Drawing is the heart and soul of art. If the drawing is strong, you have to work hard to screw up a painting. If the drawing is weak, you have to work hard to just produce mediocrity. I’ve gone through periods during which I did more drawing than painting, especially when I was young and painting…
This painting is still raggedy; some parts, such as the hair, are barely started. The thing I’m not happy with is the title: Phone Call on Main Street. It’s not so much a title as a description. I don’t like the raised edges that can occur where two carefully-painted areas meet. Beneath the bench, you…
The painting, Girl in Purple Boots II, is on the easel. In the background is the recently started Women in Sandals. Girl in Purple Boots II is based on several–three–photos that were taken at an intersection in mid-town Manhattan . It’s 44″ x 60″. Women in Sandals is also 44″ x 60″. I spent more time drawing…
After completing the cartoon for this painting, I transferred it to a canvas, as you can see in the photo. A cartoon, I remind you, is a drawing used as a template for a painting. Cartoons are made to the exact dimension of the target surface. Typically, they are used for large paintings and murals but are often…
I spent most of the day drawing, getting two new paintings ready. This afternoon I started stretching canvases. I plan to stretch 6. I’m a crackerjack canvas stretcher, I’ve done it so often, but even I can learn new tricks. I used to put the staples on the stretcher edge but I’ve started putting the…
I finished the drawing for 3 Women in Sandals quickly. It took three days to finish the underpainting. 3 Women in Sandals is 44″ x 60,” a format I use a lot. I couldn’t decide on a name for the painting even after working on it several days. My working name for it, 16-5-1, was the…
I’ve stretched and gessoed a large number of canvases this week. Soon, my store of stretchers will be exhausted. I’m concentrating on several dimensions: 36″ x 48″, 40″ x 50″, and 44″ x 60″. I have 6-10 paintings in each of those dimensions in various states of finish. We celebrated my wife’s birthday yesterday–porterhouse steaks,…
This is the state of my palette after taking it from overnight storage. I clean the palette each morning with a scrapper and remove dried colors. Often, if no colors dried overnight, I’ll start right in. My medium is fast drying and there’s no danger of previous mixtures affecting new ones. This homemade palette has…