personal

Sorry about that. Life got incredibly busy and I just didn’t have time to blog. Back now, I hope.

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• Zero tolerance (3)

<rant>

In Arizona, a 13 year old boy was recently suspended from school for making a drawing that resembles a gun. There is no indication that he has a history of preoccupation with violent visual imagery, has made explicit or implied threats, engaged in violent behavior, tortures animals, or any other issues that would make a drawing of a gun part of a pattern that responsible adults might reasonably be concerned about. A 13 year old kid makes a doodle of a gun and gets kicked out of school.

I consult in schools and have worked with extremely dangerous adolescents. I spent the last three days teaching a course for special educators and school psychologists on how to prevent and manage violence. So I’ve seen lots of kids who need intervention and discipline. I think that suspending a kid for making a drawing is an incredible act of bureaucratic cowardice.

This may have only a peripheral association with art, but it still concerns me. If teenagers are afraid to make art because an adult might find their work to be politically incorrect, then we all, in the long run, will live in a world with less good art.

Ultimately, I think this trend is related to the increasing median age in core Western societies. As more people find the young to be alien and frightening, there is more and more push for “zero tolerance” of behaviors would in their own youth have been considered innocuous.

</rant>

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Vacation was lots of fun.

Working on ideas for new posts. Any requests or suggestions?

Also of interest

• Zero tolerance (3)
• Wow. (7)
• Work in progress (5)
• The Zone (0)
• The persistence of vision (1)

I’ll be gone next week at the SCA’s Pennsic War. Back week after next.

Also of interest

• Zero tolerance (3)
• Wow. (7)
• Work in progress (5)
• The Zone (0)
• The persistence of vision (1)

All the Strange Hours is one year old today. At times I’ve had a flood of ideas and stuff to write about. More recently, the posts have been coming less often (although I’m currently writing more often). It’s been extremely enjoyable for me and a good way to clarify my thoughts about art.

I’d like to thank everyone who came here and stayed. I am especially grateful to all of the thoughtful commenters here.

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• Site update (2)
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• Zero tolerance (3)

I now have a page, linked in the navigation bar at the top of this page, that collects some of my drawings and paintings. All of them have been posted here before, but I thought it would be a good idea to make my immortal images easier to find. As I add new work (the ones I can stand for other people to see), I’ll write a post and also add the image to the gallery.

Feel free to add comments or constructive feedback.

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If’ you’d like to submit a painting or drawing for public critique, send me an image of it. I will either respond with an email telling you why I don’t feel comfortable doing a critique of it, or I will post it on this site with my feedback (with, potentially, thoughts from commenters as well). I won’t be mean, but I will give my honest opinion, which some people might find painful.

A few caveats: Files should be less than 100k in size.* Make sure it’s a decent photo or scan, not one full of glare or other problems. I’m not qualified to judge most abstract or political work. Don’t send your first ever painting; do 10 or 20 or 100 more and send the best one of those. Don’t’ send joke images; I’ll only add you to my spam filter. Send only one image. Send your own work. (Yes, you can probably fool me by sending an image of some classic but not well-known painting. Big deal.) If you’re a better artist than me (and lots of people are) then I would not be the one to judge your work.

*You can find out the size by selecting the file (click on it once) and choosing “Properties” (Windows) or “Get info” (Mac) from the File menu. If it gives a size in megabytes (MB) the file is way too big. If you’re not sure how to make the file small enough to send conveniently by email, you will need to change either the pixel dimensions of the image, the amount of compression, or both. Changing the number of dots per inch only affects how it will print, not the file size. Try saving the file in JPG format if it’s not already that kind of file. If this paragraph seems like gibberish to you, find a teenager who knows about computers and ask them to make the file 100 k (kilobytes) or less in size.

Also of interest

• Zero tolerance (3)
• Wow. (7)
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There are many art fora, resource sites, blogs, and other places on the internet where information for artists is posted. This is one of them. Often, they (we?) provide contradictory information, advice, and opinions. If you are looking for reliable advice for artists, whom do you believe?

First, with regard to safety information, don’t ever just take anyone’s word for it. I have several posts here that relate to safety. But I’m just some guy. Why would you do what I say, no matter how much authority I seem to pretend to have? This is your health and the health of everyone who comes in contact with your art stuff we’re talking about here. Just because I say that lead paint, used with reasonable caution, is perfectly safe, is no reason to think it’s true. It is true, but you shouldn’t believe me just because I say so. Only believe it after you’ve checked out the relevant information, separated out the truth from the fear-mongering, and decided for yourself what makes sense for you.

I’m not an expert. I don’t have a degree in art. I’m not a professional artist. I’ve done a lot of studying about art and I think I mostly know what I’m talking about. But you haven’t read my sources. You haven’t tried the things I have. You haven’t made the mistakes, or had the successes, that I have. All you have when you come to this website is the words and images here. You don’t know for sure whether I know what I’m talking about, or I’m a clueless blowhard.

The same goes for just about everyone else. Even people who have nice websites and appear to have some sort of credentials may be providing useful information, or garbage. Likewise, people who post on internet fora may or may not know what they’re talking about. I’ve found some pretty silly stuff in books as well.

So please read with intelligence and skepticism. Do that with everything here, and everything else you see on the internet. Try people’s advice and see if it works for you. Read other sources and compare. It’s more work that way, but a lot better than deciding that I (or anyone else) can be taken at face value. I know I have a clue, but you have no reason to believe me. Not until you try what I suggest and find out.

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• The Zone (0)
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• You say “sfumah-to,” I say “sfumay-to” (0)
• Wow. (7)

It seems like a natural cycle for artists to go through periods in which creative production is limited. That seems to be happening to me right now. Over the last few weeks, I’ve allowed the pressures of job, fatherhood, marriage, friends, and other aspects of life to push art from daily practice to something that percolates in the back of my head. I’ve been staying away from internet art forums, staying out of art stores, and generally acting like someone who doesn’t paint anymore. As a result, my mosting rate here has decreased. I have not picked up a paint brush in four weeks. It’s not that I don’t think about art, but it never seems like the right time to start again.

At one level, I’m comfortable with this. I know I’ll get back to painting, and I know it will be sooner rather than later. Painting is too important to me to allow it to become something I used to do. Right now, it seems OK to take a break, take stock, think about what I want to be producing, and let the back of my creative mind work out whatever it is it’s doing right now. That doesn’t seem professional, but fortunately I don’t depend on art to pay the mortgage. That gives me the luxury to be able to take an extended break from time to time.

On the other hand, I’m kind of anxious to get started again. Any regular activity contains its own momentum. The more you exercise, the easier it is to exercise more. The more you paint, the easier it is to bring yourself to paint again. Right now, there’s an inertia that makes it easier to hang out with my wife and play with my baby son than it is to make dinner, take out the trash, arrange with Kirsten to watch Brendan for a couple of hours, and go paint. Once I do that again for the first time, even if the painting part is clumsy and frustrating (as it probably will be as I get back into practice), it will be easier to get back into the habit. And that’s what I need to do, and soon.

Also of interest

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Whatever “normal” is.

Brendan is getting better. He’s breathing well, keeping food down, looking better, seeming happier, and his other symptoms are less severe. He’s back in day care, so we don’t have to beg for help from family and friends so that we can get to work (thanks to Joyce, Carol, Cheyenne, and Nancy). Last night Brendan woke up only once, instead of staying up most every night with unpleasant symptoms I won’t describe here.

The cold that I got (probably brought on mainly by exhaustion) is also better. (Teaching a class at work with a throbbing head cold was lots of fun.) My wife Kirsten has a bad case of the sniffles, but she’s been getting more sleep, so that should go away soon.

With any luck, I should get back to posting here normally very soon.

I’d like to thank everyone who posted a comment or wrote an email to provide support. Your kind words are much appreciated.

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First, my six month old son Brendan spent a day in the emergency room and a night in the hospital, after the cold he had been fighting for the past three weeks evolved into what the doctors first thought was pneumonia, but later diagnosed as acute viral bronchialitis. He’s home now and doing much better. Over the weekend, however, my wife and I experienced how gut-wrenchingly difficult it is to be the parent of a very sick baby who is suffering when you can’t do anything to make it better.

Of much lesser importance, I was challenged on two posts I had made here regarding a lecture on color by Graydon Parrish that I attended. In an excess of enthusiasm, I had shared my lecture notes on this blog, even though attendees were asked to be discreet. I was asked in no uncertain terms to take the posts down, which I did immediately because it was Graydon’s stuff and he did not want it out there. I received considerable criticism on the Cennini Forum for having posted in the first place, which I accepted because I was wrong to have done so without asking permission first. I would describe the experience as an excellent character-building exercise, but no fun at all.

I’m sorry I have not posted anything about art here in the last week or so. I’ll get back to that soon.

p.s. In the midst of the posting fiasco I was also accused of presenting myself as having some kind of direct connection to Graydon Parrish. I don’t think I have done so, but I’d like to state here unequivocally that I have absolutely no relationship with Mr. Parrish other than having attended a lecture by him and participating on an internet forum where he posts from time to time.

p.p.s. I am very thankful to the people who have written to me to offer their support.

Also of interest

• Zero tolerance (3)
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I just got back from a lecture on color by Graydon Parrish. He’s one of the great modern American realists (here are a couple of links, plus a bad, and unwarranted, review of his latest painting by the New York Times).

I’m still digesting what Graydon had to say; more about it later. Graydon is a great proponent of the Munsell color system. If I didn’t already have a decent understanding of Munsell color terminology, I would have gotten much less out of the lecture. He lives and breathes it, even to the point of using color chips from the Munsell set to directly determine colors on a model or object as the starting point for his color mixes. Of the 1600 color chips in the Munsell set, Graydon says that he’s mixed and tubed about 800. Yes, he’s that hard core.

I also got to meet a number of people whom I had previously interacted with only online, including Jeff Freedner (who sometimes comments here as Painterdog) and Rob Howard, the moderator of the Cennini Forum and the public face of Studio Products.

I had a great time. Much to think about.

Also of interest

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For awhile, the front page of the site wasn’t working. I traced the problem down to a plugin conflict involving the display of links in the sidebar. For now, no links. Sorry about any inconvenience.

These darn computers!

Update: I will be testing out possible fixes for this bug. If you have problems loading the first page, or if you get weird display issues, just try again in a few minutes.

Update 1/28/07: No tags either until the plugin I was using for that function is updated to work with Wordpress 2.1. I’m feeling like I should have waited a couple of weeks before upgrading. I’ll be more prudent next time.

Update 1/31/07: Tags are back. The problem I’m having with the sidebar appears to be unique to this site. Wonderful.

Update 2/4/07: With an update to the “Sidebar Widgets” plugin, the sidebar and all other features are working properly. Isn’t it great the way computers make our lives so much easier?

In the unlikely event that you’re interested, this graph shows what the upgrade did to the number of visits per day. Notice the gap.

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You may have noticed that this site was down or displaying completely wrong over the last couple of days. That’s because I attempted to upgrade my version of Wordpress (from 2.05 to 2.1) and messed it up. Compounding my error, I tried the upgrade the day before I had to drive to Portland Maine for three days for work and had no time to try to fix the site.

It’s now better, but not completely back up. I’ll keep working on it until the site is functioning properly again. My apologies for any inconvenience. I’ll try not to let this happen again.

Update

Everything now seems to be displaying properly. The site seems to load more quickly with the new version of Wordpress. Please let me know if you have any problems.

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So I’m working on a still life as a gift for my brother and my sister and law. They used to blow glass (hey, Steve and Linda, if you’re reading this—are you ever going to get back to glass again?). Anyway, the subject of the still life is two lovely glass Christmas ornaments that they gave me some time ago. It seems like a nice full-circle kind of gift. (Yes, I know it’s late.)

The two ornaments are sitting on a yellow comforter. Since that takes up the foreground, middle ground (except for the ornaments) and background, most of the composition consists of yellow fabric. It’s an oil painting on a gessoed hardboard panel.

On my first pass, I messed up the color of the yellow. For the lights, I used mostly ochres, especially Doak’s wonderful French ochre extra pale. In the darks, I used raw sienna, bunt umber, and raw umber. That was a lot of time panting complex folds of fabric, and while I was doing it it seemed fine to me. The next day, it just looked wrong. After some thought, I realized that I had screwed up the chroma of the darks, making them too dull. When I focus on the darks, they look pretty low in chroma. But when I painted that dullness, it became clear that the overall relationship between the chroma in the darks with the chroma in the light was wrong. That can happen when the difference between one color and another is subtle, but repeated throughout a painting. An error that would not be noticeable if it was in only one part of a painting looks really huge if the same problem repeats itself over and over.

So I went back over the fabric parts of the painting (after wet sanding for good adhesion from one layer to the next) and re-painted, paying more careful attention to chroma. For darks, I used yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, and ultramarine blue instead of umbers. That worked much better.

I am no hater of umbers; for really low-chroma yellows, they are hard to beat (some artists think that umbers are “deadening” colors just like black is purported to be). But in this case, they were not the right tool for the job.

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