Nesting

I have been able to spend almost the whole week here at the studio, which has been just absolutely fantastic. I managed to finish #3 of 9 on the Green Experiment, but mostly I have been nesting.

Spending as much time here as I have led me to finally unpack some boxes that have been pushed into a corner, rearrange some furniture, and even make a trip out to Ikea to get some storage shelves. I moved books around, threw out some old (and terrible) drawings and sorted through a bunch of flat materials.

There are still a couple of extension cords to run, but it feels like a more workable space now.

I finished shuffling everything around this afternoon, and then setup a still life to paint.

Working on Stage I & II of the Green Experiment has occupied pretty much all of my time in the studio, and thus I have not really painted objects in months. The results are not pretty, but it feels good to work on trying to render something in paint.

Fortunately, I have this note hanging up as a reminder to just show up and paint:

As I get close to finishing Phase II of the Green Experiment, I am going to try to divide up my focus and devote some more time to trying to accurately render objects with the paintbrush.

And with that, I am going to go home and make some dinner.

Peace in yer crease.

What's Next?

I resigned from my day job. My last day full time was the day before Thanksgiving.

I am currently working on the Nutcracker that I manage production for every year, and finishing up part time at the old job, getting my replacement up to speed and finishing out one last project. With any luck I will be done with both by the end of the day on Thursday.

I had been stressed and frustrated for some time, but it took me a while to finally commit to the decision to give up full time employment. I do have some trepidation about giving up employer provided benefits and a regular paycheck, but when I reflect on what I want, where I am and what I need to do to get to where I want to be as an artist, the decision is easy. And in truth I have slept better in the weeks since I turned in my resignation than I had in the previous six months.

I have been putting out feelers for freelance design work, and in the short term will probably be spending some time pushing road cases and setting up lighting systems to pay the bills. But I am excited about spending a lot more time in the studio with pencil and brush in hand.

Who knows, maybe I will finally get through Phase II of the Green Experiment.

Peace in yer crease.

Wax On, Wax Off

Over the past couple of months what studio time I have been able to spend has almost exclusively been focused on work for phase two of the green project. I wanted to use shapes that made sense with the color green but were still abstracted, sharply graphic so that the focus was on the color and contrast rather than how well objects were rendered.

It began with laying out a cartoon:

Green Project Layout
Brown Craft Paper, Pencil, Plastic Vines

Then was the painstaking process of perforating the cartoon for transfer to canvas:

Green Project Layout
Brown Craft Paper, Pencil

This was followed by the transfer to nine 18" x 24" canvases using charcoal dust:

Transfer of cartoon to canvas with charcoal

 Then came blocking the background color on each of the nine canvases:

Work In Progress
Oil On Canvas

The first pass at the background color took between four and five hours per canvas. The charcoal dust that I was unable to brush away before beginning tended to dull the background color a bit, so I ended up doing a second coat on each canvas.

While spending almost seventy hours just completing a solid color background for this series may sound tedious, I did not find it so. Meticulously outlining each leaf and vine, over and over again had the benefit of giving me much greater brush control. I learned to judge the amount of walnut oil I needed to add by how much resistance the palette knife gave as it moved through the paint. I got much better at accurately assessing how much paint I needed to cover a certain amount of canvas. By the end I was quicker and more certain in my use of the brush. Getting that experience and muscle memory was invaluable and the challenge of doing it well kept it interesting all along.

A couple of weeks ago I began with the green. Each canvas is an exploration of the range of green possible using a single Blue and a single Yellow. I started with Pthalo Blue and Yellow Ochre:

Green II.1
Oil On Canvas

This was a learning experience on a couple of fronts, and once I have used what I learned on the other eight canvases I plan to return to this one and retouch it a bit.

Things have been a bit hectic with my day job, and I have come out of retirement from theatrical design, but those are tales for another time.

Peace in yer crease.

Disegno And The Day Job

Between the day job, various bits of travel, and the ongoing work on The Green Experiment, I have not had much time to devote to drawing. There has been some sketching here and there, but the last time I did anything even close to a finished drawing was back in April.

Untitled- Seated Nude
Graphite On Paper

This was done at one of the Thursday evening drop in sessions at Washington Studio School, the first I had attended in a couple of years. It is three hours (minus breaks) with a single pose.

I was wanting to ease back into figure drawing, and for whatever reason thought it better to work from short poses rather than launching into one pose for the entire time, so for a few months prior I had been attending the Monday evening sessions, which are three hours beginning with two minute poses and working up to fifteen minutes.

I was finding the Monday evenings frustrating, but it wasn't until I went in for the longer sessions that I figured out why; I wasn't being given enough time to work down from the generic to the specific, to have the opportunity to focus on the details, especially shading.

I am working on finding the time to draw more, specifically figure drawing. I am planning to take an academic figure drawing class at Winter Palace Studios this fall (as soon as they get the fall schedule up on their website). And now that the day job has calmed down a little, I will be spending more time in the various open studios around town.

What is now painfully clear, however, is that my current day job is incompatible with my goals. I am exploring what the other options are, but I suspect my immediate future will involve a return to the freelance lifestyle. This is both exciting and terrifying.

And with that, I am going to go draw some more.

Peace in yer crease.

The Green Experiment, Phase One

I am a little behind in posting about what has been going on in the studio. I spent much of May traveling, Paris, then Alabama, then Baltimore, so there was not much time for being in front of the easel.

I did manage to finish up Phase One of the Green experiment:

I have now moved on to phase two. It began with making a cartoon:

Then piercing the cartoon for transfer to canvas:

I am transferring the image to canvas and blocking in the background, one canvas at a time:

Once I have done this for all nine canvases, I will start with the Greens. Each canvas will be an exploration of the range of Green between a single Blue and a single Yellow, using a nine step scale.

The final phase will be three 36" x 48" canvases using the entire range of Greens using all three Blues and all three Yellows, each canvas using a different Red for the shadows.

I am planning a studio showing of the all the completed works at the end of September. Then it will be on to Orange.

And with that in mind, I must head to the studio to do more painting.

Peace in yer crease.

My Patreon Page, Or The Most Meta Post Ever

A couple of months ago, I launched a Patreon page to try and find people who were crazy/ supportive enough to pledge some soldi (money) and help subsidize my work as a painter. I riffed on the idea of Renaissance patronage, and came up with various tiers.

$2/ month gets you listed as a Bishop.

$5/ month gets you listed as Duke/ Duchess.

$10/ month gets you listed as an Archbishop.

$25/ month gets you listed as a Prince/ Princess.

$50/ month gets you listed as a Cardinal.

$100/ month gets you listed as a King/ Queen.

$1000/ month gets you listed as a Pope.

Each tier gets various rewards for their patronage, as well as recognition when I finally get off of my ass and revamp my design website to reflect what I am doing with my life now.

Some very kind friends have been so generous as to pledge recurring monthly payments of various amounts, which have been inordinately helpful in keeping the studio running.

There is space on my Patreon page to post about what I am doing, the posts for which I copy from this blog. So if you click on the link below, it will take you to my page, where you will get to read this post again.

Like I said, the most meta post ever.

https://www.patreon.com/klyphstanford/overview

Peace in yer crease.

A Bit Of Process

I began the painting that is my banner here on my blog, as well as my Facebook and Patreon pages, about three years ago, shortly after my return from vacation in Rome.

It began with a sketch done in the Friday afternoon figure drawing session at Washington Studio School.

Untitled- Reclining Nude
Pencil On Paper

I then transferred the drawing to a 24" x 36" canvas.

I rotated the figure in the composition to give it a more relaxed feeling. I also made the decision to not paint the right hand (I still struggle with drawing hands).

Next was lining in with Burnt Umber diluted with OMS*.

Then came blocking in the values, using Burnt Umber as my darkest shade. Again this was fairly diluted.

This first pass didn't push the values enough for me, so I made another pass:

When it was dry to touch, I added the first layer of color to the background:

Then came the color on the body:

Untitled- Unfinished Reclining Nude
Oil On Canvas
24" x 36"

The painting is still hanging on the wall, unfinished. I am somewhat stuck as to what to do about the face and hair. I actually think the painting was most successful in the version before I added the body color.

I suppose at some point I will go back to this canvas to re-adress it, but for now it serves as a metaphor for my own artistic growth. Incomplete, but somewhere in process.

Peace in yer crease.


*OMS = Oderless Mineral Spirits. I use Gamsol, although I will admit I wish the studio had good enough ventilation to allow me to use gum spirits turpentine.

Friday In The Studio

Yesterday was the first day of a four day weekend from the day job. I slept in, then headed out to the studio to do some painting.

In the evening we had a DC Arts Studios artists happy hour. We were asked to bring either something to eat or something to drink, as well as a piece of artwork to show. This caused me a great deal of anxiety. I have been self conscious about showing my work here around "Real" artists because I know I have so much growth to do to be able to produce the paintings I want to. Also, most of what I have been painting lately has been this color experiment that I really think is only of interest to me, so it's not anything I wanted to share.

I decided to dig through sketchbooks and assorted drawings to find something, and although it was not what I ultimately took with me, I came across this drawing from October of 2014.

This was from back when I was attending figure drawing sessions four or five times a week at various places around town. I don't know how to get there exactly, but I do know I have to find my way back to being that immersed in drawing again. This will be a hard balance to find with the demands of my day job.

But I digress.

The work I did end up taking was a small figure sketch I did back in November.

I felt it was more indicative of the sort of work I want to be producing eventually, even if I am currently tied up in the minutia of various color combinations at the moment.

I met some really lovely people and saw an interesting variety of work. There was a woman who makes objects and fashion accessories out of old bicycle parts, a couple of photographers working in very different styles, a stained glass artist, a collage artist, and an abstract painter.

It was good to begin to get to know some of the other folks in the building a little bit. I have been feeling somewhat isolated out here, and since I stopped designing for theatre it doesn't seem that I have much of an artistic community anymore. I am hoping that I can begin to build one here.

Well it is time to get back to the drawing pad.

Peace in yer crease.

The Disparate Projects Currently On My Easels

                                                   Untitled Still Life
                                                   Oil On Canvas
                                                   24" x 18"

The canvas above is the first project I worked on in the painting class I am currently taking at the Corcoran. It was unfinished when I brought it back to the studio, so I spent some time working on it this afternoon. The bottle is a hot mess in terms of rendering it's shape accurately, and the highlight is terrible, but I am overall pleased with how I captured the tonal qualities of the composition.

The other things sitting on the easels are a series I began a few weeks ago, an extended exploration of the color Green, in preparation to finish a painting I started several years ago.

This has been hanging on a wall for some time now, and up until recently it had only had the lining done. I blocked in the sky last month, and the next logical step is the foliage on either side of the pathway. I have a couple of Greens from the tube, but I wanted to see what varieties were possible by mixing various Blues with various Yellows, so I dashed out a quick abstract canvas board, using the Greens I had out of the tube (Pthalo & Veridian), as well as a 50/50 mixture of each of the Blues I had (Pthalo, Ultramarine & Cerulean) with each of the Yellows (Cadmium Light, Hansa Light & Yellow Ochre) on a Purple background.

After competing this, I decided I wanted to see the contrast between those Greens and various background colors, so I made a cartoon and transferred the same composition to 11 pieces of canvas board.

I am just over the halfway through blocking in the background color for these.

Next will come the various Greens.

After that I plan to do nine larger canvases that explore the range of each Blue/ Yellow combination. Then will come an even larger canvas that uses the entire range of all of the Blue/ Yellow combinations.

Then rinse and repeat for the other two secondary colors, Violet and Orange.

I think this is all a six month project. We shall see.

Peace in yer crease.

The Sands In The Hourglass

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."

                                                                                                  Pablo Picasso

I turned fifty a little more than two months ago. As a present for myself, I made a trip back to Florence, Italy to celebrate my birthday.

I returned to the Galleria dell'Accademia with my sketchbook to see Michelangelo's David. I toured through the Palazzo Vecchio and wondered at the ceiling paintings. I went early one morning to the Bargello and discovered the range of Giambologna. With my friend Lauren, I climbed to the very top of the Duomo and took in the view.

I ate some amazing food, drank incredible wines, and reveled in being surrounded by such brilliant painting, sculpture, and architecture.

I returned from Italy with a remarkable amount of clarity. I am fifty now. I no longer have all of the time in the world to pursue the things that I want for myself.

As an artist, there is work I want to produce, images in my head that I want to have make their way onto canvas. In order for this to happen, my skills and technique must catch up with my vision. This means spending far more time with pencil and brush in hand.

To this end, I have rented a 200 sf studio space at DC Arts Studios in Takoma. I moved my easels, drafting table and art supplies out there in the middle of January. I also enrolled in a painting course through the Corcoran's continuing education department. In the almost two months since then I have managed to do more painting than I was able to get done in the previous two years.

What I am coming to realize is that my current job may not be compatible with this re-prioritizing of my life. We are in the midst of a very busy time at the day job, and so I am trying to reserve judgment until things calm down to evaluate, but I am holding to this commitment:

Nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of working and developing as a painter. I am fifty now. I no longer have all of the time in the world.

Peace in yer crease.