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Summer2001 | Spring2001 | Winter2001
Fall2000 | Summer2000 | Spring2000 | Winter2000
Fall1999 | Summer1999 | Spring1999 | Winter1999
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Thursday, December 20, 2001I made some more progress on the giant painting of three granny smith apples. I should be very close to finishing this painting tomorrow.
Today marks the final day of fall, and the end of another productive season. While my palette has been somewhat limited over the past three months, I have learned some wonderful things about some fairly subtle issues of light and color. It will be interesting to see where I go in the upcoming weeks and months, as I am always thinking of some radical departures from the set patterns that I've been using as my course of study. We'll see.
Now it's time for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Read on...to Winter of 2002
Wednesday, December 19, 2001It was a bright and sunny day, and I made some serious headway on the huge painting of three granny smith apples. Tomorrow I should be coming down the home stretch with this piece.
Tuesday, December 18, 2001I made very little progress on the painting today, as a result of trying to take care of too many other things.
On the upside, however, I did figure out a way to broadcast two different live studio cam images from two different capture devices, onto two different pop-up pages. I haven't figured out what's not working with the streaming video, but at least I found a way to create a simultaneous alternate view of the studio. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time. Of course the bandwidth limitations of the modem is threatening to compromise the speed of the image upload.
Anyway, it was a small victory, and now it's time for some pumpkin pie.
Monday, December 17, 2001The day turned out to be dark and overcast, but I did manage to get in some work on the new huge painting of three granny smith apples. Hopefully tomorrow the day will be bright enough for me to make some serious progress on this piece.
However, I believe I'm one step closer to figuring out the problems with the streaming video studio cam. We'll see if I can't get it up and running soon.
Sunday, December 16, 2001I started on a huge painting of three granny smith apples. I was hoping to do something other than three apples, and I was hoping to paint something smaller than 48 by 72 inches, but as it turns out I'm sinking my teeth into yet another epic trilogy. Bring it on.
I've figured out a few more things regarding the problems with the streaming video studio cam. The possible cause could be related to the use of ICS (Microsoft Internet Connection Sharing) in Windows 98 SE. The solution calls for me to install a script to create a port 8888 in a registry that doesn't already contain one. After attempting this once already I will have to look a little closer and figure out what may have gone wrong, or what else may need to be done.
It's amazing how far I can stray from the initial issues of painting once the sun goes down. I'm going to wire my red neon lights for my front windows now, just to show a little holiday cheer to the empty street below.
Saturday, December 15, 2001I spent today arranging and rearranging different things, apples and bunches of grapes, and grapes and bunches of apples. I haven't decided on an actual setup, but I started mixing colors for another large composition of granny smith apples. I'm interested in nailing down a large painting with the speed and definition I haven't experienced in these last two paintings. I'm looking forward to the passing of the winter solstice in the next week when the days will start becoming longer again. It's tough to really make any headway on a session when the sky grows dark by 4:30 in the afternoon.
It has been brought to my attention that the streaming video studio cam hasn't been working since I've switched over to this new hosting server last month. I've been trying to troubleshoot the software these past few days, and hopefully I'll have this figured out soon.
Tuesday, December 11, 2001Finished.
Click on the image to see a larger version.
Monday, December 10. 2001Almost finished.
Sunday, December 9, 2001The sun finally came out again, and I'm almost finished with this painting. Tomorrow should be spent hitting some of the details, blocking in a few key transition colors and then hopefully scratching my name into the amazingly thick wet paint.
Thursday, December 6, 2001Despite the day being fairly dark and overcast, I continued to make progress on the giant painting of eleven granny smith apples. I modeled more of the negative space and started defining some of the edges of the apples. Tomorrow should see this painting coming down the home stretch.
Wednesday, December 5, 2001I continued work on the giant painting of eleven granny smith apples. I added the yellow backdrop which proved to be successful in accentuating the depth I wanted. I continued to take everything up a level in resolution, while bringing the paint surface up to a nice richness. It's strange to work across such a giant piece. I keep stepping back and hitting scattered areas across the entire surface again and again, trusting that bit by bit it will all come into focus.
Tuesday, December 4, 2001I continued work on the giant painting of eleven granny smith apples. I made some solid progress, although I'm still considering making a few changes to the arrangement of certain things. I originally set this up with some yellow paper forming a backdrop, but I rearranged things so it is the same white in front of as behind the apples. I may reverse that decision in the light of day tomorrow. It would help me to create the expansion of space forward and backward to have a few more cues of color involved in the composition. I'm reminded of how progress on a painting is only made by mixing and applying more and more paint. It's amazing how much paint this canvas is consuming, and I believe I am only now at the halfway point.
Monday, December 3, 2001I slammed out a huge amount of paint for an energetic start to a giant painting of eleven granny smith apples. If the sun continues to come out, it should be an exciting week.
Sunday, December 2, 2001Today I started mixing colors for a massive new painting of eleven granny smith apples. I'm always humbled when I approach a new 48 by 72 inch canvas. The endless expanse of white is overwhelming. I have mountains of paint mixed, and tomorrow should be an exciting day.
Saturday, December 1, 2001Ah yes, the first sunny day in a week. I was able to finally finish this painting with several more pounds of paint slammed down to keep the surface alive and accurate. It has become a completely different kind of painting as a result of the extended sessions. Rather than try to muscle it into looking like a fresh and fast painting I decided to roll with the more articulated feel to the modeling. Fortunately I was able to avoid the contoured look that occurs when I attempt to find every transitional color between the different areas. At this point that seems to be the biggest shortcoming of the result of extended sessions, that everything winds up with a certain greasy feel from the rendered stripes of color that follow every surface.
Click on the image to see a larger version.A few weeks ago I came up with the cool trick of wrapping my palette knife with a single doubled-up strip of duct tape so I don't have to grip it quite so hard when I'm mixing paint. It sticks to my thumb and forefinger so I can really fly without worrying about the knife painfully snapping out of my hand. Yesterday I used a different kind of duct tape (than the standard silver variety) and the adhesive wound up on everything else as well. Sticky brushes, sticky fingers and sticky cats.
Mental note to self: find that roll of silver duct tape.
Friday, November 30, 2001The sun finally came out for only the final hour of the day. I knocked myself out from a rush of color mixing and scraping out and laying in of the new colors. The studio looked bizarre being lit up with sunlight for the first time in a week. The painting is on the verge of turning into a labored and overworked project, and hopefully tomorrow I'll get another hour of sunlight that I may be able to wrap this up before it kills me.
Thursday, November 29, 2001Once again the day was very dark and overcast. I spent the brightest part of the afternoon mixing colors for the broad expanse of negative space around the subjects. Just finding more color in those areas seemed to help define the sense of light and space across and between the apples. It was a short session due to the lack of light, but I did make some positive steps forward in completing this piece. I should only need to explore some of the shadows and sharpen up some of the details to call this painting finished.
Wednesday, November 28, 2001I'm struggling with trying to paint despite yet another day of dark and overcast skies. Trying to find light and color when there is no light and color is making this painting start to appear washed out and undefined. I should be finishing this painting with these last few sessions, but I'm adjusting every part of the modeling to try to make a cohesive sense of light and depth. I'll continue to work on it tomorrow and hopefully I will start finding some resolution to this piece.
Tuesday, November 27, 2001No light, no painting. And of course in retrospect I do realize that yesterday's rant was not concerning the issue of religion, but instead the issue of common respect.
Monday, November 26, 2001I'm finally back in the studio after the holiday break and two days of oppressively dark skies.
My experience with meeting Heather's family was great, with the exception of having been attacked by one over-zealous evangelist uncle on the subject of the lack of his god in my life. I've always put great emphasis on maintaining respect for my elders, but for the first time I'm realizing that I'm technically an adult in almost every sense of the word, and the emphasis should now be in giving respect where respect is due. An unsolicited attack on my personal philosophy has always been a great source of entertainment for me, as I've always had an easy time seeing it only as the psychological warfare that it really is. Side-stepping my standard response in the name of respect for Heather's family was the first thing on my mind, but in retrospect I feel a certain sense of personal violation. Heather and I had many hours to discuss our feelings on this subject during the long drive home. I am humble before the wonders and mysteries of the world, yet I still rise to meet every meaningful challenge. I feel that certain deep issues in life are not meant to have simple fairy tale explanations. The arguments on the meaning of our lives on this planet are not supposed to be resolved easily, and I can only credit the compromise I made on the delivery of my own strong opinion to the care I have for Heather and her family. I have been challenged throughout my life, and I continue to challenge myself to the limits of my mental and physical abilities. Anybody that has taken the time to know me understands my gregarious nature toward smiling in the face of overwhelming adversity. I do understand that I've taken one more step toward deconstructing the folly of social convention in my life, and I now have so much more to offer because of this.
Can you tell that I'm just a little agitated? Feel free to comment on this subject.
Aside from this, it really was really nice to meet Heather's family. And finally, what a blast it was to meet her high school friend Laurel and her soon-to-be fiancé Jason.
Ah yes, back to the painting. Most of today's session was spent trying to revive this painting from four days of neglect. Things are looking up, and hopefully I'll be able to continue developing this piece in the upcoming days.
Wednesday, November 21, 2001I made an energetic start on my newest painting of three granny smith apples. As with all first day's efforts, it is full of promise and excitement. I'll be leaving tomorrow morning to spend Thanksgiving with Heather's family in Pittsburgh, to return late Friday night. I've covered and wrapped the painting with the hopes that it will still be fairly wet when I return for my next session on Saturday. It will be nice to take a break, but it will be even nicer to get back to work. Spoken like a true workaholic.
On a side note, I've been receiving many letters of praise, thanks and support for my efforts on this project. While many of you may feel that you're addicted to keeping track of my efforts, I must admit that I've become addicted to providing this content for all of you. My initial reason for creating this website was to hopefully reach out and allow people with no exposure to the world of an artist to be able to peer through the window and see what I'm doing each day. Art is supposed to be a form of communication, but I guess I'm striving to make the artist the artform itself, while busily focusing on the narrow discipline of the still life. The written word can convey so much vision and warmth, and I'm glad that I'm making such a rich contact with my eager audience.
And thank you all.
Tuesday, November 20, 2001I decided to plunge into another giant painting of three granny smith apples just to see if I could capture this subject even faster and easier. It has become a mantra, following through with the trial of finishing a painting and then turning around and attacking the exact same subject a second or third time. Within the hundreds of brush strokes I keep hoping to see a certain logic within the loose patterns of color. I see fleeting moments where a certain perfect mark falls back into obscurity with my next series of brush strokes, and then I'll step back and see how a long stretch of searching yields a brilliant sense of light and depth. On one hand, I'm being redundant to keep attacking the same subject, but at the same time I feel that I'm figuring out some subtle and profound issues that would have evaded me on the last painting I had finished. Tomorrow should be an exciting day when I hammer out these huge piles of color that I've mixed. I can hardly wait.
Monday, November 19, 2001I believe I'm finished with this painting of granny smith apples. I went over several key areas, and I believe I was able to maintain a broader sense of color decisions to keep things from getting that contoured rendering that happens when a piece is overworked..
Click on the image to see a larger version.
Sunday, November 18, 2001I had a good solid session today. I've learned a few more things about green as I continued to study the transitions of color across these granny smith apples, specifically some electric vibrant colors along the brightest edges that turn toward the sunlight. Tomorrow should see this painting finished once I block in a few large areas of negative space around the subjects. There is a good cohesion of the sense of light throughout the painting, and I will only want to push the space in front of and behind the apples a bit more.
Saturday, November 17, 2001A plumbing emergency tied up most of my day today, but I did manage to make a little more progress on the large painting of granny smith apples. Tomorrow will hopefully be a solid and uninterrupted session.
Friday, November 16, 2001I slammed out some paint today to create the foundation for another large painting of granny smith apples. For the first time I've set them down lower against an all white background, just to be able to really dissect the glowing colors within the shadows as seen from higher above. Tomorrow should be a productive day as I continue to carve out the light and color.
Thursday, November 15, 2001I'm finally back in the studio. I picked up some really nice pears in Philadelphia yesterday, but for some reason I decided to set up granny smith apples instead. I spent today only mixing colors, and tomorrow should really see some paint flying.
Yesterday in Philadelphia Heather and I met with Eva Wittlinger and her daughter to see the Thomas Eakins exhibit at the art museum. It was an impressive show and an overwhelming body of work. While there we stopped by the restaurant to see two of my giant canvases hanging on the back wall. It is such a rare thrill to be displayed in the same building as the great masters that formed the basis for my art school education.
Sunday, November 11, 2001I finished the painting of two bartlett pears. I always feel a great sense of agitation after completing a painting of pears. There is a profound poetry to the gentle curves of these shapes, yet it always defies my abilities to capture something so slight and simple. Finding a different transitional color in the swelling curves can push or pull the entire sense of light and the actual color. I believe I'll be attacking another painting of this same subject tomorrow, just to see if I can gain a little more education.
Click on the image to see a larger version.
Saturday, November 10, 2001Arriving home from my delivery with barely an hour of sunlight didn't stop me from attacking the canvas with another layer of paint. This will be finished easily tomorrow, and I'm hoping to immediately start on a follow-up painting of a similar arrangement.
Friday, November 9, 2001I continued work on the giant painting of two pears. This is so close to being finished. I'm now in that agitated state of trying to figure out how to throw down those conclusive final marks that will bring this to a lively closure.
Tomorrow I'll be leaving in the morning to deliver a painting to a client in Maryland. Hopefully the delivery goes smoothly so I can quickly get back to the studio to finish this painting.
Thursday, November 8, 2001I had a productive and energetic session today, slamming several pounds of paint onto this giant canvas. This is a solid start to an exciting painting.
On a side note, our friend Lucy had a baby girl, Stella, on Monday.
Life, like hope, springs eternal.
Wednesday, November 7, 2001I started mixing massive amounts of paint for what will be a giant painting of two bartlett pears. I'm going to try to hammer out the bulk of this painting tomorrow. It should be an exciting day.
Monday, November 5, 2001I'm back from the weekend, and I'm even more exhausted. I did finish the painting on Sunday morning before I left.
Click on the image to see a larger version.
Saturday, November 3, 2001I continued work on the painting of three pears, slugging out more and more paint onto the already thick surface. I believe it is all but finished. I'll have another look at it in the morning before I leave for New Jersey to attend the opening reception of a friend of mine from art school, Eva Wittlinger-Pichl.
Thursday, November 1, 2001One week later I'm back at work trying to resurrect the painting of three pears. I'd like to be able to follow through and complete this piece, although I must first cover every part of the painting with wet paint, as it has all but completely dried in my absence. The pears aren't fairing too well either. Last weekend was my annual performance for a big Halloween party, and between total exhaustion and the change in the weather, I've been fairly run down and not feeling quite one hundred percent. I'm on my way back, and anxious to see this piece finished and to move on to some exciting new works in the days and weeks to come.
Thursday, October 25, 2001I continued work on the painting of three pears.
Wednesday, October 24, 2001I gave up on waiting for my paint order to arrive and drove to Lancaster to pick up a giant tube of cadmium yellow. I started mixing colors for a larger painting of the same three pears. I've been very busy trying to keep up with many of the events here in the building where I live, but I should be able to take enough time off over the next two afternoons to hopefully finish this piece.
Sunday, October 21, 2001This past weekend was spent racing to the point of exhaustion as I had a small one-day show in New Jersey. On Sunday I was able to finally finish the small painting of three pears. I'm now warmed up and ready to attack something big.
Click on the image to see a larger version.I'm waiting for some supplies to arrive, including canvas and more importantly, paint, before I'll be able to embark on some larger and more ambitious efforts.
Thursday, October 18, 2001I'm finally back in the studio working on a small warm-up painting. In the past two weeks I've been involved with several shows, as well as taking care of some things around the building here. Last weekend I had a fun show in Bethesda, Maryland. Heather and I had a blast, and we found homes for a few more paintings. Last week I left some more paintings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, including two six foot canvases for an upcoming exhibition in the restaurant. At this point I have a small commission to recreate one of the paintings of bosc pears from last winter. I'm still interested in trying something different, although I'll need a little time to re-evaluate where I am and where I'm going. This coming weekend will be my last show of the year at the Friend's School in Mullica Hill, New Jersey. Maybe I'll take some time to explore some different things over the next few months. We shall see.
Friday, October 5, 2001I had a very productive and educational day. I've learned some valuable lessons about rendering the gradation of colors within the petals of a sunflower. Once I broke down the elements of the shape of the flowers I was able to easily see the different facets of the inside of the barrel of petals. My shortcoming was in not seeing beyond the colors that move around the flowers in a circular manner, as opposed to the planes of color that radiate from the center. It was also easier to see the difference between the color of direct light and the color of translucence once I started simplifying the way I was attempting to capture this subject.
This was a strong finish, and I'm satisfied with what I've learned by focusing on these subtle issues.
Click on the image to see a larger version.After finishing this painting I decided to rework the piece from Wednesday to get it up to speed with what I've learned.
Click on the image to see a larger version.
Thursday, October 4, 2001The sunflowers seem to still be fairly perky today, so I decided to attempt another smaller painting of them, and see what else I can learn. It seems that the warmth and intensity of the color seems to say a good bit about the relative glow of light from behind the petals, as opposed to the quality of the light that shines directly on the petals.
I remember reading about the debate of whether or not all four of a horse's feet leave the ground at the same time as it runs. Some of the pioneers in the science of photography set up a series of trip wires to capture a series of images, which exposed a new reality as to how horses actually run. All of the painters of western scenes immediately changed their approach to capturing horses in motion because of the information provided by science. With this sentiment in mind I decided to shoot a digital photograph of the actual sunflowers and then using several different filters within Photoshop I roughed it up, in a manner similar to how I would paint. On some levels it seems that I'm right on the money in my interpretation of the qualities of light and shadow. Where I fell short is in some embarrassingly obvious draftsmanship errors. There were several cases where I failed to capture the difference in the hues of some of the colors that describe a surface as being lit from above, or from behind, or a combination of both. Even trickier is where the transition occurs for this phenomenon. I thought that my edge treatments could be working against me, but what really supports the image of a sunflower, aside from the color, is the details of the petals. I'm not sure if it is within my targeted intention to start painting individual petals, but tomorrow I will try to find out.
This could be a chance for an old horse to learn some new tricks.
Ah, that was bad. I'm tired.
Wednesday, October 3, 2001I finally finished the painting of sunflowers. On some levels I think I nailed it, but on other levels I realize that I still have much to learn. It could be a limitation of the marks that I use that makes it so difficult to render the depth of the flowers, or it might be something I'm missing in my interpretation of the colors. At times I feel that I should be trying to capture the glare and haze that forms around the particularly vivid and brilliant colors. It is a shortcoming of our eyes that sees this glare, yet to capture it would probably help me with some of the more contrasting areas. These flowers will probably be too wilted for me to attempt another study tomorrow, but I would like to revisit this subject again at some point. I'm open to any suggestions on what I might do to better understand how to capture this subject.
Tuesday, October 2, 2001I continued work on the painting of sunflowers. As always, I'm struggling with carving out the shapes and colors of these flowers. I'll spent a little bit of time tomorrow tightening things up, and hopefully finding an acceptable resolution to this difficult subject. As I look at today's image next to yesterday's image, I'm amazed with how little progress I made on this painting, despite huge amounts of paint and effort. All I can do is hammer out some bold decisions tomorrow and lean toward resolving some of the areas that don't convey a proper sense of depth and light.
On a side note, it turns out that I will be exhibiting this coming weekend at the Lancaster Trust Building. See the Exhibition Page for more details on this show.
Monday, October 1, 2001I started working on the new painting of sunflowers. This feels like a good start to an exciting painting. Hopefully I will finish this tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning I'll be going downtown to meet a representative from the Mayor's Office of Special Events at the Lancaster Trust building. I'm hoping there will be a space for me to exhibit this coming weekend for the Lancaster Museum of Art's Art Sunday.
Sunday, September 30, 2001I started mixing colors for a new painting of sunflowers.
I've been having a hard time focusing on my work since receiving the news on Thursday that one of my patrons showed up in the obituaries in a Philadelphia paper. He apparently worked on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center. Heather and I had spent barely 30 minutes with him when we delivered the painting to his home back in July, yet we made enough of a contact to feel that our world had grown to include the color of yet one more lively and charismatic personality. Of all of those lives I had selfishly believed that I was insulated from the disaster because I didn't personally know anyone that was directly affected. Now it seems as though I'm struggling to make up for that one missing color in my world.
Wednesday, September 26, 2001I finally finished the giant painting of three granny smith apples. While I typically would have only succeeded in overworking a painting after this many days, I was able to make some fairly broad and sweeping decisions that helped maintain the life of this piece. There are several areas that still feel like only the first level of resolution showing through, but I enjoy the play between the layers and colors. I feel that I've managed to take a step back from trying to render every element of the painting, yet still capture a powerful sense of mass with some fairly rough areas. I would enjoy continuing this trend in the future, with the only exception of hopefully being able to come to these decisions before the best part of a week goes by.
Click on the image to see a larger version.
Tuesday, September 25, 2001The sun eventually came out and I continued work on the giant painting of three granny smith apples. This is so close to being finished, but I still feel that there are a few more details to be addressed. There will really be only a handful of new marks that will satisfy my need to see this brought to its conclusion.
Monday, September 24, 2001Despite it being fairly overcast, I made some progress on the giant painting of three granny smith apples. A violent storm blew in at the end of the session, plunging the studio into darkness. I should be able to finish this painting tomorrow.
Sunday, September 23, 2001 Autumnal EquinoxI kicked off the first day of the fall season by continuing work on the giant painting of three granny smith apples. I always remember similar paintings progressing so easily whenever I embark upon another one of these huge pieces. I always feel as though I'm pushing the limits of my ability to see and capture once I really start moving some paint. I had to stop in the middle of this afternoon's session to have a late lunch with Heather's parents. I made some progress today, but I'm looking forward to having a more productive session tomorrow.
If you find yourself hungering for yet more dramatization of the angst of a painter, see Summer 2001 for the previous season's struggles.
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