“The Naphthol Crimson Wrench Head Danny” – taming transparencies and sizes

For some reason this particular crimson is hard to manage. Not sure why that is but I am not getting the results I should be getting by now on my latest canvas. It seems like this red is quite problematic for me. I look at my previous paintings where I have used it. It always felt like I was missing something. For example, My Mother as the Guardian Angel of Angels has that red and even though I believe I finished the painting, every time I look at it I feel like my characters are not done yet.

My Mom as the Guardian Angel of Angels is still waiting for my final decision.

A similar feeling I get when I look at a part in another painting (The Flight) where I have this angel carrying a bunch of blue characters on its wings. The area where I have used the crimson feels, for some reason, unfinished. I am trying to understand what is happening there. I do like these two mysterious characters appearing on the upper left of the canvas, but then I have this strip of plain red right where the wings start and it feels like it is too flat or something.

The naphthol crimson feels too flat being by itself on large areas on this work in progress (The Flight).

This small red painting I work on has become more of a pink canvas by now because of all this white I have mixed into the crimson. And again I don’t feel like it is finished yet. A painting with similar characters using another color would be already done.

The naphthol crimson becomes very pink here because of the white I have added onto the canvas.

It could be that this particular red doesn’t like to be used in the fashion I am approaching it, mixing it with the white. That red works in The Interrupted Tea Party because I have the hooker’s green hue there, which balances it out.

I worked with thick layers of colors on The Interrupted Tea Party.

It seems like this red is tricky, but I am going to find how to reveal its beauty. The naphthol crimson is captivating, but I do need to keep myself from using another color, because right now I am making the same mistake I made on The Interrupted Tea Party. I introduced the primary blue on the latest canvas and, of course, I got the Pepsi-Cola colors again even though I am not using the colors as thickly as I used them in The Interrupted Tea Party.

This red worked well when it was barely visible underneath a layer of white. Maybe that is what needs to happen on this canvas? Maybe I need to cover the whole thing with the white and “bleach” the crimson this way?

That is not a bad idea, but I am not sure if that plays along with my original plan for this painting. I need to make this crimson work for me. If it takes a bit longer to figure it out, so be it. It is an enticing color, but I am not fully familiar with its characteristics yet.

I should say I was nicely surprised by the transparency of the orange and the violet I got on my previous canvases. I used a lot of water with them. The colors laid down on surface beautifully giving me gorgeous effects.

The transparency of cadmium orange gives me exactly what I need for this canvas (Cadmiun Orange Desert).

The transparency of this violet guided me on this canvas (The Turtle Baby of Memories with a Hard on).

This naphthol crimson and the turquoise green are opaque so their relationship with the water is different. They are not giving the transparency I thought I would get when diluting the paint.

I approached this red the way I approached the cadmium orange and the violet which were transparent. This naphthol crimson is opaque. The results are obviously different.

With the turquoise green I have a love/hate relationship. It took quite a bit of my time to figure it out on my Turquoise Green Angel. The turquoise green loves to be mixed with the white. I am still not sure how I am going to solve this one area on the large canvas (The Flight ) where I have the same red I work with now. It is a weird painting and I should say I don’t know if I have finished it yet. Maybe it has to live like that for a while. If I see that the painting is not demanding me to work on it, I am going to leave it the way it is now.

For some reason I started having more issues with my large canvases. I am not sure why that is, but almost every large painting has something I am not fully satisfied with the way I am with my small canvases. It could be that the small canvases look better because of the size of my room. They are going to look quite different in a bigger space while the opposite applies to my large paintings.

There is something that works nicely with this size of paintings on my walls. It probably has something to do with the proportions of my windows and empty walls.

This should not stop me from exploring large canvases the way I am working with my small ones. I might need a bit more space when applying the paint. I have to step further back from my large canvases if I want to see everything that appears on them, while with the small ones I can sit just a few feet away and get all the information for my next brush strokes. I need to find that sweet spot which cracks open the beauty of the large canvases. I am probably more familiar with smaller sizes by now. They feel “homey” to me. Every time I take on a new large canvas my feelings get enhanced. I need to adopt this feeling by taming my colors with it.

I tend to lay my paint with more energetic movements on large canvases. I need to watch where my paint lands. I already see many spots on the floor. I need to cover it to be able to splatter all this paint around. I guess that is a part of my discomfort with the large canvases. I have to constantly check the surroundings for paint stains.

It would be better to work on large canvases in an open space, outside the house perhaps, where I literally could spill the water and the paint around without fearing the paint stains on floors, walls and furniture. I found myself cleaning a lot last night. That took my expressive brush strokes away. This could be one of the reasons why I feel more comfortable working on small canvases in my room. I need more space to be able to dance with my large canvases.

Originally written on 02-07-18

“The Interrupted Tea Party” – oh no, we are not drinking Pepsi at this tea party

Just look at me now, working every night on paintings from ten (or eleven) to two in the morning! That is good. I would like to push my work to an earlier time though and start after I have dinner, almost immediately. But, I guess, the food digests and I slow down for a few hours until my energy picks up again and I am on my metal chair working on whatever painting is on the easel.

Now, talking about The Interrupted Tea Party, sadly this blue I am using has to go. I clearly see, the painting should exhibit mostly the red and the white. I am considering that permanent hooker’s green hue I used on another painting (The Hooker’s Green Hue Dog) in the background. Hopefully it won’t give me Christmas the way this blue and the red is giving me the Pepsi-Cola signs all over the canvas. The painting for some reason feels way too busy and reminds me way too much of Pepsi-Cola signage. It is just way too much for my eyes to process now. I miss a lot the white I had at the beginning.

Sometimes you learn about color choices others make after you use them yourself. Now I know what kind of blue and red is used in Pepsi-Cola’s logo.

It is very possible that I am going to return to the white and leave a lot of it because I do like pencil drawn lines on the canvas. The white highlights them better. There are a few lines I am still not sure about, but after I am done covering this blue with the white I am going to see clearer what needs to be done to them.

I miss this washed out by the white feel on the canvas after driving myself crazy with the Pepsi-Cola logo’s colors.

It is starting to feel like I am spending a little too much time on this painting, but I need to go through those “mistakes” to get to the point where I should be. It could be that by covering this blue with the white and just seeing a little tint of it through the white will do the trick I am looking for, but for now this blue has to go. It was originally intended to be a red painting anyway. This particular blue (prime blue) likes to be diluted with water a lot. The way lighter permanent hooker’s green hue gives me a dirtier feel, blue is the complete opposite when diluted. The darker I go with the blue the dirtier it looks. I need to make some adjustments and see what effect the diluted red gives me.

I began considering the “what if” I do diluted red background and just play with the red the way I intended originally. I always can cover it with the white if I don’t like the look. It is very possible that I might uncover that exact effect I am looking for.

I have to reapply my white paint several times because of the light body it has, which is okay, because this way I can get this see-through effect. Sometimes I wonder how I would deal in the situation like this while working with oils. Oils mix differently and sometimes I feel like the acrylics are drying way too fast. But sometimes I do need my paint dry fast, so I am juggling with all kinds of possibilities here.

I am satisfied with acrylics on my small canvases, but I do realize that I need to spend more time “perfecting” my technique with the paint and all that shebang that comes with it.

Yeah, right now the painting is just way too busy and the blue is way too intrusive. The blue needs to be adjusted and in many cases completely removed.

Dimming colors a bit by lighting.

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The Hooker’s Green Hue Dog needs to be finished and just to be done. I need to remove the pencil lines from places where they don’t need to be visible and sign the painting. After I sign my paintings I know I cannot touch them again, because as soon as I sign a painting I say, that’s it, it is done and it is ready to face the world.

Originally written on 10-26-17

“The Hooker’s Green Hue Dog” – working with the color + favorite artists and influences (part 1)

I should say I am having fun with this permanent hooker’s green hue small painting. I like this little dirty effect the green gives me. I tried to smooth it up a little bit by adding some white, but the lighter mixed with the white green became too smooth for my liking. I love seeing those little brush smudges. They create a certain perspective through layers and texture. The green gives a very deep almost black effect when thickly applied.

Sunlight gives wonderful tones to the Hooker’s Green Hue

Even though I was struggling with it at the beginning, I am starting to love the green. I see some similarities happening with every color I work with. I find some very specific qualities of one or another color, then, during the process of discovery, I fall in love with the effects they give me.

This painting brought all kinds of characters out of me. It almost feels like these characters are from a cartoon I once saw. They somehow stuck in my mind and now they are getting out of it and onto this canvas.

The cartoon like characters are getting their green on.

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Today for some reason I found myself thinking about questions I might get when talking about my paintings. The questions I thought about were:

1) What are your favorite artists and why?

2) How much were you influenced by them while working on your own paintings?

Funny that I am asking this question myself. The first artist that came  to my mind was Basquiat.

This painting by Basquiat is permanently on my computer’s screen.

For some reason I also thought about Braque, even though I am not as familiar with him and his work as I am with Basquiat’s. I don’t believe I was actually thinking about Braque and his work when I was thinking about Braque. Well now that I looked at Braque’s work on line (also I remembered seeing a few paintings of his at the Met exhibited next to Picasso’s) I can see in his paintings the love for lines I have.

Braque’s Violin and a Pitcher. A similar painting by Picasso was painted almost at the same time as if the two artists were competing with each other.

I like him, but he is not my favorite. I was not thinking about his work when I was thinking about the artist I was thinking about. Picasso is much more influential to me. I like Picasso’s color periods.

Picasso’s Ironing Woman from his blue period. This painting has a secret.

Now I need to find the name of the artist I thought about which also starts with a “B.” I believe he is an American artist and gay. Ha, funny, after I put into search “gay American artists” the very first article came up with fifteen gay painters and the very first one on the list was Francis Bacon, the artist I was thinking about when Braque’s name came to my mind.

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion circa 1944 by Francis Bacon 1909-1992 Presented by Eric Hall 1953 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N06171

I still don’t know why Francis Bacon was/is in my mind though. Maybe there was just something that stuck with me that kept me thinking about him. So now I need to read the article and get familiar with these fifteen gay artists. Here is a link to this article: https://hornet.com/stories/gay-painters-amazing/

Oh and the first sentence I read there was: “Irish painter Francis Bacon is as cheesy as a lightning storm and often as shocking.” Well, first of all, I was wrong thinking that he was an American painter and second of all, well, a lightning storm always inspires me. One of my favorite things is to feel the wind on my skin, add to it lightning and rain, oh, and you have a show and I don’t want to miss it. After reading the article I need to research all these artists on the list.

The most surprising artist for me on that list was an American, Grant Wood, who painted the most famous American puritanical couple (American Gothic). He was from Iowa.

Grant Wood’s American Gothic

I am glad I spent some time getting familiar with my fellow gay artists. I am definitely some kind of gay artist myself. Ha!

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I have a feeling that I might use again that red I’ve used on my large turquoise green painting. I don’t know why I have this feeling about it yet, but I looked at my see-through plastic cups with water I use to wash my brushes and somehow this purple tint reminded me of that color. I am not sure if I am going to use the color, but at the very beginning of the painting process of The Hooker’s Green Hue Dog a name The Red Helmet came to my mind.

I probably could make this red more of a pink. I need to inspect the color against the green. At the moment I don’t see where the pink should appear, but at the same time, now that I think, the characters on the helmet could pop out even more if I incorporate that red somewhere there. Oh-oh, am I thinking of using My Mom as the Guardian Angel of Angels red color again? Well, I was thinking how I could make the eyes of the characters pop and the red might be the solution I have been looking for.

The cartoon like characters are almost done, now I need  them to pop even more.

In any case I should not be afraid of using several colors. I don’t know why I have this thing of using only two colors on one canvas. In the case of this canvas I am using white and green. Oh wow, I think the red is exactly what’s missing from this painting. I have to look at the red now, forgive me.

Okay now that I took out the turquoise green painting I see what needs to be done on it. I just need to cover the yellow with the white leaving one new profile on it and leave the black lines which indicate where the leaning angel appears. I don’t even think I should leave these lines, just paint everything in white, because our eyes can draw the lines we need from already existing figures.

I like having paintings I work on in front of me when I rest on my bed.

I am not sure though if I want to use the red on my permanent hooker’s green painting. I can see why I want to use the red, but now I need to be sure if it is needed there. Of course the green I am using is already shocking enough considering the dirty effect it gives me, so introducing a new color might be challenging, but I like challenges.

Originally written on 10-14-17

“The Hooker’s Green Hue Dog” – the giddy canvas + revealing situations and other artists

The green color I am working with is called “Permanent Hooker’s Green Hue.” You can take whatever you want from the name, but I am sure that “Hooker’s Green” does not mean the green of a prostitute. It is probably called this way because of somebody’s name. I am too lazy to research this right now, so I am going to leave this at that. Besides it will keep you guessing.

A woman’s profile in Hooker’s Green Hue color is prominent on the canvas, but it is not the central character’s idea of the painting.

The green feels a little bit dirty at the moment. That is okay as long as I don’t mix it with another color before I finish mixing it with the white. The green is a little bit tricky to work with, but I see some wonderful progress on the canvas.

Some lighter spots are visible on the dark areas because of how the green interacts with the white.

The characters that came out of me are surprising me as much as the color. The canvas is making me giddy. I like the characters appearing on the surface. I can’t wait to see where all this is going to take me.

The dog’s face appears in white because of the elements that are parts of other characters on the canvas. There is also an angry bird’s face drawn in pencil on the left-center of the canvas.

I had to stop and think for a moment about the turquoise green painting and the battle I had with the yellow. I believe I have solved the yellow problem just by redrawing two lines. Now one line defines a head in profile of the bird/angel character, another one gives definition to a wing. I just need to cover that yellow neck which is too intense for that part of the painting.

The yellow of the neck in the center is completely covered by the turquoise green color.

Situations like that in a peculiar way show me why I like one or another artist. There are times when I get hit by: “oh, this is how this artist held their brush and laid the paint on the surface” or “oh, I believe this character kind of resembles something I have already seen in somebody’s work.” I find myself wondering why some things feel so familiar to me. Have I already seen these characters somewhere or are these characters a product of my imagination and brain? But whatever is the case these characters I see in my head demand to appear in my work.

Cartoon-like characters drawn in pencil are visible on the top left of the canvas.

Considering that these characters came out of my brush they are my weird children who are stuck on canvas. They have to live this way now for how long I don’t know it yet, but it would be fun to see if any of them survive the test of time.

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There are so many amazing artists creating right now. I get overwhelmed by all this intricacy, cleverness, skill I see when I am introduced to their work on line and in real world. I have accepted that there is always going to be this tendency to compare yourself to other artists. Be cautious of it because you are you and they are they.

I believe that essentially there are no bad artists. You could question their choice of color or their technique, maybe even themes and what not. You do that because of your own taste. It dictates your critical perception. It doesn’t necessary mean that your level of taste, feel of colors and lines, skill set are the “right” ones. For one artist those colors and those lines they use are the right ones while for another one the same colors and lines are completely wrong. I have my favorite artists, but that doesn’t mean that they are everyone’s favorite. What I am trying to say here is this: I am amazed by the artwork which is coming out today. It is inspiring and borderline genius. Where I stand with my paintings I don’t know and I don’t think I want to know, because creating is really what makes me alive.

I can’t compare my artwork to somebody else’s the same way I can’t compare my life to somebody else’s life. Yes, we share the same Earth, but our experiences are different. We are unique and that is what makes the world go round with all this beauty changing and developing each and every day. Ha, just listen to my “oh so artistic tone” of everything just being so beautiful and wonderful.

More I work more I realize that I have no idea where all this painting journey is taking me. Each painting opens in me something I was not aware existed. I might think I know where I am going with them creatively, but with each new piece I am put in a situation that I don’t really know what’s going to happen next and that is absolutely amazing. It allows me to relax my mind from my preconceived logical thoughts.

I am becoming quite attached to my paintings. I have no idea how any artist can put a price tag to their works. How do you price a painting which was created in a few days, but is your favorite, next to a painting which you have been working on and off for almost a year now? How do you do that? Some people say, oh the size and the time you spend on a piece that is what defines the price and I say bullocks, because the one that comes out of you in a day or two might be the result of the work you put in other pieces and it was created this fast because of the energy you spent figuring out how something works or doesn’t in other pieces. I am not sure how one does it and this is really hard for me not only to decide how much one or another piece costs, but most importantly, am I really selling them?

Originally written on 10-12-17

Permanent Hooker’s Green Hue

I believe I cracked my small green painting yesterday. I sat down to work feeling that I know what should happen on the canvas and it happened. Half of what I did yesterday most likely is going to be covered latter, but it doesn’t matter, what matters is that right now I am getting to know my permanent hooker’s green hue better. I should say it is quite amazing to realize that you might know your colors but in reality you don’t. Even my often used blue surprises me every time I use it. So no wonder that this particular green needs to have a certain approach. Well, also it could be that the pigment and the body of the paint is not as smooth as I used to have with my other colors, so it lays down on the canvas a bit differently. At the moment this green is a hot mess, but it is going to sing at some point.

Originally written on 10-11-17