reworked older paintings- Cat 19.

Reworked paintings

 I have been trying to convince myself to toss out a substantial stack of older paintings which  just didn't work well for various reasons, and make more room in my work space.
 I couldn't bring myself to trash all of them, and started reworking some to see what I came up with. Here is Cat 19 reworked-

 (The original painting is below)

This has really caught my interest, and I have since resurrected other paintings (#5, 9, 10, 14, 18, 19, 20, 28, 47, 50, 53, 55). I recall struggling with these trying to make them work, and getting pretty frustrated at the time.  Years later it is gratifying to be able to identify the problem areas, come up with better solutions, and see some progress!
Some were simply bad compositions. Most commonly I did not give enough attention to proportions and angles, and tended to oversaturated colors competing with each other. And a disturbing "cut out" hard edge look.

                       


         

Cat 64

Cat 64, Lizzy on the heating pad
Acrylic on canvas. 12" x 14".

Lizzy on a towel covered heating pad, warming up on a cold morning.

   I had started this with my usual array of colors, and as usual it quickly became over saturated.
So part way through, I limited myself to using only what I could mix using red, blue, yellow and white, and modified everything I had laid down already.
I am pleased with the result- it is much more toned down, and unified.

Goals for this painting:
1. Getting the form correct, before getting into details.
2. Desaturate the colors by mixing more, using a limited palette.
3. Use both soft and hard edges.
3. Use directional brush strokes.

Cat 63

 Cat 63, Lizzy on the bed
Acrylic on board. 12" x 12".

Lizzy on the bed, when she stops in mid-grooming and stares before resuming her task.

I have been doing some looking and reading on the works, techniques and approaches of other people in their artwork. A few things are beginning to sink in on how I have been working.

- The most common problem is using a poor composition. No amount of fancy brushwork will compensate for that.
- Not giving enough attention to correct proportions at the start. I tend to go back in and correct angles and forms after being well into the painting, thus creating a lot of nuisance rework.
- The overuse of highly saturated color. When all the colors are intense, none of them stand out. A solution is to "gray down" some areas to create better contrast and emphasis on the focal point(s).
- And finally, I think my work would benefit from a variation of hard and soft edges-  some forms may be sharply defined, and others may be softer and not so defined.

My goals for this painting:
1. Getting the proportions of the forms correct,
2. Desaturate the colors,
3. Use both soft and hard edges.

Cat 62 (new version of Cat 45)

 Cat 62, Toby Chester (version 2 of Cat #45)
Acrylic on canvas. 14" x 11".

This is a second attempt at Cat # 45.  The original (at left) was done in response to a story that was written about this cat by a friend. In both versions I chose to depart from the reference photo (a kitchen floor) and invented a background- something I find challenging, if not outright difficult.
 I was not entirely satisfied with how I handled the foreshortened cat in the first version, but I did like the background textures and colors.

The general composition was problematic, placing the subject dead center within the frame, and the mirror image balance of background elements- a little too predictable. Another bothersome element was having the chin nearly touching the edge of the canvas, which created too much visual tension.
I decided to tackle it again, with the goal of paying attention to getting the proportions correct, adjusting the placement of the cat in relation to the frame edges and incorporating some forest type foliage which related more to the story written about him.
   I am much happier with the proportions on the new version, and the less repetitious background. It may have been a better solution had I offcentered the cat more to one side, but I think this also works with the head angled to the right, and the tail angled to the left. The idea was to lead the eye from center of interest (the face), through the highlights in the foliage up to the focal point (the high contrast of the tail) and back around to the face again.
Did it work?

Cat 61 (Reworked Cat 50)

       Cat 61 (rework of Cat 50)

       Acrylic on canvas. 16" x 20".

   I recently went through my accumulation of  paintings. Some I really like, but a few struck me as truly horrifying.
   In particular, this painting (Cat 50, at left) from September of 2013, which had been done in a rush to come up with enough pieces for a show.
The form of the cat was badly executed- I did not pay much attention to the proportions and contorted it to fit the canvas. The tail would've worked great on a Lemur. The background was indecisive, although I liked the stripes.

Instead of trashing it, I decided to rework this painting in hopes that would get me past the creative block I've had for nearly a year. My primary goal was to correct the form of the cat. I also wanted to tone down the hyper-saturated colors, soften some edges, and let brushstrokes show instead of the continuous smooth blending. I took my time, made preliminary drawings until I was satisfied with the form and placement before picking up a brush, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out.
   A ways into the painting, I abandoned my usual colors and limited myself to red, blue, and yellow, and white. I used a little raw umber to deepen a few dark areas. This really forced me to mix colors in a way that I don't normally use, and I like the results.

After the initial attempt at painting on top of the original to make corrections, I concluded it was not salvageable. The paint layers were thick, there was no canvas texture left, and the new paint was not seating onto the surface- it was pulling off with every other stroke.
So I tried scrubbing off the layers of paint, mostly to see if I could do it. Running hot tap water over the surface and scrubbing with an old, worn stiff paint brush worked to remove the layers- although I think the heat did most of the work.
   Watching the annoying image slowly disappear was cathartic- until I scrubbed a little too hard in one spot and also removed the gesso and sizing layer, exposing the warp and weft of the canvas- I could literally see through the canvas. Which meant removing the remaining layer from the rest of the surface to keep it even. After scrubbing it down and letting it dry out, I applied gesso to the raw canvas to create a new base. The downside is that the frame warped a little while it dried out. If I ever try this again, the wet frame and canvas should be weighted down on a flat surface while drying, to keep the frame straight. Probably not worth the trouble, though.

Two Pullets

Two Red Pullets
Acrylic on canvas. 12" x 16".

The exasperating painter's block continues... another extended period of not painting, followed by a longer period of fiddling with paintings, but not completing anything. I had started this over a year ago then set it aside. The young, awkward pullets have since matured into sleek, plump hens.

The Rhode Island Reds next door are always getting into some sort of mischief. As young pullets they were looking like cartoon characters- dinosaur legs, skinny necks, craning their necks around. These ladies were on top of a dog house, trying to look through a window of the house next to it.

The background went through numerous changes, starting with detailed vertical siding and window frames, then that was replaced by a forest of alder trees, then a stormy sky... all of which proved to be too busy or distracting.  I ended up with so much paint loaded on the surface that there was no canvas texture left. I opted to cover everything up with a lighter colored layer of brush strokes, as I have been wanting to include more visual texture going forward. At first it was a little disturbing to cover up all the painstaking details I had labored over, but I really like this much better now.
Sometimes less is more.

Tessie and Kloey

Tessie and Kloey
Acrylic on canvas. 16" x 20".
(sold)

It's been a while since I've produced a painting... life got in the way again this past year, and then I had "painter's block" on top of that.
I recently agreed to do a painting of two small poodles, working from a photo taken with a cell phone several years back. (Here I will whine a little: cell phone shot = less than stellar focus and color balance). Tessie is the chocolate poodle with a more reserved personality; Kloey is the more outgoing apricot poodle.

  I began as usual by trying to recreate the photo and pretty quickly abandoned that idea as many of the elements were not reading well as a composition. It's odd how elements can look reasonable in a photo, but look very strange in a painting.
Working with the strong tile grout lines dominating the image was more challenging than I expected as they continuously lead the eye away from the subject and off the edge of the picture. Trying to set them in correctly using a ruler to measure the perspective angles resulted in an odd perspective- it worked much better to just use my eye to determine the placement of the lines.
 At one point I had included the kitchen cabinets lining the background, but they added nothing to the picture other than visual clutter. The vertical cabinets also pulled my eye off the top of the picture and away from the subject. After changing the angles and heights numerous times, I gave up and got rid of  the cabinets, leaving an expanse of tile floor which became disturbing (look at the image with the solid blue rug covered up- yikes!) Including and re-positioning the blue rug stopped the grout lines from shooting off into infinity.
  The tile floor was virtually the same color as the lighter dog.  Adding an overlay wash mix of white, raw sienna and cadmium red, and a touch of ultramarine blue over the light tiles to darken them and push them back helped define the lighter dog.

I'm pleased with the textural contrast of the hard floor behind soft throw rugs and soft dogs. I also like the warm/cool tones repeating throughout the painting. Incorporating the blue colors of the rugs into the dogs helped pull the image together although I am still not satisfied with how I handled the dogs fur textures, and need to find a better solution. The dogs look a little stiff to me, and I did not work out how to make them look more fluid. In retrospect, I should have adjusted more areas of their contours to blend in more with the background values of light and dark to avoid the "cut out" effect.