Week 2: Definitely Not My Comfort Zone

Saturday hours, sticky paint, and trial & error

Palette Knives are for Mixing Paint, Dimwit

What kind of psychopath would want to trade in those smooth paint brushes for a bunch of flexible plastic? This is the question I asked myself going into this piece. I had never so much as stroked the edge of a palette knife against a painting, let alone traded my brushes entirely in favor of this tool ascended straight from Hell. I scoured in the internet in hopes of finding any type of inspiration and despite the massive volume of incredible pieces, I failed to find anything that I could feasibly achieve in my own work. I was discouraged to say the the least. Nonetheless, I picked a picture, one of my sister in all her teenage angst glancing out of a train window. I came in on Saturday in search for silence. I prepared for battle, my palette knives my weapons, paint the ammunition, the canvas my opponent.

Screwing Up: When Do I Start Over?

I commenced my attack on the canvas. I didn't know where to start, evidently, and the painting was AWFUL straight from the get-go. I felt discouraged, unmotivated, and all around frustrated. I decided to abandon the piece at left and start over, now with some experience under my belt. But, I think that this failed piece is important to reflect upon in looking back on my process. We are so used to seeing polished and completed works of art matted in galleries, that it becomes difficult to understand all of the failures that came before that piece. In reality, artistic methods take what seems like eons to master. Not even Vincent Van Gogh could produce a perfect piece of work in some random technique he'd never practiced. For me, I expect myself to produce some professional-quality piece right out of the gate, no matter the process. As a result, I end up hating the majority of my artwork. But, it is important to understand that mess-ups are what lead to the "mastery" (although you could argue that there is no such thing) of an artistic method.

A New Beginning and A Significantly Less Awful Painting

After five agonizing Saturday hours in silence, I ultimately decided that I had failed. I left the building discouraged and unmotivated. Monday, I chose a new picture and began again. I chose a smaller canvas and opted for some impasto medium to keep the paint from getting muddy and smooth like it did in my previous attempt. I decided paint like I would with a brush, which ultimately made the process a lot less daunting and unfamiliar. Also, and probably most importantly, I tried to go into it with a positive mindset. This allowed me to not get discouraged and lazy like I did with my last piece.

On a separate note, in last week's video I mentioned that I wish I had made the highlights and base tones more pigmented. This is definitely something I feel like I did well. As you can see the the bottom picture, I tried to play up the color from the reference picture. This was definitely a little scary because I'm not used to using so many bold colors. This ended up working out well in the end, though. The orangey-pink fleshly tones contrasted well with the turquoise background I laid in later.

Finally, even though I've done several self-portraits at this point in my artistic career, it is still weird to look at a reference picture of myself for that long. It was especially weird to see the final piece. My lack of blending ability with the palette knife gave me brown eyes and hair, even weirder. I think what I'm trying to say is that it is bizarre to deconstruct your own face in paintings like these. The process of constructing your own face in two-D really is different than how you might conceptualize the face of a stranger or even the face of a friend. It's just a really strange way seeing the face that stares back at you in the mirror every day.

~ Palette of the Week ~

Straight Out of the Tube:

Alizarin Crimson
Cadmium Red
Burnt Sienna
Yellow Ochre
Burnt Umber
French Ultramarine Blue
Titanium white

Mixed Colors:

Fleshy Purple- yellow ochre, burnt sienna, titanium white, alizarin crimson, burnt umber, french ultramarine blue
Yellow Hue- Titanium white, yellow ochre, cadmium red

Oh... and I almost forgot! IMPASTO!

Why is the nose so weird?

At this point, I was definitely getting tired. Experimenting with a new process is exhausting! I think this is when the flexible nature of the senior project schedule is really useful. When I got into this stage of the painting, I could take a step back and work on my blog and editing the footage I already had. I didn't have to force myself to continue in order to meet a deadline or get a painting out of the way. I expected to get sick of painting after a while (especially agonizing after the same pieces) through the senior project, not necessarily to get tired in the way that I did. Surprisingly, I have become more excited to paint. I'm not sick of painting, but it is definitely exhausting to focus on the same painting for long periods of time. Anyway, long story short, rather than getting sick of painting, I just get mentally tired after a long session.

But, in all seriousness, what is going on with the nose at this stage in the piece??? It looks conceptually wrong in ways I can't really explain.

Staying On Task

It's hard to stay on task when you're working alone on a project like this. Daily checklists have helped me stay on task and be productive. Especially when my schedule is flexible like this. There are a lot of things I have to get done that are coming at me from multiple different areas of my life, so having a general checklist ensures that I get the most important tasks out of the way.

Perpetually "in the works": When to Stop Painting

One of my biggest hurdles when painting (or using any other medium now that I think about it) is knowing when to stop. This sounds weird, I know. You're probably thinking "you stop when it's done... duh." In reality, though, it is much more complicated than that. To explain, maybe the canvas is filled but one brush stroke isn't perfect. Maybe the nose isn't quite right. Maybe the eyebrow is slightly the wrong shade of brown. It's kind of like working on a paper for school. Maybe that one word isn't perfect or you don't like the message of your second paragraph, but when you go back and obsess too much you ruin the idea you had when you started writing the paper. It's really hard for me (as I am sure it is for other artists, too) to not go back and re-do everything I've already painted. As a result of this, a lot of my portraits are overdone and overworked. I talked about this briefly on last week's blog, but as I discovered this week, overworking paint with the palette knife is a whole new game. I would argue that overworking the paint with a palette knife is extraordinarily easy and more detrimental to your piece as a whole. Because there is so much paint on the canvas, and it is thickened with the quick-dry impasto medium, going back and re-doing portions of the piece can ruin it... and quickly.

Looking back on my finished piece pictured at left, there are a million and one things that I want to change. There are a thousand things I hate, a hundred proportions that look off, and fifty color blocks that just aren't perfect. Ultimately, though I have to remember that sometimes the best thing you can do when looking at one of your own pieces is to just step back and let it be what it is. I have to focus on the things that I like about it as opposed to the trillion things that I hate about it. Satisfaction is scarcely achievable in art, which is likely the hardest thing about doing it full-time. It makes me think that maybe that "tortured artist" stereotype isn't actually that inaccurate.

Full Video of the Creation of this Piece titled "Underwater"

Editing this video went unexpectedly smoothly in terms of the literal construction. I am discovering, though, that my laptop is approximately I video away from exploding with the amount of video footage I am dealing with. Time to find an external hard drive!

Housekeeping

Going into April break, I wanted to make sure that I had a clean start to my next piece when I returned. Further, I wanted to make sure I was taking good care of the materials that I have such a privilege to use. That sticky oil paint took nearly two hours to get out of all the brushes, palette knives, and tables. It's incredibly tedious and quite understandably my least favorite part of painting. But, nonetheless, it must be done! I also FINALLY cleaned out my camera lenses and organized the camera bag so that I could bring it on vacation with me. Now I just have to clean out the memory card so there's actually space! As much as cleaning sucks, it really is nice to have a clean workspace. Plus, taking care of materials is incredibly important, especially with sticky and difficult mediums like oil paint.

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