Changing of seasons and ambient light, still re-learning best time to paint as it is differing from past years. Same with actually photographing the works once complete.
I was sent wrong color for one of my trusty pocket pads. I kept it and use it for all different stuff some serious other things not so much. It felt like it had been a while since I did a painting in one of the pocket pads so decided to do that. Unbeknownst to me, some of the pages were marred. It was only after I started painting I saw this. I decided to keep going anyways. The actual place on paper where I put the paper is fine, there is slight tearing to the right but even that’s not terrible, I am still very pleased with the piece.
I paint by natural light and learn for each season when ideal painting time is. In the summer, early mornings are better and by the afternoon I switch to giving my pen a workout.
To start my day I do early morning walks right up until dawn starting too late and it is too cool to be enjoyable. The way it has always gone is that starting in the last week or august or so, every few days/weeks dawn comes five minutes later, air feels little cooler. This year was odd in that it was as if someone just flipped a switch and the conditions which signal the end of my early walks until spring just appeared over night.
I am in process now adjusting to new light situation.
Two new pieces:
Mister Paul 5×7 Watercolor and paper
Ahhh 9×12 Rembrandt Cotton paprt
I have always greatly admired Elliott Erwitt’s photography. He often managed to organically include humor/visual puns, things he saw by complete happenstance. Sunday I was taking all books off my shelves for annual dust-behind. Before i put everything back for one section I saw an unintentional Erwitt-like opportunity for a photo.
Been hard at work with various projects. I have continued to delve into the pastel medium. Slowly, I am making the original set i bought disappear, then I will try another brand.
There has been a big scandal recently about a well known author whose latest book was a thinly veiled character assassination of a famous actress. To her surprise, she has had very few defenders. An initial defense that she offered up was along the lines of the book not merely being a take down as to write a book requires time sacrificed from other things and effort. Why would someone put their life on hold merely to inflict pain or criticize?
With literature, there can occur slaps, bite-backs etc but if the point of the work is not entirely to harm, then these aspects are tempered by everything else going on within the book. For painting and drawing, the medium makes everything more immediate and there can be no interweaving of a negative and other things as to temper it. You can not do a painting which incorporates an insult/criticism with other things.
Unless a political cartoon type of thing, i do not know any visual artist who would use the currency of their time creating a work to serve merely as a weapon to inflict harm.
Social media has become so fantasy based, idealized versions of people smiling from staged settings, that to present someone as they are is now often not seen as a good thing.
This is why I often prefer to portray myself or members of my informal little troop, there is a trust in what I am doing. And the understanding of my philosophy, truth is beauty.
I continue to delve into pastels. The medium is similar to painting but also different. Every medium has its inherent properties and then within the medium different companies equipment has it’s own voice too.
Both pieces are on 5×7 multi media paper
L
MH
spontaneous pics by me as i worked:
A brief word about AI/co-piolet et al:
An aged rocker from the sixties was asked their opinion on writing a song w/ A.I. To paraphrase he said “Well, I guess it is all right so long as they are the one writing the song.” That is not how it works, but being of an older generation & famous chances are, tech is not as necessary part of their life as a regular Joe a few decades younger. It is safe to assume that he lumped it in with email and social media, a new thing he uses a little, often via personal assistant.
AI does not create anything, it collects existing things that others made and Frankensteins them into an often cheesy looking thing. With Co-Piolet whoever decided to name that version of AI that was savvy. I see many authors put an image done with co-piolet up and they will say “It is a creation, i set the parameters.” So if you say “I want to see a rainy street in Paris” or “I want an empty dock overlooking a bay at sunset.” you still have not created anything, a machine then hunts for components other people made and constructs a thing.
For those who have tenuous grasp on the tech a broad example:
You invite friends over for an Italian dinner. You then proceed to go to various neighbors homes who are just sitting down to dinner and you take things off of each table without permission and bring them back to your place as to put it all together for your Italian meal. Just because you named the style of meal does not mean anything, it consists of all stolen things others cooked.
The shame of it is, there are so many good artists out there who would probably gladly lend an image in exchange for credit and link back to their site. If you are a band, an author, anyone who needs to marry an image to what they are doing, take a minute away from self promoting and do a search for artists on any platform, drop them a line.
The ever present phones in everyone’s hand has ruined the casual museum goer’s ability to enjoy a painting. Now, a painting must look photorealistic to be “good” because everyone is used to viewing art via their phones. No one wants to see an artist’s brushstrokes or any evidence of a thing done by human hands.
Phones allow people to capture the minutia of their lives instantly. It has almost become de rigueur, even for the most informal of photos for people to do a sort of post-production tweak. Skin is smoothed, other imperfections sanded down. Just as people do not want to see evidence of an artist’s hand in a painting or drawing, photos now may only vaguely suggest one’s age. Unless it is the point of a photo (like those amazing black and white photos of aged people whose crags make them look akin to sculptures) wrinkles, imperfections et al are verboten.
One of my greatest pleasure and something I never tire of is portraying flesh with paint. I did not feel like dealing with anyone but wanted to indulge in my raison d’etre, showing the gooniness of flesh. August 9th, I am looking in the mirror about to shave. Monk’s elliptical patterns float through the half open door.
Gazing in the mirror:
“Wow, good thing I am talented.”
Almost Blue: August 9 Selfie 9×12 Rembrandt paper (this is one of my personal favorites of all my paintings)
The temperature in my studio is once again safe to be in. I had finished the Ro piece before my brief exile while Swinger lay almost done the entire time of my banishment. I am very pleased with both pieces.
Swinger has special history. Over a decade ago the place I had lived part of the year every year in Paris for a long time had art supply stores all around it. I had a preference for specific things from each store i.e my pencil store, my paint store et al.
By happenstance I became pals with one of the guys at the sore closest to me. It’s proximity meant that i often walked by it and would pop in just to walk the isles, grabbing pencils or little notepads which I really didn’t need. We would chat.
He started letting me use his employee discount, plus coupons and samples. The very last time I saw him, I was so loaded up with supplies (lots free non-sample things) that when returning stateside I needed an extra bag for all the goodies.
He followed a proto-Coachella girl to Ibiza, then all around the hotspots for EDM festivals until he vanished in the ether.
Swingers is the very last piece of paper from all the paper swag he had given me. Obviously, I did not use it non-stop but I did use it steadily in-between all other papers I was exploring.
I would like to think that he got the girl or maybe he realized he didn’t need to get the girl, that it was about the adventure. And now, like Ulysses, he is heading towards a land where people do not put salt on their food.
As I get closer to the release of my next story/essay collection I have continued to explore pastels. I have done about nine of them in-between my painting and drawing. I enjoy the medium and each one is better than the last. I am still in my naissance and so have not even begun to explore the different types of papers & pastel companies yet.
I will be systematic about it first using up what I have then furthering my explorations.
I am about a week or two away from my next short story collection coming out. As usual I continued to paint and now, further delving into pastel medium.
For my paintings, I usually do them in twos and one always in my trusty pocket pad.
Chloe 5×7
Not Shy II 4×4 pocket pad
Fourth of July Prayer
Thomas Paine, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Alan Poe, Jelly Roll Morton, Lois Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Bourbon, Rye, Jazz, Stetson Hats, Skyscrapers, Hank Williams, Robert Johnson, Bill Finger, Zippo Lighters, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Kodak, Coca Cola, Baseball, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Muhamad Ali, Rap, Hip-hop, New School of Journalism, Chuck Berry, Bo Didley, Fats Domino, Blue Jeans, The Automat, Bob Dylan, Noir films, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, Edward R Murrow, Gene kelly, Fred Astaire, Harley Davidson, Maverick Directors of the 1970’s, Patti Smith, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, New York School of Painters, Andrew Wyeth, Dashiell Hammett, Jim Thompson, Edward Hopper, Hedy Lamar, Louise Brooks, Carole Lombard, John Lewis, MLK, Rosa Parks, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Golden Age comics, Robert Williams, Blue Note Records, Pinball Machines, Judy Blume, Fred Rogers, Life Magazine,
Our differences are our strengths. Until we drop the pervading tribalism and fear from being prime motivations for our actions, we will continue to be a shadow of what we had been and what we can still be. This limitless potential is another strength.
It is up to all of us. And, this is perhaps the one remaining aspect, for now, of our former Greatness.
I just finished reading Jean Paul Sartre’s essay on Baudelaire. While I didn’t agree with everything he said, it was very enjoyable. Baudelaire very much lived a solipsistic life. As I am not a huge fan of his work and knowing history of France during his era, I think to some extent his attitude was to the determent of his art.
It definitely can be no fun, you go to a concert and in-between songs as you wait to hear a favorite the singer starts preaching or having the work in service of specific message for an artist’s entire oeuvre.
However, it is also weird to be living through turbulent times and make no comment upon them ever. Like most important things in life, there is a delicate balance.
Previously, I have made comments, so and my mission is humanistic not political. I will only say now that I hope my work serves as a brief respite from all daily troubles and bleak news we all must deal with.
Edie Talen Art Creations Multi Media pocket Pad 4×4 inches
I had been talking to someone about what appears in my works. More often than not it is someone from my inner circle or a thing from my life not staged but as is (a shirt hanging off the back of a chair, a demi tasse with its dregs offering up a fortune-tell). What had made the impressionists radical more than the naturalism of how they portrayed color/shadow/light was their portrayal of people and things.
In lieu of the typical historical and mythological subject matter were people from their lives and every day objects. Back then, this was more radical than it seems now.
There is a weird dichotomy with painting now though. We accept the everyday as subject matter but also because of movies & television, expect things connected with painting whether it is a work’s creation or the painter having a chop bump up to be dramatic, moviesque.
Half-pan watercolors at least for me with the exception of the few colors I use in every piece, last me. Often I would finish a piece and have paint left in my palettes. I started doing smaller pocket pad pieces with what was left. There were few motives behind this.
It is sort of pagan, my way of honoring/offering up thanks to the process I will spend my life happily serving. This (at least in my mind) is akin to when Romans would offer sacrifice before or after a journey or successful battle. I have the money and it’s not cost prohibitive to just dump what little paint is left each time out, although cumulatively it would add up. This is my version of the great chefs who have the “use every part of the animal” philosophy.
I have my methodology down, I do pencil for both paintings, the start to work on the larger first. With these two, I had only done the smaller as I had been in middle of final edits for my next story collection. I finished, very pleased, and then realized that I had given no thought to the second painting.
With the luxury of no deadline nor expectations I decided to experiment and do second piece radically different in every way. I used bigger paper which I randomly grabbed out of a tabouret, I worked on it in completely different way. These challenges created by leaving the comfort zone of the established are a way to foster growth & chops.
When I first started doing the water soluble graphite works, it added to my painting and then it ping-ponged where that medium was added to by painting. I recently took up pastels and although I am still very new to that, I see some added technique to my painting. That and this spontaneous challenge have definitely added to my painting even if not necessarily apparent to the viewer.
“Not Shy” Talen Art Creations Multi Media pocket Pad 4×4 inches
