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Empress Foliage, While Getting Ready for Donna Granata

The quest for foliage continues, and I’ve been adding dark shadows into the foliage on the right side of the painting, building substance and getting further away from the very decorative leaves that were there before. In the photo you can see where the new edge of the painting is (regular visitors will remember I snapped a bright orange chalk line so that I could see what the new boundary was) because the thinly painted and linear work on the right contrast sharply with the dark leaves I’ve added in the last week.

We’ve also been busy getting the studio ready (read “cleaned up”) for Donna Granata to come over tomorrow to shoot photos for her impressive portfolio of portraits of artists. She runs an organization called Focus on the Masters which documents the lives and work of artists who live in Ventura County. Once the portrait is made it will be part of her traveling exhibit of photographs and also accompany an television interview that will make part of a file about my work that will be available to historians and researchers in the future. I’ll post a link when they’ve put my file on the web.

This weekend a beautiful exhibit opens at the Weisman Museum in Malibu. Strongly recommended!

The Epic and the Exotic: 19th-century Academic Realism from the Dahesh Museum of Art, which will be at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University from January 14 through April 1, 2012.  Opening reception is Saturday, Jan 14, 5-7 pm.

Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art
Pepperdine University
24255 Pacific Coast Highway
Malibu, CA 90263

2012 01 09 pearce Announcements
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Hanged Man on the Wall

After a year or so of looking at the the giant mural of the virtues and thinking to myself, “Wow, I should probably do some painting on that…”, I’m officially calling it quits on the thing and painting it over with at  least three other paintings. I can use the blue skies in these other works if I’m careful about it, so the materials won’t be lost, but the virtues project just doesn’t excite me any more. So, on with the Hanged Man, who is taking shape in the middle of the wall.

I’ve changed my mind about the height, because of the impracticality of a twenty foot high painting. I’d LOVE to make a giant painting like that, but it’s going to have to wait until someone commissions it. The new canvas for the Hanged Man will be ten feet high and five wide, a good sized piece of work with the figure receding from a life sized head to a much smaller foot as the body dramatically extends up and away from the viewer. It’s a big mess of Foundation White over blue and white background right now, establishing the rough shape of the figure as he hangs suspended from a rope by one ankle, reaching down toward the ground in his efforts to reach a ring.


I’ll need to research oak trees this time, looking carefully at their leaves and branches because the rope will be lashed to a sturdy branch at the top of the canvas.

2012 01 09 pearce Hanged Man
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Shooting the Hanged Man

This was the most nerve-racking but fastest photo shoot I’ve done so far, but I think we laughed more than most of the other shoots too. It was very straightforward in essence, just one model (Aaron again, except he’s lost twenty pounds and looks completely different compared to when he posed for the Emperor in the Empire painting) and simple lighting using the shade of natural sunlight.

In this painting the figure has to hang upside down from one foot, so figuring out how to suspend Aaron was a bit worrying, because this was actually used as a method of execution in late medieval north Italy. But people regularly hang upside down in the gym and do crunches to strengthen their stomach muscles, wearing gravity boots that strap around their ankles and can be hooked over a bar, so I borrowed a pair from my friend Antony and we explored potential places that might be high and strong enough to support Aaron’s weight. After a few false starts in locations that we didn’t like because they weren’t safe or the light was no good (stadium bleachers, trees, a swing set), we decided on an outdoor staircase railing that was the perfect height and nicely shaded, and we were in business. Aaron regularly does upside down sit ups as part of his training for waterpolo, so we were confident that he could hang for a minute or so, and I quickly shot a lot of photos while he twisted and turned. My son Ethan helped to get him unhooked and we were done.

Looking at the pictures later was very satisfying – they’ve turned out very well. I have to be thoughtful about the height of the head in the painting so that the point of view of anyone looking at the painting is in the correct place, I want to make sure that the painting will look right if it’s hung two feet above the ground. The canvas will be very tall – about twenty feet high – so I’m looking forward to painting a lot of sky, while the landscape will be fairly small, filling only the bottom of the painting. I’ll paint the figure well above the landscape to increase the sense of height in the composition. There’s going to be lots of foreshortening too.

After shooting the photos I got back to work on the foliage in the Empress painting which is looking much more substantial after a couple of days of work. Re-doing the floor has made a big difference to it, and the leaves are looking much better. I re-painted the girls’ hair and added deeper shadows to the faces and some of the bodies, but I want to rework the flesh generally once I get through the leaves. I like the idea of adding some debris to the floor to make it look more convincing. Outdoor floors usually seem to have leaves or sticks or something scattered around them here and there. Detail!

2012 01 03 pearce Empress
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Cut! Changing the Empress

The darker floor makes the space more convincing.

New creeper leaves drafted in Foundation White. It's already much more complex. I've painted only to the new edge of the left side of the work.

The orange line shows where the new edge of the painting is going to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m letting the Empire painting rest for a little while so I can look at the piece again with a fresh eye in a couple of weeks, so I’ve moved to the old Empress painting. I’ve had this piece leaning against the studio wall for several months, waiting for a chance to change it. I’ve never been satisfied with it for numerous reasons, which I think I know how to fix now that I’ve had a long time to look at it and really figure out what bothers me about it.

In no particular order:

First: because of the square composition and the symmetry of the courtyard the girls are standing in the painting lacks flow and doesn’t invite a visual journey around the world within it, so I spent a while figuring out how to re-shape the canvas so that there is less symmetry, snapping a chalk line down the right side, cutting eight inches or so, then reducing the size of the pillar on the left, which occupies too much space on the edge of the canvas. If you look closely you’ll see orange chalk-lines that show how I plan to re-stretch the canvas onto stretcher bars.

Second: I HATE the extended feet of the girl who’s lying down, and these are definitely going to need a re-paint, which I’ll get to next week.

Third: I want to repaint all of the girls. Although the face of the girl who’s lying down is pretty, its not sitting on the body properly and needs to be repainted; then the others need to be fixed up, and the clothes need to get lighter and looser. Everything is too decorative right now – it needs to be more painterly.

Fourth: the marble is way too bright and lacks depth, the landscape needs to be worked on so that there’s more space in it, so I deepened the shadows on the floor, making the space feel dirtier and giving the girls somewhere to stand. I also darkened the shadows on the walls on the left of the painting so that there’s more light moving through the space. I’ll continue with this later.

Fifth: I couldn’t stand looking at the facile vines I decorated the sides of the painting with. These have got to become much richer and more convincing. The decorative idea was nice, but it’s not the direction I want the paintings to go in. I need these paintings to belong to the same world.

2011 12 30 pearce Empress
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Grass is Greener

Rough texture over the vines that are coming closest to the viewer

Green grass and orange flowers. Building up the foreground of the painting.

 

I’ve been pretty busy in the studio, painting the foreground grass and working on detail on the vines. The foreground vines are much rougher and more textured now, which makes them feel like they’re coming forward.

I added some Cobalt blue into the shadows around the flowers, scraping it on with a knife, then scraped a touch of Cadmium red over the buds, using a rag to control the paint. The flowers were lightly glazed with a Transparent Iron Oxide Orange, then the white bits were wiped off, then additional orange oxide painted into the dark parts of the flowers.

My easel broke again. I’ll have to get the sled off again and figure out how to reinforce it with some steel, or something. Alternatively I suppose I could just paint much smaller paintings…

It’s seriously quiet in the studio because all my students are away on their Christmas break. I play lots of loud music when it’s like this, but lose track of the time regularly.

2011 12 29 pearce Emperor
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Cow Parsley and Oilseed

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The trees have felt a bit too dark and heavy on the horizon since I glazed them with Olive Green, so I decided to put a coat of white over them to drop them back in a misty veil. In the first photo the white (which I mixed with a touch of burnt umber to make it a little bit grey, so that I can add pure white later to pop the highlights.) is beginning to cover the tree on the left of the canvas, then in the next picture I’ve wiped away most of the paint so that there’s a slightly swirly mist feel to the haze. I brought the haziness down into the furthest part of the landscape, where the land meets the sky, and allowed it to meet with some of the patchy areas of distant grass.

I’ve painted the grass seed-heads in light grey so that I can put greens, yellows and browns over the top, bending the stems and seed-heads to the left so that there’s a sensation of a breeze blowing the field – with the bending trees and the swept back hair we should feel some sense of motion in the painting. In the background some cow parsley and oil seed has sprung up, reminding me of the English countryside. I should probably look at some Constable paintings to see how he treated his landscapes – get some good advice from the master.

I’m still working out if I can bring those lovely mountains into this painting. It’s tempting.

2011 12 20 pearce Emperor
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Carnegie

The Emperor painting has taken a giant leap forward, with an entirely new foreground landscape beginning to develop around the Empress. I’ve enjoyed painting the underlying dark areas that will lie beneath a range of grass that will be the next feature to emerge. In addition, I’ve added some white over the edges of the foliage that climbs the chair, letting the dark leaves drop back into the sky a little by softening the edge between the blue and green. I used Foundation White because that’s what I used for the milky glaze over the blue.

I didn’t get any more painting done today, but I did get to snap a picture of this beautifully misty sky beside my home that I might want to use for reference in the Emperor painting. I love the soft transitions from mountain to mountain as the California ranges sit further and further away. This is atmospheric perspective in action! Lovely.

The Carnegie Museum is a lovely neo-classical building with a grand facade beside a grassy town square in Oxnard, California. It’s a perfect setting for an exhibit of my canvases, which will mingle beautifully with its lovely white pillared interior, carefully balanced with grey walls that won’t overwhelm the colours of the paintings. It’s a delightful space – I loved being in a gallery that doesn’t have excessively bright white walls! I met with curator Suzanne Belah today to look around the rooms again and to contemplate how the paintings will work, and to consider which new works should be my priorities in the progress of the new year. I enjoyed sitting in the building in silence, getting a feel for the quiet energies of the various spaces, which I think will allow for the paintings to be hung in a series of almost shrine-like settings.

Good times!

2011 12 19 pearce Emperor
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Leaving the Foliage

The green glaze covering the leaves.

The freshly painted flesh and shirt, working nicely with the leaves.

The leaves have been treated to Sap Green mixed with Iron Oxide Red, and some strokes of Grey-Green to add variety, then the shadows deepened with a touch of Raw Umber. The buds have been painted with a little Cadmiium Red mixed with Foundation White. It’s a good start. I want to rework  the leaves by bringing in some Iron Oxides to warm them and to the stems, which I started highlighting in white in preparation, before I got tired of the incredible staining power of Sap Green, which is truly a pain, getting into everything! I’ll let it dry thoroughly before recommencing.

With these glazes of green over all of the leaves it’s time to move onto painting the woman’s skin and her clothes, adding some Burnt Sienna into the shadows, popping subtle reds into the eyes, nose and mouth, and into a few areas of the neck and armpits. I enjoyed putting white highlights into the chest and arms, particularly introducing subtle movements of colour by allowing the paints to blend into the white. I glazed her shirt using a Yellow Ochre that balances the gold of the ball in the Emperor’s hand. Over the Raw Umber underpainting it appears quite green.

I’ve noticed that when I start putting colour onto the paintings after I’ve been working in grey and brown for a long time the fresh paint seems extraordinarily bright, so I have to restrain myself from greying everything down until I can see how all the colour works together.

2011 12 13 pearce Emperor
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Green on Vine

With colour the foliage looks more lively.

Another layer of subtly coloured pink and green grays to make the stick more convincing.

The colour spreads further down the canvas, reaching the horizon line today. I need to work in areas because I want the highlights to blend with the darker greens in this stage, so I’ll move further down the painting later.

I worked with lovely glazed transparent Sap Green and Raw Umber with dashes of Grey Green for some variety and highlights. First I glazed areas of the leaves with the Sap Green, then popped in a darker mixture into areas mostly on the right side where shadows should fall more substantially. To make the darker colour I mixed some of the Sap Green with a bit of Iron Oxide Red – another beautifully transparent paint which is the same hue as Burnt Sienna in M. Graham’s range of oils. The deepest area of shadows between closely positioned leaves were emphasized with the Raw Umber, blended out with my fingers. I must work on the skin on the legs now, to introduce shadows and redraw the toes on the right foot.

The flowers are bright white now. I was tempted to put a glaze of colour over them, but I’d better be patient and do them all in one sitting.

I’ve added a picture showing the stick that I worked on a couple of days ago. I’ve added subtly coloured pink-grey and green-grey to make it appear more natural. Nature is seldom monochromatic.

I almost forgot to mention that I painted the surface of the moon on the little ball dangling from the stick, so now the Emperor is clearly the emblem of divine rule on earth.

2011 12 09 pearce Emperor
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Golden Sun, Silver Moon

The Emperor starts looking substantial.

The golden globus cruciger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s so good to start adding layers of colour into the painting after this long period of working in browns as the plants and bodies take shape.

The Emperor is looking increasingly complete with every additional layer of colour subtly building the illusion of substantial flesh. The globus cruciger, symbol of the Emperor’s authority, has solidified into a spherical ball now that it has some colour and highlighting. I’ve painted some pale green and pinkish grey onto the stick he’s holding in his other hand. The stick is his sceptre, here suspending the moon which he dangles over the Empress, suggesting that he has power over her too – but the plants she’s directing up his chair will soon take care of his arrogance.

2011 12 08 pearce Emperor
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