Vincent is perfect. I'm not.

Hello all!

As I begin this posting, it has been 46 days since my last blog; as many of you know, at the end of September, my husband made the decision to move his office, our house sold, and we have moved into a work/live loft space in the downtown of our small town's commercial district.  The move, consolidation of the office and our home, huge estate sale and final closing all are, at last, over.  We are mostly settled in, loving our space, and enjoying the stimulating and creative new environment that greets us each morning.  Finally, I can turn my attention away from the move, and refocus my energies on my art lessons with Vincent.

From the moment I had announced my hiatus, I had been itching to paint.  As I packed up the things we wanted to keep, and decided which items were most expendable, my mind kept circling back to painting.  What seemed like hundreds of ideas kept running through my head - new techniques to try, or color combinations that I wanted to see together, or which painting I would do first in my new studio.

The move was making me feel energized and inspired.  Making all of the decorating and logistical decisions didn't drain me of creative energy, rather it seemed to be feeding it.  I felt like I was conducting a big and energetic orchestra with Vincent rehearsing as the first chair in the art section.  With every cabinet I emptied, and every box I carried up the stairs, I felt I was one step closer to ripping open and attacking a blank white canvas.  I could not wait to paint!

So why wasn't I painting?  After all, I was doing everything else; shopping for furniture, arranging kitchen cabinets, making new curtains, walking dogs, chatting with new neighbors, watching TV.... There was plenty of time for Words with Friends, and even the oh so addictive Draw Something, but the real question was, why wasn't I painting?

I had arranged the studio almost immediately after we moved in.  I then rearranged and re - rearranged again to get everything in just the right place.

I put my desk in front of a sunny, east facing window that looks out over the downtown and then beyond to tree covered hills on the other side of bridge.  I can see the cars coming and going, and enjoy watching the pedestrians sauntering, strolling, and occasionally hurrying their way past the stores, restaurants, and the coffee shop.

Just opposite the window, I put my "egg" chair and ottoman, which is always piled with art books and sketch pads.  It is a comfortable place to read and doodle, and is an enjoyable spot for watching the ever changing Texas sky.  Next to the chair is my china cabinet, filled with my beloved rummage sale dishes and the water glasses my mother and her siblings gave to their mother as gifts during the Depression.  Each year at Christmas, one, beautiful, cut crystal goblet was presented; I was lucky enough to get the nine that remain.

From the office, I inherited two banks of drawers, as well as large and small shelves, and they have been outfitted with all of my art supplies - all neatly arranged, accessible, and ready to use.  Although you can't see them, the puppies are snoozing doggedly in the carrier in the foreground...  They seem to have no trouble re-embracing their life's work, even in this new setting.

 My easel fits neatly into the corner between my desk and supply drawers; It is clipped with lights, at just the right height, and is positioned to offer an over the shoulder view right up Main Street.  My Mac, the hardware for all blogging and searching, is at the ready just to the left of the painting area.

As you can see below, my magic palette fit serendipitously into one of the drawers; this let me cram a lot more work surface into a lot less space.  There was also handy room for my water cups and brush holders.

 So everything was arranged in the way most conducive to painting, creating, blogging, growing, learning, etc. etc.

And I was on round 338 of Draw Something.  And my email was all opened, read and organized.

And everything in the new house, which wasn't even dusty, had been dusted.  Hmmm.

So why wasn't I painting?

In a word: Fear!

Let me back up to the packing phase of the move.  When we first made the decision to make this huge change, we walked around the house and the office and identified only what we wanted to keep.  Because our space was going to be so limited, each item we moved had to be carefully considered, and The ArtDemigod and I agreed that, on furniture, we both had to love it at least 90% in order to take it with us.  Personal items were our own choice.  He kept his base guitar and fly fishing gear.  I was adamant about my studio.

So deciding what to keep was easy.  And, honestly, deciding what furniture, old dishes, and household items to let go wasn't hard at all.  (Now cue the bad ghost movie suspenseful music...)

I was fine until I went into to tackle my "craft closet." This closet was a 4' X 12' room that had actually lived a life (under the previous owners of the house) as a tanning room.  As I had little desire to spend my free time cooking my already plenty wrinkled enough skin, I instead lined the long wall from the floor to the ceiling with shelves, which I used to store all of my "projects."

That room was cram packed with supplies for every imaginable type of creative activity.  Beading, sewing, needlepoint, embroidery, knitting, upholstery, and costume supplies were just a few of the items in my own private Michaels.  Along with the inventory, there were literally dozens of half finished projects in almost every imaginable stage of (in)completion.  I had no idea what to keep and what to let go.  It was, literally, overwhelming.

But because the estate sale had been scheduled, and we had a firm closing date, I had to move beyond my paralysis and into action.  But every time I looked at, or moved, or even thought about all of those piles, I felt like a complete failure. Goddamn Martha Stewart, the queen of expectations, the matriarch of unrealized possibility...

What I finally realized about these piles brought me to a very upsetting thought.

I wasn't the the artist who had committed to The Vincent Project; I was the lazy big spender who never finished anything.  (To be fair, there was no corresponding craft closet on the other side of the house storing all of the things I had completed; those items had been long ago given as gifts, recycled, or used up in ordinary living.)  But, in the end, I was still standing in a room with a lot of incomplete passes.  This was something I had to think about.

Without a choice, under an ever shrinking time deadline, as I sorted through all of this stuff,  I realized a common thread - the partially finished projects were all completed to exactly the point at which one of two things had occurred:  either I realized that the end product that I had imagined was beyond my ability to execute, or the materials that I had selected had some how not lived up to my imagined expectation.

In other words, the projects were abandoned because the product had somehow fallen short.

This realization left me feeling very out of sync with The Project, and Vincent, and Art, and Creativity, and exactly who the hell I thought I was.  Was this blog just another thing that I would start and not finish?  Was I even capable of doing this huge task of 52 paintings and essays?  Was this going to be something that would just wind up, unfinished, in some new craft closet in my new studio?

For about two weeks, I just hid from thinking about this whole issue by busying myself with moving in.  I made curtains, and arranged the kitchen, and picked out new furniture and lamps.

On the first weekend after we were all moved in,  I even tried to just kickstart myself back into an inspired state by attending the Lucien Freud Portraits exhibit in Fort Worth (It was FANTASTIC, even in my less than receptive state). I even engaged in a brief fling with two fascinating books on Picasso, which only left me feeling more guilty.

Nothing was working.  What had happened in that craft room had left me feeling completely uncreative and as utterly dried up as an old sponge.

So I decided to think about all of this for a week.  I told myself I wasn't even going to try to paint, and I wasn't going to go near the blog.  I was going to try to figure out what it was about these unfinished projects that had stripped away whatever Mojo I thought I had.  I was going to try to figure out why I had walked into that craft room feeling like an artist, and walked out feeling like a fraud.

The projects were abandoned because the product had somehow fallen short.  If the product had fallen short, did that mean that I had fallen short?  And what did "fallen short" mean, exactly?  After about three days of thinking, I finally figured it out.  I abandoned all of those projects because I could not finish them perfectly.  In all of this work, I was not allowing myself to be "good enough;"  it had to be perfect.  I had to be perfect.

What an awful realization that was.  There was no way in doing this project that I could paint "perfectly."  Vincent had already covered that territory; no one, no matter how good, could paint a Vincent Van Gogh better than Vincent Van Gogh.  To be sure, a lot of people, including myself, have tried.  But all of that work could only be, at best, derivative.

That was what I liked so much about doing the Vincent Project.  From the beginning, I never felt like I had to be perfect because Vincent already was.  All I was trying to do was to try to learn about painting by copying Vincent and forcing myself to write about it.  And that's when I finally got it, or rather reminded myself of my original intent.  The purpose of The Vincent Project was NOT to produce "perfect" paintings.  The purpose of the Vincent Project was to learn how to paint.

And that realization freed me, at least enough to pick up a canvas and start scribbling. (Please see Author's Note, below*) 

On Day 46, I went back to the beginning.  I decided to paint a chair.

In my very first blog posting, I mentioned that all of this started with a student assignment from a painting class where we were asked to copy a painting by a great artist, and I chose to paint Vincent's chair.  This was the chair that he had painted while living in the little yellow house in Arles in anticipation of the visit by fellow painter Paul Gauguin.

On the left is Vincent's chair - mine is on the right.

As a companion to the painting of his own chair, Vincent also rendered the chair of Paul Gauguin.

                                                             



I would find my way back to Vincent the way I found him in the first place.  I could (at least try) to paint Gauguin's chair.  I could paint!  Finally! There was something I wanted to paint!

People read a lot of symbolism into the two chairs, saying that Vincent painted the chairs as portraits; they were expressions of how he felt about both himself and his guest.  Vincent's chair was a peasant's chair: rough, armless, and placed on a clay tile floor, probably in a kitchen.  Gauguin's chair, in contrast, was very fancy, with curved arms and a carved back, resting on a lush carpet in what looked like a more formal area of the house.

Vincent positioned on Gauguin's chair totems of learning (books) and culture (the lighted candle).  In contrast, Vincent's chair held the small, cheap pleasure of the common man, a pipe and pouch of tobacco.  Notice that, like the candle, Vincent's pipe could have been depicted with an ember of lit tobacco; instead he presents it with the bowl of the pipe turned away from the viewer.  Vincent's chair is seen in sunlight, Gaugin's is shown in a nocturnal scene.  In the background of Gauguin's chair is a lighted sconce, behind Vincent's chair are a box of sprouting onions.

Most telling, for me, is the door that Vincent painted into his own chair view.  As any patron of movie symbolism will tell you, a door is a portal, and a portal is an escape.  No door or window is presented in the Gauguin chair; Vincent clearly did not want to provide any retreat for the first painter to join him in what he fervently hoped would become a thriving artist's colony.  I wonder if Vincent meant all that I am reading into what he painted, or if there just happened to be a door right behind the chair he was painting?

So, with a newly opened, fresh, white canvas student board positioned to receive, I (re)started the Vincent Project by dividing a copy (that I had in a book) of the painting into quarters.  As I observed the image, I was excited to get started: Gauguin's chair was so much fancier than Vincent's chair, and it had all these awesome lights and very atmospheric electric blue shadows.

First, I transferred the image from the book to my canvas, one quarter at a time.

I drew out the entire cartoon,  then loaded my brush with the ochrey red that I observed underneath the wash of green on Vincent's wall.

Here is a close up of the red...

And a longer shot - notice the deeper hues behind the chair, away from the source of light

My trusty angled brush

And here is the green wash that I put over the ochre.  

Here is a view of the palette that I was using to make the green wash.  I think that my color wound up as a little to "tourquoisy," as compared to Vincent's painting, which had the wall as more of a hunter green.

Eventually, I do catch this difference, and it will get corrected later.  Can you see what I missed?  Compare the right arm of my chair to Vincent's.  His has a beautiful, sensuous curve, while mine looks like the arm of the chair was broken and badly set.  I wish I had noticed this before I went on with the painting.

(Author's note to herself: "Shut up! Think about the process, not the product... It does not need to be perfect... what can you learn from the mistake?")

The close up at right shows this mistake in all its ignominious glory.

But I do like the way the ochre and the green are vibrating against each other; it is so cool how our eyes process these opposite colors and make them come alive.

On this painting, I used a charcoal pencil (rather than a stick) to make the initial drawing.  I liked doing it this way because the pencil line was much more precise, and there was far less smearing of the charcoal, both from my my hands brushing against it, and from the black swirling into my freshly applied paint.

Here is my chair next to Vincent's, so far.

Next, I started to get my browns on.  I started with Van Dyke Brown and the ever popular alizarin crimson hue.

I also squeezed out the following:
raw umber and transparent raw umber,
burnt umber and transparent burnt umber,
transparent raw sienna,
burnt sienna and transparent burnt sienna (I did not have any transparent raw sienna).

Notice how all of these groovy browns have a raw or burnt option, as well as a "regular" (opaque) or a transparent option.

It was a lovely lesson to have all of these choices ordered onto my palette.  I admit it was confusing at first, but each of these tubes contains a unique product, and each of these products does a different and very individual thing on the canvas.

After reviewing the theme of this week's blog, here is my advice: do not be afraid of "wasting" paint.  You cannot learn from paint that is trapped in a tube.  Release the paint and let it teach you.

Observe my lesson plan below:  With the exception of the transparent raw sienna and Van Dyke brown (both shown at the bottom of the picture; raw sienna is on the left), transparents are on the right, and opaques are on the left.  The colors are ordered, (top to bottom, left to right) as raw umber, transparent raw umber; burnt umber, transparent burnt umber; burnt sienna, transparent burnt sienna, then transparent raw sienna and Van Dyke brown.  Alizarin crimson is (as of the photo session) still locked in its tube.

Ultimately, this is a rose by any other name situation.  The bottom line is that the colors are simply ways of expressing an observation or idea.  It is less important to focus on their names, and more important to focus on what they can do for you in your painting.  That said, knowing the names will keep you from a hunt and peck method of finding which color you want.  So, don't get bogged down by brown confusion.  Start squirting, painting, and take command of your colors!

At right are some browns on the chair.  I definitely used all of the colors that I had out; but I cannot tell you exactly what I used where.

(That is the point of a student board; it is a place to experiment and make mistakes - and remember, Martha - it doesn't have to be perfect!)

Speaking of "mistakes," has anyone yet observed what is missing from Vincent's original painting?  There are no stretcher bars  on the right side (as you are sitting in it) of the chair.  I observed this when I was doing the drawing, and decided that Vincent left them out on purpose because it would be confusing to see them juxtaposed against the patterned carpet.

At left is a close up of the front underskirt of the chair.  Notice how transparent the paint is, you can still see the white canvas peeking through the wood tone.

The Payne's gray outlining the rush seat will add depth and dimension to the straw as it is layered on.

I was observing other colors that I thought were missing, and threw out some cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, and a reinforcing portion of the transparent raw sienna.

These are the sunny colors of the South of France, and just seeing them got me in the mood for a glass of wine, the Provincial sun, and a Peter Mayle book.

At left you can see I have started on the rush seat of the chair.  As I painted the cover of the book, I accidentally slopped paint that should have been only on the cover onto the "pages" area.  (I know I don't have to be perfect; I just don't want to be intentionally sloppy.)

This was a classic case of coloring outside the lines.  And, although I am usually totally in favor of coloring outside the lines, in this case, I did not want the cover of my book sliding, Dali - like, down the pages below.

Luckily, I had my little "scrubber" brush handy to correct my mistake.  This type of brush can be purchased individually or in a set, and they come in various sizes for cleaning up all sorts of painting messes.

The red handled brush has stiff, white, synthetic bristles which can be used to literally scrub the canvas, as long as the paint you are scrubbing away is still wet.

The brush is really called a "scrubber," it is put out by a company called Creative Mark; look for it at your art supply.

When using a scrubber brush, I typically wet it in some water, then dab the bristles off with a paper towel so that the scrubbing area is moist, but not wet, when I apply it to the mistake.

The scrubber is such an excellent tool, and I am so glad that I have them to work with.

Shown at left is an extreme closeup of the newly cleaned canvas.

And now for the electric blue shadows.  I have already added a lot of greens and yellows to the rush seat.  I think it is looking appropriately rounded, and I am happy with the rough quality of the seat itself.

The first time I saw Vincent's painting of Gauguin's chair, I just didn't get the shadows.  They seemed unshadowlike, primarily because of the choice of color.  You could tell that they were shadows because they were placed exactly where you would expect shadows to be, but the color - that color was definitely not a regular shadow color.

But as I looked again, I realized that those shadows are what make that painting work.  Almost all of the other colors in the piece (with the exception of the green walls and seat) are warm and very cozy tones.  The green hardly even counts as cool, because painted beneath both the walls and the seat are still more layers of warm.  There are black outlinings, which are cool, but they did not pop at all until I layed in the electra glide.

Without us having to see the other side of the room, those shadows give us the atmosphere of a crackling fire's reflection on a well polished and barely used chair. Those shadows cool us, and cause our eyes to move around the painting in exactly the way that Vincent intended.  In the underlayment of the candle is the same bright blue - if the candle does indeed symbolize culture and knowledge (for Vincent), then he has absolutely bathed Gauguin's chair it.

Yet he does the same (although much more indirectly) in the painting of his own chair, by rendering the wall and door behind in a cool selection of turquoise and sky blue.  He may have just chosen these watery colors because he thought that they would look nice (if so, he was so right!), but who knows?  Half the fun in observing art is in asking the rhetorical "why" questions; the spell would be broken if we began expecting replies.



Above are some closeups of what I did to try to get the rug... Even Vincent's version was really just a series of different colored blobs.  Although I did not match him blob for blob, I think I got sorta close with it.  After doing the rug, I agreed with him 100% on the whole stretcher bar thing.

Below are some final shots of the finished painting.  What do you think?

Thanks for reading, everybody!  Please feel free to make a comment; I would love to hear your thoughts, whatever they may be.

*Author's note: Although it sounds like I just snapped my fingers to get myself out of my funk, nothing could be further from the truth.  The subject of perfectionism and its impact is a long and complex one, particularly for the women in my family.  I think that the impasse that I described at the beginning of this posting is really a signpost for me as I continue down the road of this project.  In future blog postings, there will be more said about perfectionism, it's effect on other artists, and the ways in which it has shaped my own life.

Happy holidays to all, and I will see you as much as I am able between now and the new year!

Catherine

I miss Vincent - I miss painting - I miss blogging - I miss all of you!

Hello!

I know that I have been completely MIA after promising to faithfully paint and blog each week.  No, fear not, I am not wearing a fully sleeved and tied white jacket - I have not been that kind of committed, as Vincent was.  (And I want you all to know that I still remain very committed to this project, in the way that I described to you in my first post.)

What happened was, in today's economic climate, something of a miracle.  Three days after putting our house on the market, we had a contract.  So I have been busy preparing to move.

I am happy to report that our new space is a sunny, open, light flooded loft; we will be moving into the entire second floor of an old granite bank building in the heart of our small town's downtown district.  We had looked at it, fallen in love with it, and decided to leave things in God's hands.  I have to admit that I was surprised He would answer so quickly!

Best of all, there is a place for me to paint and to write, so I will be able to continue with the blog as soon as we have completely moved in.

This week we had the space repainted, and I was amazed at how quickly and confidently I was able choose colors - I think all of my painting and thinking so much about color (and how Vincent put hues together) really paid off - When everything is completed I will post some pictures.

Although I am not writing about Vincent, I am sure thinking about him, and contemplating what it must have been like for him to move the many times that he did during his adult life.  I plan on exploring that subject in the blog when I return to it - which I hope is sometime around the first of November.

I will extend the project to make up for the weeks I am missing; although this is a year long venture, my real commitment is to 52 paintings and 52 blogs.

Thanks to all who are continuing to read in my absence.  Feel free to make some comments and "discuss amongst yourselves..."

I have no painting for you, only pictures of some really cute little dogs...

Poco

Brio

Happy October, and I will see you all on the other side of the month.

Catherine

In the twilight, I continue to search for Vincent

Hello, all!

This week, I will be attempting my first landscape painting (ever!) by emulating  Landscape at twilight, which Van Gogh painted very near the end of his life, in June of 1890.

(For those who might prefer a first hand link/look - http://www.googleartproject.com/collection/van-gogh-museum/artwork/landscape-at-twilight-vincent-van-gogh/5734954/ )

In this masterpiece, Van Gogh was trying to capture the colors of dusky early evening, one of his favorite times of light.  The painting was done "plein-air," which means that Vincent painted it directly from nature, while standing outside at the scene.

The painting depicts an area around Auvers sur-Oise (near Paris); Van Gogh selected a view of two pear trees on the side of a road, with an old castle in the background  (It kind of shows you what he thought was important).  There are stands of verdant corn growing in the mid-ground of the painting, and the sun is setting at the horizon in a brilliant impasto (built up paint) of oranges, yellows, and reflected greens.

Although he had painted many landscapes before, in this painting, Vincent tried something new that he had begun experimenting with:  The support he selected to paint the scene on was exactly twice as wide as it was high.

Daubigny's On the Oise

This panoramic framework is something that he probably copied (borrowed?  homaged? - there it is again!) from a renowned landscape painter named Charles-Francois Daubigny (1817-1878); a fine artist well known for exceptional exterior scenes.




Link to the man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-François_Daubigny

Link to his painting of the Oise area (above): http://www.googleartproject.com/collection/indianapolis-museum-of-art/artwork/on-the-oise-daubigny-charles-francois/403133/

Vincent greatly admired Daubigny's work, and had come to Auvers sur-Oise because the great artist (that many considered to be a father of impressionism) had a lovely home with gardens nearby.  Daubingny's widow still lived in the house she had shared with her husband (before his passing 20 years earlier) when Vincent came to the area to paint.

Chavanne's Between Art and Nature

Daubingny had used "double canvases" for his landscapes, which incorporated linen stretched across the equivalent of two full sized side-by-side painting frames, and Vincent was anxious to utilize similar panoramic canvases.

The effectiveness of these large supports in presenting big ideas was further reinforced by Vincent's discovery at the Paris Salon (A big, annual Fancy Pants showing of all of the best art of the year) of a painting (Between Art and Nature, left) by Puvis de Chavanne, a famed muralist.


Link to the man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Puvis_de_Chavannes

Link to his painting that inspired Vincent: http://uploads0.wikipaintings.org/images/pierre-puvis-de-chavannes/between-art-and-nature.jpg

Vincent felt that by using the panoramic double canvas, it would allow him to achieve an "enveloping pictorial world" [foot note #1 - please see my "book-link" at the bottom of this blog entry.] 

But there was a practical and physical element that Vincent had to carefully consider, as well.

No matter how big his idea, or the image he was trying to paint, he had to be able to carry what he wanted to paint on out to a field (or up a foot path to the top of a hill or vista), set it up on an easel, and then carry it, undoubtedly still wet, back to his room.  The logistics of this exercise limited just how big his canvas could be; consider your own level of enthusiasm for carrying on foot what was essentially a three and a half foot wide "sail" and painting kit (including easel) a couple of miles, then up the side of a hill, set it all up, work in the heat all day, clean it all up and put it away, then carry the painting back (butter side up) without your touching it to anything or dropping it.

Modern painters have it easy.  When I realized that I needed a panoramic canvas, I just pulled one off of an art supply store shelf and took it to the register to pay for it. Thanks to a handy counter and helpful staff, I didn't even have to juggle or hold on to my canvas as I slid my plastic; the greatest effort I had to expend was deciding if it would fit better in the trunk or the back seat of my hybrid (sigh!).  If I decide to paint outside, I can just hop back in my car and drive to wherever I want to go paint. Except France.  Can't drive there, even in a hybrid.

Contemporary artists have a vast array of supports that they can choose to paint with.  For the Vincent project, I am selecting primarily canvas covered boards, known as student panels.

These student panels are very inexpensive, quite sturdy and can take wet applications without bending, warping or falling apart.


They are made by gluing sturdy canvas cloth (tightly woven cotton or linen fabric) onto a cardboard panel, and then are finished with a paper backing.


These thin panels come ready to peel (their protective plastic wrap) and paint, and are lightweight and very stackable.

So what about other types of supports?

Look around at most any museum (other than strictly contemporary collections or sports museums, etc.) and you will find that people have making and responding to visual art for as long as there have been people.  For mystical, religious, aesthetic, communicative and many other reasons, we human beings have always done things to "improve" the objects in our lives, both by engineering them and by enhancing them as decorative objects.  Even today, I would say that most people find it more pleasurable to use an object that is deemed to be attractive; why else does Apple keep changing the look (as well as the capabilities) of the iphone, or Starbucks switch from a brown logo to green?   Why did you buy that particular car, or tennis shoes or pair of glasses?

I would contend that we make art everywhere, so everything in our lives is either a support that was utilized or a wasted opportunity for expression; but I digress - and shall now reel myself back in to the subject at hand -  

The first wall decorations were paintings that were left on the insides of caves.  Those early efforts evolved into the decorative and religious paintings of ancient Egypt and the frescos of the early church.  Eventually, Art Patrons realized that portability might be a good quality in the paintings they were paying for, and boards were introduced as the support of choice.  Wooden panels were (relatively) easy to move, and it was their embrace of these supports that allowed the old masters to achieve the photo-like realism we still see in their paintings today.  When sanded and polished smooth, the wood panels allowed artists to start with an extremely flattened surface upon which to build up the translucent layers of paint, giving depth to the images painted on them.  But the artists who used these boards were limited in how big they could make their paintings; boards were very heavy, and trees grew only so big - 

Modern boards are made of manufactured hardboard (trade name: masonite), so they are much lighter in weight and are offered in varying sizes.  Many contemporary artists use this type of board to paint on today, particularly those who paint in the old master's style.

These masonite boards (right) come from the manufacturer already smoothed, then coated with various types of surface preparations. They are available finished with different  textures, including super smooth, medium textured and more roughly textured surfaces. Masonite boards are suitable for painting, collage, pastels, and other media.  Like the canvas panels, they come in a wide variety of sizes.

 It was the great age of sailing that got people thinking about what else they could do with this sturdy fabric called canvas (from the same word root as cannabis; canvas was originally made from hemp).  Canvas was lightweight, rollable, and could be woven on looms (or woven together in a way) that allowed for almost infinite sizes to be produced.  Canvas could be stretched onto boards then removed for transport; the ability to roll up finished paintings has preserved many great works of art through wars and similar turmoil.  But canvas was not perfect.  Oil paint would bleed directly through it, causing the color to not set properly as it did on polished boards.

Eventually, a solution was engineered: Gesso.  Gesso is a paint like substance (there are different oil and acrylic formulations) that is applied during manufacturing to the surface of the canvas - rendering it sublimely paintable.  The gesso is the bridge that allows the best of all worlds - the paintability of a board combined with the lightweight, infinite size-ability of canvas.

Most modern boards and stretched canvases come pre-gessoed, so artists don't even have to bother with that step.  I have lately seen pre gessoed canvases in black for artists who are so inclined.  Those who enjoy extra steps can gesso their own canvases, which opens up the option of coloring the gesso in whatever hue you fancy.

Two examples of prepared stretched canvas supports are depicted above and at right.  Please note that on both, the canvas material is wrapped around the side of the stretcher and stapled onto the back.  This is a vast improvement over the upholstery tacks that had been common; you would have to be an octopus to manage a taught canvas by nailing in tacks onto the slender side of a board.

The support above has a deeper stretcher; this is a more modern finish that is often used in contemporary (style) paintings, as it does not require framing.  Both examples came pre-gessoed, and the only effort required to use them is finding the dang scissors because my fingernail is never quite sharp enough to vanquish the plastic wrap.

The photo at left shows the back of the canvas depicted above.  The things hanging from the side are little "stays" that can be shoved into the corners after the painting is finished to keep it square.



Of course, you can paint on most anything that will absorb and hold the paint.  I just finished painting a ukulele as a gift for a recent high school graduate.  I offer some images below:

OK - here is the "book-link" foot note as promised.

1.  From Van Gogh, The Life, by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith; published by Random House, New York. page 835.

This book is incredibly interesting for anyone who wants to learn about Van Gogh's life or work.  I will be telling you a lot of the most interesting details as I read it over the next year, including a most fascinating account of his final days (was it suicide, or something much more sinister?) along with insight as to why he became so famous, with his art rocketing from zero to hero within just a few years after his untimely death.  I cannot recommend it enough.

And again, it is time once more to shut up and paint....

I become a copy cat (herine)

The subject this week is Van Gogh's portrait of Camille Roulin

(1888, Oil on Canvas).  The GAP link follows:

http://www.googleartproject.com/collection/van-gogh-museum/artwork/portrait-of-camille-roulin-vincent-van-gogh/5783165/#

(fist bumping myself!  I figured out how to add the links!)

Camille Roulin was the middle child of VvG's postman in Arles.  At the time, mail was delivered two or more times each day, so Vincent became very familiar with his mailman, Joseph Roulin, and was friendly with Roulin's family, as well.  Vincent could not afford fees to pay models, but the Roulin family agreed to sit for him in exchange for some of the paintings that were produced.  Camille was 11 at the time this portrait was made.  I am posting a link (below) where you can find out more about the Roulin family and their relationship with Vincent, and see many of the paintings of the family that Van Gogh produced during that period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roulin_Family_(Van_Gogh_series)

That Camille Roulin - what a cutie!  With his blue eyes and jaunty cap and that impish jut of his chin, you know that Camille must have been just the kind of kid who always had ants in his pants.  Vincent captures him leaning forward, ready to spring from the chair.  What was this boy thinking about as he tried to sit still for this crazy red headed man?  Had he any idea what Vincent was doing as he smashed his sticks into colored blobs then squished the blobs together onto to a frame of stretched tablecloth?  His gaze is independent and certainly is not directed at Vincent; you wonder if he was looking at his mother or father admonishing him to try not to move.  One of the most charming aspects of his face are his lips, which are permanently pursed in an expression of being ready to blurt!

His simple green coat is accented by a single red button, and, like the clothes of many middle children, the jacket looks just a little too big for him.  The background of the portrait is a soft, lemony color, and Vincent also deploys a lot of yellow in the boyish little face.  Speaking broadly, only four major colors appear in the painting: yellow, blue, green and red.  If they sound familiar, it is because they are the primary colors - what an appropriate choice for the portrait of a child!

Unlike the clogs/velvet loafers paintings, I will attempt to copy this painting as exactly as I can.  This will be a real challenge for me because it will force me to do things that I don't really enjoy doing, like staying within the lines, and painstakingly mixing hues to match.   

Many art classes assign a project of copying an established artist's work of art.  Sometimes instructors will assign all of the students in the class the same painting, and sometimes the teachers will leave it up to the students to pick a painting from an artist that they like.  The idea behind this copying is for the students, by studying the established work closely enough to reproduce a facsimile of it, will learn at least a little bit about how the artist made the work.

My first blog post featured my student painting of a chair that I had copied from one painted by Vincent - please note the differences in the color selection (I was not trying to match exactly) and composition.

At first this seemed like stealing - the "real" artist painted it first, and copying (even loosely) a painting that someone else has already done does not seem like the most creative endeavor.

But there is a long history of established artists copying other artist's paintings, styles, techniques, subjects, and pretty much everything else there is that has to do with the making of art.  The difference is that established artists do not call this copying - they call it by many other very french sounding names like homage, Parody, Reprise, Imitation, Adaptation, Derivation, and Detournement...

(for your linking pleasure:)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imitation_(art)

There does seem to be a line, however, which you must not cross. Those works are known by an equally frenchy sounding word: Forgery.   And, you don't need for me to tell you that this type of activity can lead to yet another word in our french vocabulary lesson - incarceration!

I started really thinking about "copying" and "homaging" and "borrowing" and "honoring" and all of the other ings involved in "recycling" other artists works when I saw an exhibit recently at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  They had a gallery in their contemporary wing that was devoted to works that were "re-imaginings" of other paintings, fabric, mirrors, furniture, sculpture, photographs and all manner of weird and unusual stuff.   The atmosphere and vibe of the exhibition was absolutely thick with deja vu.

One of the pieces in that show which particularly intrigued me was (pictured at left) "Dialogue with Myself 1," 2004, by Yasumasa Morimura - When I saw the image, I immediately recognized it as an almost exact (yet really strange) replica of Freda Kahlo's "The Two Fridas," (1939) a double self portrait that she had done in response to her divorce from Diego Rivera (right).  Morimura is a Japanese artist who makes photographic replicas of famous portraits, inserting an image of himself in place of the original subject. Copy?  Homage?  Parody?  You be the judge.

What struck me was this: the idea that, what was, essentially, a copy, was hanging in a major museum along with a bunch of other copies.  That means that curators must not really think that they are copies... I think that the curators, because they chose to display them, think that these copies are a way of advancing a new layer of the idea of the original work.  These copies make the original work newly relevant for a modern audience.  I think that is an interesting thing to think about.

Feel free to divert to google images for a look at more of Morimura's work - it is really amusing!

http://www.google.com/search?q=Yasumasa+Morimura&hl=en&client=safari&rls=10_5_8&prmd=imvnsob&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=rT_iT-b6NqTU2AWd5sDvCw&ved=0CGgQsAQ&biw=1419&bih=937&sei=tD_iT5GKBab82gXLyfC_Cw

The two Fridas can be found at:

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/frida-kahlo/the-two-fridas-1939

And now a little housekeeping: In my first blog I indicated that I would be publishing the Wednesday blog by noon.  What was I thinking?  I am not a morning person, and like the owl, I hoot at night!  My new (and improved) deadline shall forever be Wednesdays at midnight.  Until I feel like changing it again.  It's my blog, so deal.

Again, thank you to those who are reading and following - I appreciate your interest!

OK, it is time to shut up and start painting!  

I try on Vincent's shoes for size

Hello, again!

The painting for this week is inspired by Vincent's "A pair of leather clogs" which, according to the Google Art Project, hangs at the Van Gogh museum in Arles.

But first, a quick detour to explore the Google Art Project (GAP). If you already know about the GAP, skip these paragraphs, but for those not yet in the know, you are about to find out about an incredible tool for artists.  The GAP has partnered with a number of great museums around the world to photograph portions of their collections for viewing by art lovers through the magical series of tubes we call the internet.

While we have been slumbering, GAP elves have gone into museums each night and photographed paths past some of the world's greatest art work, as well as deeply close up images of the the paintings, sculpture, textiles, drawings, etc. on display.  Software wizards then formatted all of this digital information into an easy to navigate "Google Maps" style program which allows anyone with a computer and access to the internet the opportunity to let their fingers do the walking through the great museums of the world.

But GAP is actually much better than just going to the museum.  When I viewed Vincent's "The Starry Night" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, I did so along with about 75 other people, with each of us jockeying for position to catch a glimpse of the surprisingly small canvas.  The closest I was able to get to the iconic painting was about 15 feet away, and my viewing experience offered very little in the way of actually connecting with Vincent's work.

When I looked up the same painting on the GAP, I was able to get out my little person icon and view the museum through her eyes - and - BEST of all - when you get to the painting, you have a close up on steroids which allows you to practically go inside!

The close up view in the GAP is SO much closer than even the best magnifying glass (if you were even allowed to get a magnifying glass that close to any museum piece, with the ever watchful "Miss, step back please.." guards...) - with the close up, you can literally dive into the painting with your eyes.  You can count the brushstrokes, see how thinly or thickly the paint was applied, find evidence of the artist's fingerprints, isolate "do overs" and so much more.

For several reasons, this super close up view is particularly useful for studying Vincent's work.  Because Vincent utilized the technique of optical blending of the colors in his work, you can see for yourself exactly the weird color choices he made; zooming in and out from individual colors to the the masterful blends of the finished works.  You can also see how (and guess why) he built up the paint (impasto) to be thicker in some areas (like the stars) and, even on some canvases, how he left blank spots where you can see the stretched linen with no paint on it at all.

These close up views allow the us to think carefully (and without someone hustling us along to the next gallery) about the choices that Vincent and other artists made in their work, which liberates us to make our own choices, which in turn, liberates us to make art.

(There will be more later about the GAP, as it is simply to awesome to describe in one blog... In the meanwhile, go look at the GAP for yourself - find your favorite artist, museum or genre and go to town!)

Many thanks to whoever it was at Google who devised and green-lighted the Google Art Project. Thanks also to the GAP elves, who keep everything going.  Your work is helping me to become an artist. Thanks!

So, now it is time for me to shut up and start painting.  Please feel free to paint along... There will be more next Tuesday.