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Two steps forward, one step back... Where last night I loved my color choices, tonight - not so much. But where last night I blew some of my lines for not concentrating on seeing, tonight I got that part right. I did something for the first time tonight also - I stood up while I painted.  I discovered that I am much more at ease and in control when seated. Does this mean that I just need to get used to standing? I have no idea. But I do know that I had a harder time controlling the brush and seeing the color palette for the overhead light reflection. So I get this for my effort...  I'm obviously not done, and instead of trying to finish this, I want to redo my color choices and start over. I tried cobalt turquoise tonight. I think it's a good choice for cool shadows (cool, as in the temperature). I don't think it blends easily with other colors. Not gently, anyway. But I had a good time listening to Vivaldi and practicing forgetfulness. The more I look at this, the more I'm convinced that I lost the harmony of the objects. The frig, for example, is completely its own painting and wasn't done with any consideration of the rest of the scene. Selfish appliance... I think I've been away from actual painting for too long to try something this busy right now. I'll try standing up again and see what happens. |
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BeatCanvas.com, an Iowa Art Blog, by artist Brett Rogers, 1/6/2009 1:34:16 AM
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What I forgot to do yesterday in painting was to forget that I was painting the corner of a room with a lamp, ladder, and blanket. I missed the crooked nature of the upper right part of the ladder. I misaligned a couple of proportions. If I had remembered to forget, then I would have painted it all as I saw it, and not painted part of it as I thought it was. Big difference... Tonight, I'll swing into our kitchen and paint that, I think. Hopefully, I'll remember that it's not a kitchen. |
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BeatCanvas.com, an Iowa Art Blog, by artist Brett Rogers, 1/5/2009 10:47:21 AM
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Did a painting tonight for the first time in a long time. This is the corner of our family room...  Had a good time with it. I feel like some of the things I've reconsidered in my art over the last year are paying off. If I had it to do over, I would paint the blanket on the rough hewn ladder a bit brighter. Interestingly, as I worked on it, my choice of colors changed and turned out to be just four colors (other than white): medium cadmium yellow dark, quinacridone violet, ultramarine blue, and a touch of light cadmium red for use on the blanket. I'm ready to paint more... ETC: As a reality check, I decided to take a picture of the scene I painted.  I didn't paint from a photo, but instead painted what I saw in front of me - plein air, as it's called. I want to paint other scenes and other things from my home. It's gnawing at me, like a craving. Funny how this has hit me. And hard, too. I guess I've been pregnant with painting, and the labor has started. It's about 1 AM and I really want to dig into another one. But I should go to sleep instead... |
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BeatCanvas.com, an Iowa Art Blog, by artist Brett Rogers, 1/4/2009 10:19:13 PM
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On Saturday, Tamara and I pretty much spent the day together as most of our kids were away doing other things in other cities. Prior to that, I'd been working a great deal (sometimes as much as 14 hours a day), and with the travel over the holidays, while we'd spent time together, it wasn't really "alone" time. So yesterday was kind of a PJ day for just us. Tamara went out and got a bunch of movies and we curled up on our new big comfy couch. Among five movies, she picked Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and its sequel. In the sequel, one of the girls had held a grudge against her dad since the day her mother had died. The mom committed suicide. Some events that led up to her mother's death helped the girl conclude that dad was guilty in part by either contributing to the reasons that led to the suicide or by neglecting his wife's needs. Later, after obtaining more context by visiting her grandmother, the girl realizes that her dad was not only doing everything he could to help his wife, but he was also hurting, and that her treatment of him was just one big long fester on top of his personal pain from losing the wife he loved. Judgment... if I could create my own definition of it, it would be that we critically weigh the choices of others to determine first if we agree with those choices and second whether malice played a role in the decision for action. That said, I wonder how often we assign "intent to hurt" to the choices and actions of someone else when that wasn't the case at all. I've heard the phrase before "Walk a mile in my shoes and then judge me..." The girl in the movie realized that some of her dad's choices were made with the best of intentions. She also realized that she hadn't given her dad the benefit of the doubt. As Tamara and I discussed this later in the evening, she mentioned that very thing: the benefit of the doubt. When we don't understand the choices made by someone, our natural instinct is to fill in the blanks as best we can. Depending on our own internal wiring and experience, that can be negative, positive, or wait-and-see. Are we cynical? Or do we lend the benefit of the doubt? How do we judge the choices of others? It seems to me that the harshness of our judgment scales like this: At the low end of judgment, there's forgiveness built right in: He couldn't help it. Either he didn't know enough or he operated on instinct or training, but it's that "He had no choice." We don't judge animals for painfully ripping other animals into bite-sized morsels. They can't help it. But some people harshly judge humans for that same action of hunting and killing animals. Why? They perceive that people have a choice. Then there is the selfless act. Nobody judges that poorly, but because it is a conscious decision (not instinctual) it lends to bolster your street cred with humans. The more sacrificial it is, the greater the perception of goodness. (I'm not talking about when someone is generous with others' money or time - that's not selfless. Quite the opposite...) Finally, there is the selfish act. Choosing what's in your own best interest seems to cause some folks a great deal of heartache and renders a lot of judgment. Here, I think some political leanings are drawn. I think business too, because it is by definition profit-oriented, is self-centered and therefore judged harshly. Now along these axes of instinct and choice, and selfless and self-centered, we can factor in things that color judgment: Intent to hurt
Deception
Jealousy
Revenge Tamara and I also watched This Christmas. In it, one person viciously beats the crap out of another person with a belt. In fact, they poured baby oil on the tile floor to prevent the other near-naked person from defending themselves while getting whipped with the belt. Sounds bad, I know. How does it flavor your perception of it though when you learn that Regina King's character was doing this to her husband because she knew that he was cheating on her and she finally unloaded her anger about it? Her self-centered choice becomes justifiable to us. And even funny in the movie. You go girl! Beat that two-timing jerk! There are two parts to judgment: the interpretation and the response. It seems to me that personal interpretation needs to be softer and more patient. Our system of justice is patterned after this. It seeks a full disclosure from all sides so that as full an understanding as possible is gained before the response is given. But in the busy moments of our day, it's tough to give time to that. As a parent, there've been times that I've judged one of my kids too quickly and later learned more of the facts I should have taken the time to acquire and I came to see that my response was completely wrong. |
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BeatCanvas.com, an Iowa Art Blog, by artist Brett Rogers, 1/4/2009 12:00:29 PM
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Drawn on my Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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When we were down in Georgia, most of the grandkids from Tamara's side of the family were there, so I took a few portrait photos at poolside with one of the palm trees as backdrop. Here are the Woods sisters' kids and the Force kids.  Here are the Force kids.  And the Woods sisters' kids.  Also, something I captured...  Classic Tyler. And this last one, of Tamara's mom, Frances, the best mother-in-law I could hope for, surprised at her white elephant gift, an iTunes gift card.  If it's true that some women turn out to be much like their mother, how lucky I am. We had a great Christmas :) |
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BeatCanvas.com, an Iowa Art Blog, by artist Brett Rogers, 1/1/2009 2:18:36 PM
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Drawn on my Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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Drawn on my Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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      This last picture, obviously someone who didn't care much for the McCain half of the ticket in the election. |
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BeatCanvas.com, an Iowa Art Blog, by artist Brett Rogers, 12/27/2008 9:59:58 AM
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For the sake of convenience, about 60% to 70% of my art is rendered from photographs. I take a picture, or I find a picture I like, and put my own artistic twist on it as I put brush to canvas or stylus to cell phone. Something I'd read a while back (it might have been in a book by Charles Sovek) is that photographs ruin shadows... In fact, as I am writing this, I looked it up on Google. It was Sovek. He said: Photographs lie. The darks tend to be colorless, the lights oftentimes too bright, and hard edges predominate, freezing the life out of a subject. Emphasis mine.The detail and the variety of color are all lost in the shadows in a photograph. If you click on the link above, you'll see that in the original (top center) picture. The shadows are just big black blobs in the photo. And in fact, his pencil sketch to the left is simply more interesting than the photo itself. Something I've noticed in my own paintings is that I tend to have real dark areas in some of them where nothing is happening. My sunflower painting is a classic example of that, and it had bothered me ever since I painted it. I took that picture in Alabama and came home and painted it from the photo I took. The lack of detail - no, the lack of life - in the darker/blacker areas has increasingly annoyed me about that painting. I realize this now because it's been something I've chewed on but didn't really get when I first read it, and on this Christmas trip to Georgia, the Poolside painting was painted from a photo in Tamara's parents' back yard, which has a pool. The photo lost too many details in the shadow, I can see now, and this will inform my choices in painting and art going forward. And I think I have some other thoughts around this that I will share later once they're more concrete. |
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BeatCanvas.com, an Iowa Art Blog, by artist Brett Rogers, 12/26/2008 11:03:41 AM
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