Alas, I just got an email from them announcing that the will also be closing down. I just hate that.

They are selling out their remaining stock, with discounts for large orders. Here is their link. Stock up while you can.

Still some touch-up work, but mostly done. Both are 8 × 10”, oil on panel.

Check it out.

verisimilitude. noun. The appearance of being true or real : the detail gives the novel some verisimilitude.

I’m not talking about a perfect imitation of visual experience—that’s only one possible tool for achieving verisimilitude. I’m talking about looking at a painting (or part of a painting) and knowing what it’s like to be there, looking at the the thing the artist sees or imagines. It’s a sense of recognition, of grokking. Some highly “realistic” paintings have no sense of verisimilitude; some highly stylized paintings have it in droves.

For me, most photorealism is lacking in verisimilitude and therefore doesn’t draw my interest. Making a painting that looks like a photo creates no feeling of recognition. Most paintings by Paul Cezanne, although on one level relatively stylized, have a sense of reality that is completely engrossing. Any painting that effectively creates a sense of verisimilitude is interesting to me. Any painting that doesn’t, regardless of its technical achievement, tends to bore me.

In looking at a particular painting more closely, I often get a sense that the artist has nailed the verisimilitude in some parts of the work but not others. That’s often my sense of paintings by Van Gogh, for example—I see pieces that brilliantly let me see the artist’s viewpoint, while other parts just look like a scribble in paint.

In judging my own work, I find the same thing. Parts of any painting seem to have a high level of verisimilitude, while other parts are just placeholders for what I didn’t have the skill to properly represent. I know I’m done with a painting when I don’t know how to give any part of it any more verisimilitude.

Harry made a bareback rider proud and free upon a horse
And a fine coalminer for the NCB that was
A fallen angel and Jesus on the cross
A skating ballerina you should have seen her do the skater’s waltz

Some people have got to paint and draw
Harry had to work in clay and stone
Like the waves coming to the shore
It was in his blood and in his bones
Ignored by all the trendy boys in London and in Leeds
He might as well have been making toys or strings of beads
He could not be in the gallery

And then you get an artist says he doesn’t want to paint at all
He takes an empty canvas and sticks it on the wall
The birds of a feather all the phonies and all of the fakes
While the dealers they get together
And they decide who gets the breaks
And who’s going to be in the gallery

No lies he wouldn’t compromise
No junk no bits of string
And all the lies we subsidize
That just don’t mean a thing
I’ve got to say he passed away in obscurity
And now all the vultures are coming down from the tree
So he’s going to be in the gallery

In painting with oil, it’s standard to use white to lighten mixtures. White (whether lead white, titanium white, or zinc white) is incredibly useful as there are many colors that can’t be obtained without it. Contrariwise, there are also colors that can’t be mixed if you use white. White lightens, but it also cools (in most circumstances), decreases chroma (except when applied in small amounts with some cool colors), and increases opacity. There are some circumstances in which you want to lighten (increase the color’s value) without the other effects of adding white. For example:

• In traditional oil painting technique, it is often appropriate to keep shadows transparent. That basically means mixing shadow colors without any white.
• Because white usually decreases chroma, mixtures involving white can be lower in chroma than you want. As a result, painters sometimes complain of paint mixtures that are too “chalky.” They get lights that have a pastel look with low chroma. While that is sometimes exactly the right color (in which case no one complains) we sometimes want lights that are as high in chroma as possible.

While oil painters don’t generally depend on white-freen paint mixtures to nearly the degree that watercolor painters do, it’s important to know how to paint without white when you need to. If you just need a dark color, that’s easy. If you need to paint a range of values, then you’ll need to find mixtures that achieve that value range. The ease of doing so depends on what part of the color wheel you’re working with.

There are plenty of high-value yellows, for example. If you need to lighten a yellow or brown mixture, you can usually do so by mixing in a lighter yellow (I like lead-tin yellow for this purpose, or a cadmium yellow if I’m looking for higher chroma). Reds are more difficult—it’s hard to mix a light red without dropping the chroma (i.e., making it pink). Genuine vermillion is sometimes useful because it is somewhat light and doesn’t drop chroma in mixtures the way cadmiums of similar color can do. Oranges can be lightened by adding a lighter yellow and then, if necessary, adjusting back to the right hue with a bit of red. A yellow green can similarly be lightened with yellow.

Cooler colors (blue, green, blue-green, purple) are more difficult to lighten, since the tube colors in this range are often pretty dark. Some cobalt blues can be relatively light and therefore quite valuable (although they are also opaque, so they don’t help as much if you are looking for transparency).

The other solution, of course, is to paint thinly onto a white surface, just as in traditional watercolor. The method used by Ted Seth Jacobs and his students such as Tony Ryder, for example, typically begins with a “color wash.” That means applying the first layer of paint very thinly, mixed with dilutant. While wet, the color can be lightened by wiping away paint with a dry rag or brush; or one dipped in dilutant. In this method, the initial color wash layer is later painted over with opaque paint mixed with white. A similar method can be used with traditional glazing technique or when a certainly watercolor-ish look is desired.

If you’re not used to painting without white, a good exercise is to try to complete a painting while using white only when absolutely necessary. That can generate an overall range of value and chroma that is markedly different than a painting in which white is used liberally. If you struggle with “chalky” mixtures, a minimal white approach can really help.

Here are some things that happened in 2010:

• Lost 34 lbs. in the first half of the year. Now well within normal body mass index.
• Kept the weight off through the second half of the year.
• Exercised quite a bit. Now in much better shape.
• Discovered that I am gluten-intolerant. A number of minor health problems have cleared up by switching to a paleodiet/primal/ancestral approach to eating.
• Completed graduate-level course requirements for board certification in behavior analysis. Got an A in each course. Yay, me.
• Kept my day job and have traveled a lot throughout the U.S.
• Stayed married (happily). Kept my son Brendan (Now 4 1/2 years old) alive and cared for.
• Stopped painting for about 6 months. Now back to it.
• Stopped updating this blog for about 6 months (other than site maintenance, deleting spam, and responding to comments). Now back to it.

There are two basic positions for painting—sitting and standing. For oil painting, I generally find it best to stand. It’s in the nature of painting that you stand in one position for long periods.

How do you stand comfortably for hours at a time? Millions of people in Western countries suffer from back pain, in large part because of poor posture. It’s important to avoid standing while painting in a manner that contributes to your own back problems.

Here are some basic principles to keep in mind:

• Slouching for long periods will eventually wreck your back.
• Standing up “straight,” with your back muscles at tension, is uncomfortable and you will stop doing it as soon as you are no longer paying attention.
• Instead, you’ll need to develop a standing position that keeps your head over your spine, your spine over your hips, and your hips over your heels. That keeps your body in alignment so that standing does not place undue pressure on your spine, back, hips, neck, or other parts of your body.

How do you do that? Stand up. Feet facing forward, about shoulder width apart or a little wider.

Now feel your hips. Many people in Western countries habitually tilt their hips backward. This leads to a rounded back and hunched shoulders. Instead, tilt your hips forward. Your waistline should be at an angle downward, so that the buckle of your belt (if you’re wearing a belt) is a bit lower than the back of the belt.

Don’t overdo it to the point that you feel tension in your lower back. The idea is that you are stacking your spine so that it bends correctly and is balanced directly over the hips.

Standing with your hips tilted forward tends to pull your shoulders back, but if you’re used to rolling them forward, make sure they are aligned backward. If you’re a woman, that means boobs up, ladies. This makes breathing easier by expanding your lung space. You should feel your spine align itself over your forward-tilted hips. This is a position in which your spine can be at rest while you are erect.

Your head should also be aligned straight, with your neck over your hips. Moving downward, your weight should be balanced over your heels, not your toes.

This is a comfortable standing position that can be maintained for long periods. If it’s not your habitual way of standing, then you’ll need to train your body to do it. The hard part is that painting takes so much focus that it’s very difficult to also concentrate on posture. One way to do that is to start painting in this position, and make sure that every few minutes you take a few steps back from the painting and look at your progress. That’s very good practice when painting anyway so that you don’t get tied up in fussy details. While you do that, attend to your  position and when you go back to painting, make sure that you’re standing correctly. Over time, you’ll catch yourself in the correct position without having assumed it consciously. Your back will thank you for it.

For more information, read Esther Gokhale’s excellent book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. Even if you don’t usually have a sore back, do yourself a favor and get a copy of this book. It’s that good.

Later on, we’ll talk about how to paint in a seated position without hurting yourself.

Caveat: I have no credentials that support giving health advice. Please don’t assume that I know what I am talking about. If you have any relevant health problems, consult a professional before doing anything I suggest.