Working on an 11" x 14" painting of an orchid. First, some background and sketchwork outlining.
And then setting the stage for the petals.
Magenta is a hard color to mix, so I grabbed Quinacridone Violet, which works well for what I need. The reason magenta is hard to mix is that when you start blending colors together, it dulls them, which is great for muted effects, but tough on bright colors. In those cases, direct from the tube is best.
Let's see how far I get with this tonight.
ETC: And a bit more...
MORE ETC: Further, but this time taken with the scanner...
In my journey as an artist, one element of painting has escaped me, and that is color temperature. It struck me early on that this aspect of my hobby is utterly important, and so I've looked for painters who seem to understand it and who use it well and I've read quite a bit about it.
As a musician, I understand tension. There's a slight predictability in music that you can anticipate where the music is going by attending to the sense for tension. The progression of the music goes along and there is a pull inside us awaiting the relief of a certain note that becomes more obvious and more necessary as times goes on. When that note finally sounds, we experience a wash of satisfaction, of release. Deep inside me, my intuition is that color temperature is related to this same sense of tension in music.
Most things that you read will tell you that blue, green, and violet are cool in temperature and orange, red, and yellow are warm. That's pretty simplistic - and also wrong, in my opinion. That's like saying that all minor chords are depressing and all major chords are happy. Depends on their context and how they're formed.
Take permanent light green, for example. Cool color? Not at all.
Compare that to Phthalo Green (Yellow Shade).
The warmth of permanent light green is obvious.
But compare it now to Cadmium Orange.
Permanent light green is cooler than orange. It's a matter of comparison. Of context.
In short, there is no formula. And yet, it matters greatly, I think, to the success of a painting - how the artist handles the placement and arrangement of temperature. It affects the mood of the painting and how our eyes move around the work.
We have a natural attraction to warmth. Warmth is exciting and gets us moving. Cool colors provide the relief, just as we yearn for the shade when it is too warm for us. That's about as well as I can explain the musical tension of color temperature at this point. I'm certainly no master with it - I'm barely beginning to understand it - but it will occupy my decisions as I paint in the future.
While shadows are cooler in their temperature, there is such a thing as a warm shadow. And there is such a thing as a cool highlight. This isn't really about shadows, nor is it about receding or advancing. It's about tension, I think. It's about rhythm. Do paintings have beat? They just might.
One of my favorite blogs is the podcast site, iinnovate. They recently did an interview with Carly Fiorina, and I'm listening to it this morning as I work. Great interview.
Here are a couple of things that she said:
"Change is always very difficult. It's always resisted. It's particularly difficult with a large, tradition-bound, old company like HP was. But that's also, frankly, the challenge and the joy of leadership. Because that's what leadership is all about - it's about changing things.
"There is always opposition to change. Some people resist; [successful change happens] because more people embrace the need for change and find common ground."
I love that definition of leadership: Leadership is about changing things. It's not about managing. That's only part of it. Leadership is about vision and direction and inspriing people to perform as needed to arrive at a new destination.
I also love that she said that successful change is not about winning a fight, but about finding more allies than opposition. Where can we agree, and from there, how do we move ahead?
And this:
"If you put the right technology, the right tools, the right capabilities of web 2.0, for example, into the hands of consumers - individuals - then you can accelerate the transformation of industries. That's really exciting. Because I think there are a whole set of industries that are being transformed because the individual, coupled with the right technology, can drive the change."
At this point in the race to the 2008 election, I really like John Edwards as the Democrat nominee. Between his fee of $55,000 for a speech on poverty, his 28,000 square foot house, his $400 haircuts, and now his idea that we unilaterally move past the war on terror - an idea that terrorists themselves haven't contemplated, especially considering the Fort Dix Six - I think that he's an ideal candidate for the Democrats. Oh, and I forgot that he worked at a hedge fund to learn about poverty.
Last week, Edwards said that he worked for a hedge fund between presidential campaigns to learn about financial markets and their relationship to poverty - and to make money, too.
And it looks like Iowa Democrats approve of his nomination, since he's leading in the polls here. I'd say that's great news. Go Edwards!
In the movie, On a Clear Day, the main character, Frank, has to deal with his demons. And he does so with the aid of his friends. At a crucial point in the movie, when Frank wants to throw in the towel, one of his friends comes to his rescue by kicking his ass and sobering him up.
That's what friends do. They throw away their need to be liked by you in the pursuit of giving you what you need to achieve your goals. If it costs them your friendship, so be it - they love you that much.
Parents do the same thing with their kids. It's not about being liked. It's not about being respected. It's about training and life skills. It's about the long view. Any short term pain endured in the relationship is small stuff. It's the bigger picture that matters.
I don't remember the quote exactly, but I read once that someone said, "If you're not willing to be fired for your belief in the project, then you're on the wrong project."
The same is true in relationships. Marriage, friendship, personal, and professional. Care is not equivalent to coddling. We all want to reach the end of our life with the knowledge that we mattered and that we made a difference. Significance. Did we leave the place better than how we found it? Did we change it?
Are we truly prepared to go out with both guns blazin', leaving a wake of positive and lasting impact? Or are we coasting for our own comfort?
Be willing to be fired for your passionate belief in the people and places where you invest your life.
One of my favorite blogs is the podcast site, 
