One Hung, One to go

I'm cutting it close. The paintings must be dropped off at Wing's Conservatory before noon on Saturday. The paint will still be wet when the color studies are hung. Fortunately the paintings are oil on paper and need to be matted and framed under glass, protecting the wet paint from being smeared by curious fingers. Within an hour or two I will have completed the last of the little color studies and will begin cutting mats and framing.

Working four days a week at the prop shop has forced me into a discipline of scheduling my time carefully. Another benefit, aside from that of a regular paycheck, is the pruning of priorities. Over the past five years I have spent a great deal of time on marketing that has not proven to move me toward my goal of becoming a better painter. Ultimately, learning to paint with clean, fresh, exciting color that suggests moods, atmospheric conditions and excitement will bring me far greater satisfaction than adding more exhibits to my resume.

I look forward to disappearing from the public eye for awhile.

Image: Ellen Mihalick, painted over black & white, giclee print of photograph by Elayne Wishart.

Eric Ortega

The energy and movements of Eric Ortega have been an inspiration to me since I began painting him four or five years ago. He inspired my spontaneous Zakar Art work and now the first oil painting of him. The exhibit Reflections of a Dancer opens next weekend at Wings Conservatory in Chester, New Jersey. Along with a selection of my watercolor paintings and Zakar paintings, a series of color studies created from the photographs of Elayne Wishart will be presented. This study of Eric is one of the paintings that will be on display. The exhibit is a fund raising event for the Butterfly Project. For more information on the Butterfly Project, click here.

Reflections of a Dancer - Exhibit at Wings Conservatory

First Image: underpainting
Second Image: first glaze over underpainting.

The exhibit, Reflections of a Dancer, opens at Wings Conservatory in Chester on March 7th, 2009. The exhibit will raise funds for The Butterfly Project, supporting children's cancer research.

The technique used in the color studies I have created for this exhibit is new to me. The images were taken from the beautiful photographs of Elayne Wishart whose work will also be shown in the exhibit along with the work of Deb Gichan and Ana Tatoris. Using the traditional technique of underpainting and glazing, I first used the computer to transform Elayne's color photographs into black and white photographs. I then printed giclee prints and painting the initial underpainting (first image posted here) directly onto the print. I felt like a hack doing that. My goal was to play with color and glazes on figures as I did on landscapes last year. Taking the time to redraw the images of twelve paintings for a fund raising exhibit was not part of the plan, especially when the images themselves were not originally mine. Still, it worked against my grain to simply paint over someone else's photographs. These paintings are not just inspired by Elayne's work, they are, beneath the surface of paint, Elayne's work. So be it. I have learned what I set out to learn by this experiment, that complementary colors in an underpainting does not always work as well with interior/figure work as with landscapes. Analagous colors glazed over the surfaces of walls, backgrounds and flesh worked a bit better for me.

However, struggling through the color studies, nuances of color were suggested that I would not have thought to experiment with and will lead to further studies. Heaven forbid I find myself at a dead end of exploration. I had planned for the orange underpainting in many of the studies (not shown here) to be obliterated by the glazes. Instead, I left a great deal of orange as it added energy to the work. The flesh tones often conflicted with the walls and had to be adjusted. I will choose the colors for the underpaintings differently the next time I work on figures in an interior.

All in all, it was a delightful experiment and I am grateful to Elayne for allowing me to use her work for this small series of color studies.

For Exhibit information visit www.chriscarterart.com and click on the link for schedule of events.

Underpaintings of Figures

The benefits of doing an underpainting continue to delight me. I find it easier to correct drawing and test values. I have more patience, correcting the drawing as many times as necessary. Trees are much more forgiving than faces. The technique of glazing multiple layers of paint over the underpainting requires weeks, perhaps months to complete since each layer must dry completely before applying the next layer of glaze. What is the sense in spending weeks applying glazes over a poor drawing?

The colors are so extreme that the canvas begins to take on a life of its own from the very first few brush strokes. A conversation begins almost immediately and the dialogue between the canvas and the right side of my brain is absolutely entertaining. I am amused that I feel as carefree painting this way in oils as I do splashing, splattering and pouring watercolor paint. For the past several years I've been trying to figure out how to thin oils so that I can manipulate them like watercolor. I thought I needed to splash, splatter and pour to get the sense of depth and motion I want. It is absurd to me that the technique of the old masters has given me the freedom I was searching for. It is difficult at this stage to imagine what the paintings will look like with five or six layers of glaze.

Image: Rachel Brice, Tribal Fusion Belly Dance Performer

Link to page on website featuring progress of portrait paintings.

Communicating With Fewer Brush Strokes

I study anatomy in order to paint the movement of a figure with as few strokes as possible. It is not that I don't enjoy painting more complex works of art, it is that I value the power of a single stroke that carries a message of something as complex as a figure expressing emotion and mood through body posture and movement. Though I love thick novels I admire the well-crafted short short story, the one that is only a page long, even more.

Images:
A Dance for Dionysus - Watercolor and Oil on Canvas
Samira Belly Dancing at Easton Yoga - Watercolor