I’m pleased with my progress this Thursday. I didn’t loose her left eye this time and her mouth seems to appropriately wrap around her jaw. (That is a strange sentence.) I failed at capturing the neck. I got lazy at that part of the sketch and lost the musculature. I cheated and covered my failure with a made-up robe.

Warm up sketch from Thursday night. Notice the wonky neck.

The sternocleidomastoids are the muscles which run from the base of your skull, from behind your ear, down to your sternum. These muscles bulge when you twist your head hard to one side. They come down from the skull at an angle and sort of run along side the Adam’s Apple before anchoring down to your sternum and clavicle. In direct light they create interesting curves and diagonals. From the front they form a sort of arrow pointing down from the chin. They are complex and subtle. They are hard to capture. When are drawn incorrectly, the look wrong.

As a change of pace this time, after sketching, I painted in greyscale to build up light and dark value and then “glazed” with color. In ProCreate I used the “gouache” brush which lends itself to transparent color with a little texture. The best way, I’ve found, to get those strange grey colors that appear on lighter toned skin, is to let them happen naturally with transparency - pale peachy oranges on top of black and white. This was, of course, discovered 600-odd years ago by our friends in Italy. It’s still a delightful magic trick.

Now that the days are longer, the drawing session begins with lots of natural light. As the session wears on the sun sets and the natural light yields to the artificial lights in the studio. We typically have a spot light or two to get that romantic, directional, lighting and then there are these ugly yellow incandescent track lights on the ceiling. They cast warm shadows but leave skin looking weirdly orange. But, lights are expensive.

The color picker in Procreate - all the colors. Too many colors.

This makes it hard to capture the colors in the room; they change throughout the session. I should probably try blobbing out some color on a separate layer while I’m sketching - to try to capture the palette I like before the light changes too much. ProCreate and most digital painting tools have a “Color Picker“ which provides quick access to an overwhelming amount of color - I wonder if a better approach might be peeling out a limited palette and “mixing” colors on a layer (with transparency, blending tools, or whatever) and then extracting a color palette from those mixtures. I wonder would that fit my color sense better? Whenever I try to pluck the right color out of millions I feel like I always miss. When I work with traditional media I build color up through observation, trial, and error.

This was our third session in a row with this model. She sits stone-still which is a little uncanny. She is friendly and takes an interest in our work. Her angular features are fun to draw. I’m excited though for our next model.

Another small still life for a Sunday afternoon. Painted with ProCreate.

This past Thursday I followed my own advice. I spent the first hour of our three-hour session on a drawing. This yielded much better results. An actual good likeness and acurate proportions.

After drawing for an hour, I duplicated the drawing, reduced its opacity, and then painted above the drwaing on a new layer.

Taking an hour to settle in and get my hands, eyes, and brain working together really makes a difference.

The collective noun for still life paintings should be “pantry” - as in “a pantry of still life paintings”. I’ve been filling my pantry with an onion, a clove of elephant garlic, a lime, and half an avocado. I should probably include salt and a molcajete too and then I’ll have everything I need to make a decent guacamole.

I recently finished Irrational Judgments: Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, and 1960s New York by Kirsten Swenson. I have fallen back in love with the work of Sol LeWitt and wanted to dig a little deeper into his history and maybe even learn some of his secrets. Irrational Judgements is about the relationship between Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse. These two ran in the same circles in the New York art world of the 1960s and became great friends and collaborators. Both Eva and Sol left (abstract) painting behind and found themselves looking for inspiration in making physical objects, in generating art from “serious nonsense” - that is creating processes and methods which are regimented and “logical” but reach no conclusion. For example, Sol LeWitt’s “49 Three-Part Variations on Three Different Kinds of Cubes” is a mathematically governed collection of the iterations on a concept. But what is it? A military regiment of file cabinets? An insane trip to Ikea? If I were to fill each cubby hole with a stuffed toy animal would I be arrested? Ultimately there is nothing there but the algorithm. Our pattern-matching and narrative-craving brains see the logic, we see a pattern emerging, and then we inevitably bring our own conclusion to the work. As for me, I see a dark mirror of the gallery space in these cubes. They are empty display cases. A display of display cases. Conceptual art provides a framework for art which the viewer must complete in their mind.

49 Three-Part Variations on Three Different Kinds of Cubes

When I tucked into Irrational Judgements I was hoping to learn about Sol LeWitt’s wall drawing process. I want to know if sketches them first. I want to know if he had a blank wall in his studio where he tried out all of the instructions first.

There is a tension to these works that I enjoy trying to reconcile. I find LeWitt’s wall drawings to be beautiful. They are large, simple designs with bold graphic appeal. But is that an accident? Did Sol LeWitt just sit as his desk and dream up instructions for a wall drawing? Is the beauty I see just my own pattern matching brain filling in the blank? Are they actually beautiful but just accidentally so?

I was hoping to find out that LeWitt sketched each of these on paper first, throwing out the ones that didn’t work. I was hoping that there are secret notebooks full of conceptual art sketches. But no luck.

Instead while reading Irrational Judgements I learned that Sol LeWitt quit his job working under I.M. Pei to become a fine artist. He went on the dole to focus on his art. How romantic. He applied his professional discipline to his work:

As Hesse and LeWitt’s mutual friend Bochner recalled, “Eva liked to tell the story that in the ’50s Sol was the only Abstract Expressionist who got up at 5:00 AM, finished a full day of painting by noon, and then spent the rest of the day reading The New York Times cover to cover.

I learned also that Sol LeWitt may have begun wall drawings on a bit of a whim.

Finally, in the fall of 1968, LeWitt decided “what the hell,” responding to Doug Chrismas’s invitation for a show at Ace Gallery in Los Angeles in December: “‘Yeah, I want to do some drawings on the wall.’ I even surprised myself when I first said it.

And maybe that’s the secret. When a wall drawing came out beautiful, maybe Sol was just as surprised as everyone else.

I found a little time to practice drawing tonight. I beamed an old screenshot from "The Thin Man" over to the TV and spent a couple of hours painting.

On the left is the original, incorrect mouth. Too small. Not nearly wide enough. The corners of the mouth should roughly align with the center of the eye. On the right is a corrected mouth, much better overall proportion, and a better likeness because of it.

I had a decent drawing session last Thursday I am still standing to draw and still trying to take things slow and really establish shape and structure. I’m trying, also, to keep things a little looser. I already know I can do tight, detailed work, but I’ve never really excelled at loose, expressive work. I’d like to have that arrow in my quiver.

<img src=”http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/b830856dbc.jpg” alt=” Life drawing in ProCreate using the “HB Pencil” brush on grey background in two colors. “/>
Life drawing in ProCreate using the “HB Pencil” brush on grey background in two colors.

I started on a long drawing which took almost 2 of the three hours. Once I reached a stopping place I decided to “sketch” instead of beating a painting to death. I used an off-white background and pencil tools in ProCreate. By sketching, and erasing, and sketching again, it’s possible to build up something that has much of the quality of a real drawing on paper.

I noticed though, that right after I finished, the proportions on my “sketch” were far more accurate. I realized where I had gotten lost. I made the model’s mouth far to wide - I lost track of that basic structure while I was working.

I decided to try and correct the issue using my second sketch as a reference. Since I’m working in ProCreate I could just coarsely select the mouth, copy it to a new layer and blend away the edges. I used the transform tool to scrunch the mouth up a little shorter and then corrected the drawing a bit. Then I merged this back down into the drawing and blended away the seams.

A floating mouth, scrunched to size.

This kind of endless fiddling is a risk of working digitally. With a painting you will reach a stopping point naturally because everything is wet. With a drawing you will eventually saturate the page with drawing medium and you must stop. But digital art allows endless futzing around. That can be paralyzing. I try to aggressively merge layers, flatten images, and call things “done” so I’m forced to learn to act correctly the first time.

The lesson from last Thursday is to start with the sketch next time. Spend that first hour or so on a warm-up sketch before attempting a painting.

Constructivist wallpaper, made with ProCreate

I was thinking about Constructivist art recently when I was working on a blog post for my recently finished painting of a Motel 6. I went down a rabbit hole with Google Image Search and Pinterest. These paintings - some nearly a century old - still seem very fresh to me. Many could easily be the album art for a very serious musician. Many could be tweaked just a bit and become the basis for a contemporary graphic identity package. This inspired another wallpaper doodle for the collection.

And now that I have a collection of wallpapers, I decided to post them as a gallery where they can be easily shared.

<img src=”http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/0304f1da23.jpg” alt=” Acrylic on canvas panel. 8” × 8” March 5, 2017 “/> Acrylic on canvas panel. 8” × 8” March 5, 2017

When I moved from Charlotte, NC to Portland, OR I stayed in a Motel 6 every night of the 6 day drive. Each night I would pull my giant boat of a ’93 Camry into the parking lot, trying to keep the trailer out of the way. I would check in. I unloaded the car each night, for fear of being robbed. The back seat was packed to the ceiling. After I unloaded all of that stuff would then line the walls of the room. The woman I was with at the time led the way in her own car. She would unpack her things as well, and then unload her damned cat. This animal would try to escape. It would try to hide under the bed. It was a menace.

I delighted in the confusion that awful animal must have felt. It was in a moving vehicle all day long. Then at the end of that long day it would be hauled out into a strange place which looked exactly like the night before. What were these humans doing?

At this time Motel 6 was trying to masquerade as a value-priced version of nicer hotels. So they had chintzy comforters on the bed, fake wood furniture. Lots of mauve and bad art prints on the wall.

When my wife and I first came to Tacoma to find a place to live, we decided to stay the night in a cheap hotel before driving back the next day. We chose the Motel 6 in Fife, Washington.

Now some marketing genius has embraced the cheapness of Motel 6 and has redone the interior with cheap Ikea style furniture. It works. I imagined party kids in our tiny room getting ready for a big night out at the Tacoma Dome.

You pay for your room with the sort of credit-card swiping machine you find at a grocery store. If they could somehow have a drive-thru option they would. The Motel 6 charges $5 extra for “premium” WiFi. Got to get the premium. Swipe your card now please.

Across the parking lot of the Motel 6 is Johnny’s at Fife - a diner with a view of the I-5 and the Emerald Queen Casino just beyond. Johnny’s is the sort of place that offers you a double on your drink and are genuinely surprised when you tip. We got drunk in the lounge and ate fried cheese sticks. We had breakfast there the next day.

After breakfast we checked out of the motel. There was a battered, bloodied, possibly still-drunk construction worker. The night before we saw several men checking in wearing tool belts, safety vests, and dust. Maybe a roving crew working on the perpetually under-construction interstate. This poor fellow got into it the night before. The folks at the front desk were trying to keep him calm while the cops or an ambulance or both got there. He had a hard time staying in his chair and the earth heaved beneath him.

The architecture of the Motel 6 is a kind of panopticon. The hotel rooms, in low flat buildings, encircle a small building housing the front desk, offices, laundry and supply closets. Between the main office and the hotel rooms there might be a pool. This arrangement allows the front desk to see who’s coming and going, who’s parked where, and who’s horsing around in the pool.

Every motel room may only be entered from the inside of the panopticon. From the front door, or the one window. There is no back way out. You’ll be seen coming or going. From the outside or the back, the Motel 6 looks like a low blank wall with a sign above it..

We visited this Motel 6 in late April. It was already hot. The sky was clear and the sun beat down. I am fascinated by the rigid, efficient geometry of the place. Door after door, window after window, two floors making x-dollars per night, costing y dollars per day. Just beyond the hotel you can hear the cars on the freeway. The pool hasn’t been opened yet. I took several photos.

When I got back into painting almost a year ago, I went right back to my old favorites. I used to buy Utrect paints almost exclusively. Utrecht is known for being high quality and affordable, being well above “student grade“ quality but not outrageously expensive.

There used to be a Utrecht store in Portland, down in the Pearl District, near where there used to be art galleries, but are now only expensive clothing stores and restaurants. In 2013 Blick Art Materials bought Utrecht. The Utrecht store is gone, but a Blick store appeared in the same neighborhood to replace it.

When I restocked for painting I bought two “kits” of Utrecht paint - a “basics” set of common painter’s hues, and a “portrait” set with some subtle browns and pinks. I supplemented these with some acrylic mediums and a few other tubes of this and that.

A month or two ago the cap on my tube of “Brilliant Blue” (Pthalo Blue plus Titanium White) snapped right off. The twisty bit separated from the screwy bit. A little while after that my new tube of Burnt Umber did the same thing. Once is a happenstance, twice is a coincidence. Can we make it all the way to conspiracy?

I am worried that the quality of Utrecht art supplies has diminished. I never had a tube break on my. Sure, I split the sides of a tube after crimping it up to get the very last bit of paint out. But to have a cap just twist apart? Never. The colors seem a little less rich now too. This could be my faulty memory, but I find I have to take care not to end up with a chalky looking painting. Too much binder? Too much filler?

I would like to believe that the quality diminished when Blick bought the brand, but it’s likely that I’m just remembering wrong. Maybe what seemed like decent paint when I was in school really wasn’t.

I do not want to drop a pile of money to buy all new paint, but I have decided to slowly replace my Utrecht paints with Golden acrylics. I’m already using Golden acrylic mediums. This weekend I picked up some Cobalt Blue and Burnt Umber to replace the broken tubes. Soon I will need a tube of white. I'll replace that with Golden too.

It makes me a little sad to walk away from a brand that I trusted. I have fond memories of receiving a big box full of canvas, gesso, and paint ordered from the Utrect catalog. It was art-school-Christmas. Golden always seemed overpriced and glitzly. Golden sales reps would come by our school to show off all the fun things you could do with a $30 tub of heavy body acrylic paint. We would laugh behind their backs. But now I have a job with a paycheck and I cannot abide low quality.

Continuing practice, showing improvement.

Profile of our model, Matt Digital painting, ProCreate for iPad

This week at my Thursday night drawing studio I tried something a little different. Instead of sitting on a horse (drawing bench) I stood, cradling my iPad in one arm. Now, instead of looking up the model’s nose, I was more on eye-level and more importantly I could step in closer, or move my head for a better angle. The result is a much better drawing. Better likeness, better proportions. Overall much improved. By the end of the three hours my legs and one hip ached. But worth it.

I’m sure that I can bring this to bear while sitting, but I just need to be bold enough to rearrange the furniture and move the benches around.

I started this drawing with a grey-green drawing to set the values and work out the proportions. I then “glazed” the drawing with browns, pinks, and oranges to bring out the flesh tone. I love this trick. It makes your drawing deep and rich while producing subtle, naturalistic colors which are quite hard to pluck from the air or a color picker.

More practice

The previous weekend I had a good bit of time to myself. My wife worked so I drew. I wanted to get some more practice but I knew drawing from a tiny image in the corner of my iPad screen wasn’t really working that well.

My home is thoroughly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem. I am drawing on an iPad, writing on a Mac, and now I used my Apple TV as an ad hoc studio model. The Apple TV has a feature which shows any photos you have synced to Apple’s cloud photo service. Basically if you are using Apple’s products as they intend, then all of your photos will be on your TV for old-fashioned vacation slideshows. I pulled up a couple of photos on the TV, then sat across the room on the couch to draw. Yes, this is ridiculous. It’s a bit boggling to think of the image, taken with a camera, stored on a server, beamed over to a TV via the internet, then used as a reference for a drawing made by hand, with digital paint, on a flat future computer from Star Trek.

These images are bit rough structurally, but show me getting stronger. I may be approaching my skill level from 20 years ago.

Friend Marco Digital painting, ProCreate for iPad

Caroline at the old apartment Digital painting, ProCreate for iPad

Fun on the internet

I listen to a very silly podcast called Bonanza. It is very hard to explain. It’s a long running inside joke spanning at least two podcast networks, possibly three. Imagine drunk Bond villains running an internet start up.

On the most recent episode one of the hosts shared an unflattering picture of himself. He was a bit worse from wear after a big event the night before. This photo reminded me of the famous painting The Death of Marat.

Death of a podcaster(s) Digital painting, ProCreate for iPad

Since I was already painting on my iPad, and I already had my ridiculous beam-it-over-to-the-AppleTV set up working, I downloaded the photo, it popped up on my TV, and then I got to work.

I used the same green-grey under-drawing technique as above, replacing the ceiling fan with a hazy painting background (you know those brownish clouds that float behind portraits in old paintings). I think it was well received.

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”2048.0”] Adobe Draw - the premier avocado drawing app for iPad [/caption]

What I really want, is Sketch for iPad. That doesn’t exist (and probably won’t ever) so I am trying out Adobe Draw.

Adobe Draw is a “vector drawing” or illustration app for iPad with Apple Pencil support. A “vector drawing app“ (like Sketch or Adobe’s Illustrator) creates images with mathematically defined curves, lines, and shapes (vectors) instead of pixels. These sorts of drawing apps are often used for logo and icon design, or designing the user interface for software. In the hands of artists, these tools can produce flat color illustrations which can look like intricate cut-paper designs or ink drawings. It’s also possible, using carefully drawn shapes, transparency, and gradient fills, to create realistic images.

   [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1536.0"]<img src="http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/e3f4484b8b.jpg" alt=" Infinitely scalable avocado "/>  Infinitely scalable avocado [/caption] 

Because the image is built from a list of instructions, and not a tremendous grid of pixels, the files tend to be smaller, and interestingly are resolution independent. That is, you can print them on a billboard or a business card and still have crisp, sharp edges. The list of instructions can be saved as a formatted text file - a Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) - which can be used in any modern web browser. On the web these images can stretch from a tiny icon to a giant hero image. This potential in particular is existing to me. I think there is artistic potential in scalable web images.

The app

Adobe Draw is available for iPhone, iPad, Android devices, and ChromeBook. The app focuses on free-form drawing with 5 brush heads (and an eraser), layers, and some simple shape tools. Each brush can adjust its color, diameter, shape, and opacity. See a quick tutorial here.

Each brush gets its own color selection - choosing brush 1 and setting its color, then bouncing over to brush 2 means you have now changed colors. By default, Adobe Draw assigns some contrasty, cartoony colors to each brush.

Changing aspects of the brush requires first selecting the brush, and then adjusting each aspect of the brush. Changing colors requires opening a color picker every time. The color picker supports selecting from color families (like triads or analogous colors), keeps a history of selected colors, and provides some pre-built color palettes. None of this is particularly easy to get to. The color picker has multiple tabs and modes. The behavior is fidgety and inconsistent. The color picker doesn’t retain state between use. If you open the color picker, and navigate to an included palette, you must navigate back again the next time you open the picker. This sounds trivial, but it means that while using the app you are dancing with the color picker about as much as drawing.

It is possible to tap-and drag the color chip out onto the canvas to select a color - so the smart work-around is probably to scribble out a pile of colors on your workspace and select from there while ignoring the color picker.

It is possible also to create color palettes with a second Adobe app called Adobe Capture - I have not played with this feature yet. While it seems logical to have an app dedicated to capturing things - it’s painful to require two apps to create a color palette.

Mystery meat

Adobe Draw uses gestures (swiping, tapping, etc) for many interactions. This is maybe to be expected on a tablet app - but the actions are not discoverable.

   [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1536.0"]<img src="http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/bf404253c1.jpg" alt=" Mysterious shape tools…  The shape tools can be pinched to resize, rotated with two fingers, "stamped" with a double tap, and filled with a long press. You'd never know it though. "/>  Mysterious shape tools…  The shape tools can be pinched to resize, rotated with two fingers, "stamped" with a double tap, and filled with a long press. You'd never know it though. [/caption] 

For example the shape tools allow you to drag a shape (circle, square, lines, etc) on to the workspace where you can fill the shape, trace the shape, “stamp” the shape (trace the entire shape in one go), and even erase from the shape. But the only thing you see when you pull out a shape is a dashed line, an “X” and a slider. The slider adjusts the width of the shape. There are no controls for fills, scaling, rotating, etc. These are all done with gestures. Now gestures are fine and perhaps the right tool. But other apps will indicate that the gestures exist by providing visual indicators or secondary control handles.

In order to discover the gestures, I had to watch an in-app tutorial on how to use shapes. This is incompatible with the app’s stated goal as a quick and direct idea capturing tool.

Drawing tools

There is a round, tapered, flat, chisel, and “terminal” brush shape. The terminal brush is a chisel tip with a little nubbin on the back. It behaves like an ink pen might.

Generally these all work well. Realistically you will use the round and the flat brush almost exclusively.

I did find that the Apple Pencil support combined with a tiny brush size make it possible to capture your hand writing as a vector graphic. This has some interesting possibilities.

Escaping the app

Adobe Draw requires an Adobe Creative Cloud account in order to use the app. Your drawings are saved locally and maybe exported to Adobe’s cloud storage where they can be retrieved. If you are already working in Adobe’s ecosystem, you can push images from Adobe Draw directly to Photoshop or Illustrator on your desktop computer. However, if you want to use your work elsewhere you might find it a bit of a struggle.

Adobe Draw allows you to share your artwork as a PNG file at screen resolution - this is mostly for quick sharing in a text message or an email. You can also save the file as a PSD (Photoshop) document at 300 dpi - which is suitable for continued work. Many applications can read Photoshop documents (like Pixelmator) so this is a pretty useful option. But if you want to retain the vector-y goodness your only option is to export to Illustrator via Creative Cloud or to save as a PDF.

The PDF does save a vector graphic - but it is written in such a way that it confounds Sketch when I open it. I did find that if I copy from the PDF in Preview and paste into Sketch - the image works just fine and then can be exported as an SVG. This makes it a bit tedious to take full advantage of Draw in a web workflow (unless you’re paying for Illustrator - and lets face it. Web folks are using Sketch these days).

The exported, copied, and saved SVG is below:

<img class=”svg” src=”data:image/svg xml,

”/><p>Overall Adobe Draw is just OK - it’s a bit glitchy. Sometimes touches are not registered. When the application relies on mystery gestures for basic operation, this can be infuriating. The app does tend to hang and crash from time to time, but so far hasn’t lost any work. The drawing tools are quite nice - free-handing vector art has a lot of creative promise. Hopefully the app will improve over time, becoming more stable and allowing more output options.</p>

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”2500.0”] N. Ruston Way Digital image, ProCreate for iPad February 20, 2017 [/caption]

Over the weekend I spent a little time diving into Youtube watching demonstrations of digital painting. I was looking for hints as to how digital painters work with reference photos.

When I take my iPad to Thursday night figure drawing, I just prop up the iPad and draw from the model. But if I want to work on the train or on the couch while my wife watches Narcos, I’ll work from a photograph.

I struggle with how to work from a photo while on the iPad. The easiest and most obvious thing to do is to drop the photo on a layer, trace it lightly, and then work on a new layer above the photo. I have taken to duplicating the layer with the reference photo, scaling it down, and then floating it around the screen as a visual reference while I work. But then there’s the guilt. I shouldn’t trace.

On Youtube I found an amiable Englishman who talked quietly as he drew in Procreate on his iPad. I found lots of “speed painting” videos starting with a blank screen and ending with a hyper-real portrait. About 90% of these were portraits of Scarlet Johannson. The remaining 10% were split between Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. These artists will spend 20 hours with pixel-width brushes getting flowing blonde hair and manly stubble just right.

Reading between the lines (and the comments) I believe that these artists are either:

• Working from a printed photo reference
• Working from a digital photo reference on a second screen. This could be a phone, a second monitor, or a laptop beside an iPad
• Or they’re just tracing the photograph like I described above

When I was in undergraduate and graduate school, any painters who made the mistake of working figuratively were heavily encouraged to first paint from life, then paint from their imagination, and then only use photographs sparingly. If you must use a photograph you must interpret the image and not “simply” reproduce it. This was a moral imperative. Naturally no such standard applied if you were making brushy, drippy abstractions or welding steel or stacking found objects.

Historically - when painting was a job, when there were no cameras, and the only way to have a picture of something was to make it by hand - successful artists hid their processes and techniques. These were valuable trade secrets. Painters allowed their patrons to believe that they simply had an eye graced by god. Of course, in truth, painters used perspective grids, viewfinders, mirrors, lenses, camera obscura, camera lucida, calipers, and who knows what else. Dega painted from his own photographs. David Hockney even wrote an art historical tome on the subject.

Why did this ahistorical myth persist in art school well into the 2000s?

Why don’t you just paint these?

This question “why don’t you just paint these?” was the best bit of feedback I got during my graduate education. Towards the end of my second year, I started experimenting with large works on paper. I took advantage of the large format printers in our computer lab and the large format photocopiers across from campus to make 60” by 40” mixed media collages of photos, transfers and paint. These works were big, they were expressive, and they were fun to make. I made enough work in a short time that I had to hold my weekly critique in an empty classroom instead of my studio. I needed all the walls.

I can’t claim that this work was any good - but I think a good instructor would have seen that I was up to something and then said “Ok, now make 50 more and see where you land”.

Our weekly critiques could have been scripted. The professors would walk in to look at your work. You would give a quick introduction. They would ask who you were looking at. You would list off some name from last month’s Art Forum. They would nod and then list off some names of people you really should be looking at. There was rarely any discussion of technique or motive or subject matter. This theater is what passed for academic research in a university graduate program in the fine arts.

During this critique though, one cranky professor asked “why don’t you just paint these?“ This professor’s paintings were of satirical scenes of academic art school students in caps and gowns with giant pencils stuck in their rectums. So you know he’s legit.

Why don’t I just paint these? Well thanks ‘perfester’ that clears the whole thing right up. This snide, dismissive remark taught me how conservative, fearful, and cultish the fine art world is. It’s why I rage-quit after school and found myself learning web development.

The history of contemporary art begins in 1917 with Marcel Duchamp signing a urinal, placing it on a pedestal, and titling it “Fountain”. In 1999 art professors were having a hard time with digital prints collaged with paint.

The painter’s myth is that art comes only from a trained eye and a steady hand. The art school moral code states that any traditional painting - a figure, a landscape, or a still life - must be created in strict accordance to that myth. Any deviation from this moral code and you will be banished and labeled an “illustrator” or a “commercial artist”. The painter’s myth is just pre-industrial advertising and trade secrecy. The art school moral code protects institutions from change.

None of this helps you be more creative, find a creative outlet, find an audience, or an opportunity. It does help a weird cult keep the lights on.

Whatever gets the job done

I sneered at the videos of Scarlet Johannson portraits. This was just snobbery on my part. I think it’s a valid and obvious criticism to state that reproducing a professionally shot photograph of a perfectly lit, made-up, and retouched actor isn’t all that artistically interesting. But maybe the joke is on me. If these digital painters are strict formalists, maybe the subject doesn’t matter. And if the subject doesn’t matter, why not render Scarlet’s beautiful noggin? Everyone wants to look at Scarlet. This way more people will want to watch your tiny one-pixel brush render perfect eyelashes. Also, isn’t interesting that most of these digital artists choose Scarlet Johannson and not some other beautiful white woman? Sure, all of these artists want to make popular videos and choose a popular subject. But why is she the most popular subject? Is she the Zeitgeist? Is her nose easier to draw?

I can look at these video portraits of beautiful famous people the same way an art historian looks at a replica Duchamp fountain. By bringing context, history, intellect, and empathy they can take on deeper meaning. Likewise I can choose to look at the efficacy and immediacy of digital tools as empowering and freeing.

tl;dr tracing is ok.

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”1871.0”]<img src=”http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/5ff10a908c.jpg” alt=” Acrylic on canvas. 8” × 10” February 12, 2017 “/> Acrylic on canvas. 8” × 10” February 12, 2017 [/caption]

I was out running errands back in October. I tried to be clever getting out of the Safeway parking lot and ended up turned around sideways. Then I saw the beacon of glowing hope, the “OPEN” sign in the window of Le Donut.

I pulled over, parked, and stood in the back half of the Safeway parking lot taking pictures of a donut shop. Anyone who saw me must have thought “oh no, not another Seattle hipster looking for something authentic“ — that or just “weirdo”.

I love little restaurants like these. If I still lived in Charlotte, NC I’m sure I’d have done at least one series of Waffle House photos or paintings. These places have stories.

Process

I started with a rough drawing on the canvas with pencil. I seal the pencil lines under a layer of clear acrylic medium, applied with a knife. This prevents the pencil from blending into the paint and altering the colors. From there I worked top-to-center and bottom-to-center, painting sky and street, converging on the open sign in the central window.

I jumped right into this painting, forgetting my typical under-painting of transparent red or green. I don’t think it hurt the final product, but I miss it. The little hints of color that pop through create depth and visual interest. The under-painting can lend a color-cast to an image. If the light from the sky gives everything a blue tint (for example) starting with a blue canvas will make that easier to achieve. Any place the paint is a bit transparent will show blue underneath. This is how subtle grey-green skin tones are created in those paintings of rich dead people you see at the museum. The underpainting shows through the transparent skin tones on top.

One feature of working in acrylic is that painter’s tape becomes a viable artistic tool. To get a perfect line or a crisp edge I will tape off the shape I want then apply clear acrylic medium over the edges of the tape. This prevents any paint from seeping under the tape, between the threads of the canvas. A quick blast from the hair dryer seals the seam. Paint on top, remove the tape, and you have a perfect straight line. If you are very careful with a razor, curves and circles are possible too.

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”1508.0”] Three attempts at portraits, with steady improvement. [/caption]

Work and train schedule permitting, I try to get to Thursday night open studio every week. A few weeks ago I finally summoned the courage to be that guy who brings his glowing glass rectangle to art class and I’ve been using it primarily ever since. I may warm up a bit in a sketchbook with a pen, but I’ve taken to trying to paint a portrait each week during class.

My second attempt at drawing from life with ProCreate on the iPad was anemic at best. Bad drawing. Poor likeness. Stiff. I did a warm-up sketch that felt OK - but then jumped right into attempting to paint from life. I tried building up a tonal, greyscale image and then (digitally) glazing on top with color. I rushed. I should have spent more time drawing. I should have just started over. I’m reasonably happy with some of my color choices, but the rest is just garbage.

Last week I made it back to studio and tried again. Much improved. I spent more time nailing down the drawing. I still butchered her eyes - the nose is too tight and fidgety. Her lips look pasted on, not integrated with her head. But the overall drawing is much better and the color is stronger as well.

Then, the other night, with a martini, I pulled up a bad photo of myself I accidentally took while reading on the train. Weird green light. Squinty eyes. I tried turning this into a quick portrait and had much better success. Better color. I worked very quickly and didn’t fidget. Also had a martini so maybe I couldn’t fidget. Another important factor is that photos don’t move around.

I was able to rough in the important shapes and not have to re-interpret things because the model’s head had drooped a bit.

Lessons learned

Maybe I should bring a martini to studio.

I could stand to go find a bunch of photos on the internet and spend time drawing eyes and mouths. The structures are complex and sometimes hard to see. I am failing at interpreting them - and failing at just laying them out correctly. A simplified eye in the right place is better than a detailed eye pointed in the wrong direction.

Really this is about slowing down when drawing from life. I have three hours. I should spend more time layout out the image. Maybe even set a timer for myself. Or use the models timer - 20 minute intervals. Put color away until I’ve spent the first 20 minutes getting the features into position.

Having every option available to me right away while working on the iPad is a bit distracting and overwhelming. Physical media has a natural limiting cadence. Digital media allows taking off at full throttle before you’re ready.

Other thoughts

I wonder if I could convince the folks at the studio that we could maybe have a background behind the model. I realize the point is to practice drawing the human form - but the dark brown curtain behind the figure becomes the same inky void in every drawing. A different color or some other detail might be interesting. It might reflect some color onto the subjects.

I tend to focus on a portrait instead of the full figure. Partially this is because I think faces are the most challenging thing to work from. But I am also a tiny bit shy about sharing paintings and drawings of nude people. I’m not prude, but I want to put my work on Instagram and share it on Facebook - and those places are prudish. I’m sure the models are aware that their likeness might wind up in a portfolio or a gallery wall - but I’m not sure if they understand that artists share their work on social media - and therefore their likenesses are being shared as well.

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”2500.0”] Putting my work to good use, decorating my iDevices [/caption]

I have been re-discovering the work of Sol LeWitt recently. In January my wife and I travelled to the Bay Area for a wedding. This was my first visit to San Francisco as well as my first visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. There was a room full of LeWitt’s famous wall drawings on display.

   [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="850.0"]<img src="http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/2f0f6835bf.jpg" alt="  Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing 280, January 1976  "/>   Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing 280, January 1976  [/caption] 

I think the first time I saw a Sol LeWitt work was probably in a back hallway at the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, NC. It was a small work on paper. Colored lines, vertical, horizontal, and diagonal in a 4-square grid. I didn’t get much out of it. But! It was important! This was an artist whose work I learned about in school and there it was!

Over the years I’ve grown to love LeWitt’s wall drawings. They exist only as open-ended instructions, such as:

A square divided horizontally and vertically into four equal parts, each with a progressively darker gradation of gray.

and..

A black five-pointed star, a yellow six-pointed star, a red seven-pointed star, and a blue eight-pointed star, drawn in color and India ink washes.

The drawings were (and are) typically executed by a team of assistants who follow the instructions and fill in the gaps with their own interpretation. The same instructions will yield different results each time they are followed. This may sound cold and mechanical - but the result are colorful and baroque wall-scapes that transform dead white museum walls into whimsical oceans of color and shape.

I wonder if LeWitt had “sketches” of instructions. Are there instructions that didn’t quite work out? Instructions that seemed to work, literally, on paper but didn’t come together once executed? Did he try the instructions out himself or on his friends?

My programmer brain reads his instructions and wants to write a little program which executes Sol LeWitt drawings in your web browser. Sol LeWitt’s drawing instructions are procedural art generating algorithms.

Algorithms on the art machine

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This week I started making some algorithmic drawings on the iPad as a way to keep creative and produce more. I like to exercise with color and texture without necessarily trying to create an image. I’ve done this in the past with paintings based upon subway signs. They were pleasurable to make, but in the end, I just had a funny colored sign.

With these I chose a shape. A star, circle, diamond, triangle, and an isometric cube. I chose colors. Primary colors plus green or compliments. I then I chose a simple, concentric repeating pattern.

I used Sketch to generate a reference shape for each image, which I then imported into ProCreate on the iPad. There I could layer color and texture until satisfied.

I’ve been enjoying these as wallpapers for my phone and tablet. Feel free to do so yourself.

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”2500.0”] Bodegón or Still Life with Pottery Jars, by Francisco de Zurbarán. [/caption]

I learned a word — bodegón — the term for a type of 17th century Spanish still life featuring pottery, cookware, game, slabs of fish, fruits and vegetables, and the like depicted on a window sill, shelf, or sometimes in a box suspended with wire. The Wikipedia entry implies these paintings mainly exist to show off the artist’s mastery of rendering complex imagery - like shiny copper pots or delicate flowers. Maybe. These paintings are poetic and surreal. It’s hard to imagine them as simply an advertisement for a painter’s skill. But then again, it’s not like they had cameras on their smartphones.

   [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1153.0"]<img src="http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/71f125d6b7.jpg" alt="  Bodegón by Juan Sánchez Cotán.  "/>   Bodegón by Juan Sánchez Cotán.  [/caption] 

“Dude, it looks like a melon, but it’s not a melon“
— Some guy in 17th century Spain, probably.

My art history coursework flew right past much of the post-renaissance and zoomed right to Impressionism so they could hurry up and get modernism out of the way and finally talk about the conceptual art that really mattered. So I never came across the term Bodegón until I found myself on Wikipedia reading the entry for “Painting”.

I was reading the entry for painting because I was thinking about traditional painting, digital “painting” (on my iPad), Rafaël Rozendaal’s websites, and flat SVG graphics and wondering if there was some sort of common element to all these things that made them all paintings. Is a painting made of strokes? Is that it? Well then that leaves out Rozendaal’s websites. But those feel like paintings even though they are wiggly HTML images and animations.

I scrolled through the Wikipedia entry looking for a hook into into this idea and then saw the word bogedón and then raced off to photograph an avocado on my countertop and then quickly paint it on my iPad.

   [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2048.0"]<img src="http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/5535e78e8d.jpg" alt=" A quick one-hour iPad painting with ProCreate "/>  A quick one-hour iPad painting with ProCreate [/caption] 

In the process I found a decent way to solve the problem of using a reference photo in ProCreate.

Instead leaving a photo as a background and tracing over it - I placed the photo on a layer on its own, resized it to be about one quarter of the image size — and then moved the image from one corner to another while referencing it. ProCreate has a great non-destructive editing feature. If you scale an image down then scale it back up and no data is lost. This let me paint from the photo without simply tracing over it.

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”1490.0”]<img src=”http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/5b6420cd5e.jpg” alt=” South Tacoma Way 8” × 10” Acrylic on canvas “/> South Tacoma Way 8” × 10” Acrylic on canvas [/caption]

Late last October, I drove out to find a FedEx copy center. I had a thumb drive full of pictures to print on the color laser printer so I could play with making transfers one afternoon. Everything in Tacoma south of I-5 remains mysterious to me. I have ventured there for FedEx, the Washington Department of Licensing, and a service appointment at a Toyota dealership. Tacoma is a well-ordered grid, despite being a peninsula that points northwest into the Puget Sound. Highway 16 and Interstate 5 curve and careen through town, only bending for the geography and caring nothing for the city within. The snarl of freeway where Highway 16 Interstate 5 meet is a persistent mess and I almost always need Siri to tell me what to do.

 <p>On the way home from Fed Ex, Siri took me down Sprague Avenue to South Tacoma Way, under the freeways. I have a thing for freeways and overpasses. I love the way a swooping overpass carves a cathedral-like space out of the air. I also love how we almost never see this because we mostly drive over overpasses; or we drive right by quickly. These big beautiful things are mostly invisible. I pulled over to the side of the street and took photos</p><p>I’ve been painting on small canvases recently - I think I prefer a smoother surface - like paper or board, but the texture of the canvas does force me to avoid tiny details. With big knobby weave, it’s impossible to create too fine a line. This helps me focus more on shape and color. In this case - trying to find that yellow-grey-green that concrete takes on in the setting sun.</p>

I picked up the following habits from growing up down south (in North Carolina) and they’ve served me well and help me stand out on the casual left coast.

1. Buy a stack of handkerchiefs and carry one every day

Buy a set of 6 to 12 plain, white handkerchiefs. There’s nothing wrong with getting colored or fun patterns. But white handkerchiefs match everything and can be easily laundered (and bleached, if needed). Carry one in your back pocket, on the opposite cheek from your wallet.

When people think of handkerchiefs, they primarily think of snot rags. Carrying around a wad of snot-soaked cloth is unhygienic. That’s not what handkerchiefs are for.

Handkerchiefs are for emergencies

Snot-related emergencies, of course, apply.

In the following circumstances, producing a handkerchief will make you a hero:

• At dinner, someone has a spill. Offer your handkerchief.
• Someone gets a cut or a scrape. Offer your handkerchief as a bandage.
• Someone gets some terrible news and needs to cry. Offer your handkerchief.

In situations like these I have had handkerchiefs laundered, ironed, and returned to me as a way of saying thanks; in all cases you should be willing to sacrifice your handkerchief. If it’s stained with wine or blood, it’s probably ruined anyway. This is why you buy lots of them. This is why you buy white ones so none of them are special.

You might think you should reserve your handkerchiefs only for damsels who need un-distressing. But don’t be that guy. Offer your handkerchief to anyone who needs it.

  <img src="http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/3d2848d1f2.jpg" alt=""/>

2. Wear a plain white undershirt every day.

Much like with handkerchiefs, you can buy plain white t-shirts in packs of 6 or 12. Go ahead and get twelve. Again, you want white for no-conflict matching and for ease of laundering. I prefer a v-neck t-shirt so it hides discreetly behind an open-collared shirt, but this is just a personal preference.

In cold weather the plain white undershirt is an extra layer for warmth. In hot weather, the plain white undershirt wicks sweat off your body while preventing your nice clothes from getting permanently stained with deodorant. In all weather a plain white undershirt protects your nicer outer-wear from your stank-ass body and smoothes over imperfections in your torso. That extra layer of thin fabric makes your top layer lay smoothly over hair, and nipples, and what have you. This works whether you’re wearing an ironic programmer t-shirt or real adult clothes on top.

You’ll look better, your clothes will last longer, and if you peel off your dress shirt to jump under a sink to fix a leak you’ll look like the cover of a romance novel. Speaking of dress shirts…

3. Wear dress shirts

If you have a decent, professional type job - even if it’s a casual environment - do yourself a favor and buy 8 to 10 dress shirts. Before you buy, get yourself measured. Any decent men’s department should be able to measure your neck size and sleeve length. Once you know your size you can buy from anyplace online that posts a size chart. I like Uniqlo shirts; they're affordable and decent quality.

Buy at least a few white shirts, but don’t be afraid to buy some fun colors or patterns. Don’t buy 10 of the same shirt. You’re not Steve Jobs.

If you wear denim, a dress shirt will elevate your grungy jeans to something smart and casual. Throw on a cardigan and people will mistake you for that new professor. Pair with any old slacks and black shoes and congratulations! You’ve mastered business casual.

Bonus laundry hack

Now that you have enough dress shirts to wear Monday – Friday of each week, get them cleaned professionally. Wear the first 4 or 5 shirts. Then on Friday or Saturday take your shirts to the cleaners to be cleaned, starched, and pressed. On the following week, wear the next 4 or 5 shirts. Go back to the cleaners on the weekend, swap your shirts and repeat.

Where I live (not the cheapest place in the world) it costs less than $3 to have a shirt laundered, starched, and pressed. That’s cheaper than a latte. Having 5 shirts laundered each week will set you back maybe $15. That’s lunch one day.

Skip lunch, skip the latte, and spend less time each morning and less time at the laundry machine. It’s worth it.

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”2500.0”] Ready to work? [/caption]

I'm trying to be better about making more art more regularly. Going to my a weekly drawing session will help. But I also want to create a body of work to show at some point. Lately my progress has been slow. The holidays consumed lots of time with travel and family. Work and commuting eat up most of my week. When the weekend arrives I have to try to squeeze in chores, quality time with my wife, painting, exercise, writing, cooking, and maybe a little fun.

I am failing at finding the balance.

Space

Before the holidays, I had my workspace set up continually so that I could, in theory start to work with little set up time. My workspace is also the spare bedroom and the holidays brought guests who cannot sleep under my work table.

My workspace is a small two by four foot folding table, placed on a water resistant drop cloth. The table is just big enough to spread out my paints with a palette, reference material, and two ex-yogurt containers for cleaning brushes. It's tight and precise but it works. It's also somewhat portable; I can easily (carefully) move the table around the room or the apartment.

My palette is a sheet of scrap window glass with the edges taped up. If you go a hardware store which sells replacement window panes, ask if they sell scrap glass. In my case I found a 12" by 18" sheet of glass for about $2.

I store my paints and brushes in an old toolbox my father found at my Grandmother's house. It's older than me. I used it in art school years ago to hold drawing supplies. When I got organized again after moving to Tacoma, I emptied it out, vacuumed the interior, and now it's my paint box.

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If I am good, and keep my workspace up, I can jump into a painting pretty quickly.

Shortcuts

I paint small these days. Partly for space concerns, and partly because I prefer the intimacy of a small painting. You have to get close to see it.

Since I'm working small I can take advantage of an old trick to get a sketch onto my painting surface without too much hassle.

Trace or copy your sketch onto standard white printer paper. Tape the sketch to a window with the drawing against the glass. Using a dark, soft pencil, scribble on the back of the sketch. You will be able to see your sketch through the paper and focus your effort on your lines.

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Now remove the sketch from the window and tape it face up on your canvas or painting surface. Retrace the drawing with a sharp pencil. The pencil on the back of the paper will transfer to the canvas. Remove the drawing and you will have a light line drawing on your canvas Touch it up if you need. I will often seal the sketch behind a thin layer of clear acrylic medium, spread on with a palette knife. This prevents the drawing from rubbing off or getting washed away with wet paint.

Time

I am fortunate to be gainfully employed, but my work can be demanding and requires that I commute to Seattle from Tacoma by train. This eats time.

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Time seems to be the thing I can't work around or hack. I can't easily paint on the train. I can't work less. Commuting turns an 8 hour day into an 11 hour day. Where to find the time? How to make the time?

I often daydream about finding some kind of remote job. Terrible for my long term career but I'd sure have a lot more time to paint.