Lab Book #14, Part 9: the Fire Eater

This is the final installment in the Lab Book 14 mini-series (please see the previous blog for part 8 posted today). The idea behind this painting actually came about as a result of writing this blog. I had been writing a few entries about how to paint fire (Stay Warm-Unleash Your Creativity, and Escaping the Act), and had the idea to make a whole painting based on the illusion of fire. In the bottom right of the painting I placed a cartoon face (a composite of many doodles) holding fire up to her mouth. Initially there were no eyelids but the character looked way too freaked out about the fire, she is a professional after all.

I tried to include the illusion of fire-light in every part of this painting. The fire originates from the bottom right, and there is also a second light source (the cool blue moon at top left). Some objects are lit with both light sources, see the two women in dresses and the crowd in the middle, their fronts have warm highlights from the fire while their heads and shoulders are lit by the blue moon. The distant background elements (trees, and rising smoke) are also illuminated by the fire, which gives the sense that this fire is quite strong, projecting light well into the horizon. The face of the Fire Eater is also lit up, with intense primary colours on the left part of his face, which fade to cool greens and blues on the right. One final note on composition of this series, I made sure that the center of interest (the main focal element) was in a different position for each work....compare the Fire Eater (bottom right) to the Burlesque Dancer (top left). This way, when looking at them one after another, your eye will always fall to a different place.

20x16" hot press, 2009

Lab Book #14, Part 8: The Burlesque Dancer

What is a circus without a burlesque dancer? I was watching a lot of a TV show on HBO called Carnivale, and they had this old-style circus with a lot of the classic performers like burlesque dancers. I suppose that series was part of the inspiration to do the Lab Book 14 series which is centered around circus themes. On the top left of this painting is the dancer, lights shining up from below as she works the stage. You will also see, to the right of the stage, an image of a couple dining on a pillar in the desert, this doodle was used to create another work, which I think I may have posted already, if not I will post it soon.

This painting was all about the light and shadow. Every object on and around the stage is depicted with bottom lighting (the light is from below). I have not actually indicated where the light is, adding to the mystery of the picture. To create strong lighting effects, try to have a fairly sharp border between the shadow and light. For example, the dancer herself is almost all lit up, except for a thin sliver of shadowing on her left side. Similarily, the 'fan-like' obejct in the wall to the right of the stage is nearly black and white (without too much grey area between), which intensifies the contrast between shadow and light. Another trick is to keep some of the background elements dark, look at underneath the stage, I have created very dark cave-like images which provides a backdrop enhancing the bright parts of the painting.

20x16", hot press, 2009

Cobblestone Street, Paris, France

On a walk through Paris I came across this wonderful scene where the sun as just peaking over the apartments casting rich blue shadows across the cobblestone road. The location was somewhere west of the Notre Dame cathedral, just north of the seine river, in fact the road where you see the two cars is just next to the river, and the apartments you see in the background is on a small island. In the foreground on the right is a museum, I'm not sure what they were showing there but the security guard was quite interested in what I was doing, luckily he did not ask me to leave.

Finding the right location is half the challenge when painting ourdoors. For this scene I walked for almost 45 minutes to find the right conditions. First, it is important to find a spot where the sun is falling on your paper, try to avoid sitting in the shadow of a building. Second, it is best if the sun is shining on all or some of your landscape, in this example the road and the apartments on the right are lit up. Third, you need to find somewhere safe to sit, if you are teetering on the curb of a busy street or in the middle of a sidewalk this is not good. So after all that, you want to find something interesting to paint too, try not to compromise the first few rules too much even if the scene looks good because the results will be dissapointing. Here, the scene may not have been so spectacular (it is not the Eiffel tower or anything), but the simple lighting and rich blues and browns really make the painting a great success.

11 x 7.5" coldpress 2009

Lab Book #14, Part 7: The Ringmaster

I'll try to get through the Lab Book 14 series on the blog so I can show some of the new Dominican Republic paintings. In this installment of the Lab Book #14 mini series entitled three ringed flying circus on wheels, we see the Ringmaster of the circus, apparently standing in a desert populated by panicked stags and flying worms. Is he lost? Is he even alive? The form of the Ringmaster is scarecrow-like or even skeletal, his hands and lower torso unseen. Going with the lyrics of a Beatles song I was listening to at the time, the button on the Ringmasters lapel says "Hello Hello". Unlike the other paintings in this series, Part 7 is done in portrait size (taller height than width). My idea would be to hang all nine paintings on the same wall, with this one in the middle and the other eight arranged around it.

In the Lab Book book series I use a style I call doodleism, which puts together small independent doodles into a larger work. I am unsure as to the spelling of the word as 'doodleism' seems alot like 'yankee doodleism' a sort of american cultural term, while 'doodlism' without the e turns up a few references to a painting or drawing style when it is used in google searches. At any rate, the essence of the style is seen in 'The Ringmaster', look into the form of the Ringmasters body and you see dozens of small doodles put together into a torso-like form. Even in the background soil and sky, doodles have been included to represent contours and details. In some cases the doodles were pretty well formed in my original notes and appear more or less unchanged in the final work, for example the deer in the top right, and the desert scene in the top left, both appeared as full-paged drawings in my lab notebooks.

Lab Book #14, Part 7: the Ring Master, watercolour 16 x 20" hot press, 2009 (No. 1806)

Plaza De Espana in Seville, Spain

Another painting from the 1998 Spain trip, this one shows a part of a famous square, which I believe was called Plaza De Espana. I do remember that as I did this painting a large group of school kids gathered around and watched every brushstroke. It was pretty fun, and at least children are short and therefor dido not block the view. Often adults stand and watch (or film you, in Spain), and block the sunlight and your scene. But otherwise I really do enjoy having on-lookers when I paint. I'll talk a bit about painting windows, because they can be very difficult at times for the landscape painter. My advice with painting windows is to not bother with too much detail. Often, there are slats in the window painted white, which make it a very difficult thing with watercolour (because you would have to paint around all the slats and it would take forever). Instead, a better idea is to start by laying down the colour of the glass, filling in the entire area of the window, and then put the slats on top with a darker colour. Nobody will ever notice that you changed the colour of the slats from white to brown or whatever, and you end up saving a lot of time on something that nobody really notices anyways. 

 Palacio Arzobispal Sevilla Spain, watercolour 5x7" cold press, 1998 (No. 0936)

Lab Book #14, Part 6: the Sideshow

I decided to post another today (see previous post for Barbados Cruise Boat), it is part 6 in the Lab book #14 miniseries. I ran in to a particularly tough string of doodles in my notes, most of which were tiny little abstract landscapes, which made it rather difficult to create a sideshow scene. There is a stage in the middle of the painting towards the bottom, on which a twisty spider-monkey thing stands, a ghost-like onlooker watches. My favorite part is the salt shaker in the top right, and the couple having a picnic in the bottom right. I'll talk a bit about painting yellow, because it is the most problematic for beginner/amateur artists. The main problem is that yellow right from the tube has a very low value (on the dark-lightness scale it is very light) so when you put it in a painting without further mixing it looks kind of fake. To make a yellow with a darker value, you need to mix in a little bit of blue and red and maybe a bit of green. Or with watercolour, you can lay down the yellow pure, let it dry, and then overlay with a purply/greenish layer. That is what I did in the lower left of the painting. It is hard to tell from the photo, but in real life, that part of the painting is a shimmering yellow tone, like creme brule, or a nice golden lager beer. Hmm, that gives me ideas. 12x16, hot press, 2009

Cruise Boat, Barbados

Here is a little painting I did on my trip to Barbados, on a beach that our cruise boat stopped at, it pulled right up on the beach and let people go down a big slide if they wanted. If not there was a ramp. it was a big boat, 3 stories high as you can see. To my surprise, the crowd on the boat played loud music and danced the while time. I stood by the dance floor watching awkwardly until one of the locals pulled me in and I learned quickly how to dance like the locals. As I approach another winter get away vacation, I have to think back on how to capture the brilliant caribbean colours. The water here is a deep cool blue on the horizon, a teal green in the middle, and a yellowish blue, with finally a pale purple near the beach. The deep blue is ultramarine with emeral green and a touch od rose red, then you add a bit more yellow in the middle, and then even more yellow and a touch of cadmium red for the warmer tones near the beach. I keep everything lighter than ususal, just to bring out the feeling of warm sun. 7x10"cold press November 2001