like to step in and save the toy. If I was going to rate this toy, it would go something like this (1-10 scale):
Tugability 8 – withstood some strong tug sessions between my large dogs (Zip 50 lbs, Wolfy 85 lbs )
Durability 6 – hard for a canvas toy to rate higher than a 7, so this is pretty good
Versatility 8 – this could have easily been used inside or outside, both for fetch or tug.
With a few deep breaths, and some tasty wine for liquid courage, I dove into the cellophane stage of this composition. I carved out a little more than an hour tonight to get the ball rolling. I was pleasantly surprised with the progress, but I will admit that my inner artist was struggling with laying gray tones on top of the pretty red vase in the name of cellophane.
It was rough going initially b/c there weren’t enough value contrasts between the white table cloth and the wide range of cellophane grays and cast shadows. Then I remembered the advice from David Cheifetz during his workshop a couple weeks ago – “Value is king! A painting with the right values but wrong colors will still look pretty good.” I’m not about to put that on a tshirt or a bumper sticker, but its great guidance. I stepped away from what seemed like the right dark and light grays and made both ends of the spectrum more extreme, darker grays and lighter grays. It seems to have worked so far.
The real power of the cellophane image won’t really come together until the grays are laid in properly and then the bright, white highlights are added on top. That’s what gives the cellophane it’s shape and texture. I’m still not entirely convinced this will look like the real thing when I’m done, but stepping back from this first stab at it, I was able to see the shape of the cellophane starting to come together. The key is going to be establishing that clingy sensation with the highlights. Fingers crossed…
[The grays of the cellophane are primarily 2 setups: Ultramarine blue + burnt umber + white OR white + ivory black. I’ll probably add a 3rd option for the cooler side of the cellophane (right side, away from the light source) of UB+raw umber+white. ]
Art Bern 