#6 - Icy Nocturne - A Study in Intensities

#6- Icy Nocturne, 8x8", Oil on Stretched Canvas

With this, my sixth small painting, I decided going in that this would not take me all afternoon.  I made a deal with myself that no matter what, I would make choices and live with them.  This didn't come as an easy bargain, let me tell you.  I like to pick, polish, and fret over things.  And it is really a new thing for me not to need several sessions with a piece before I'm happy.  Sometimes, it's many sessions, particularly with portraits, which have taught me humility, if nothing else.

So, here was this reference and it was kind of begging for some interest, so I decided to pop up the color and see where that took me, no matter what.

The reference was taken a while back after a freezing rain storm.  It's actually looking down the alleyway next to our house.  Everything was a glare of ice that night with surreal colors reflecting of iced surfaces.

I don't know if I caught it, exactly, but this was a hoot to do.  The freedom of not fretting too much about it made me feel a bit more courage, and I pretty much laid on the color and left it.   I even told myself I didn't need to share it.  No one would ever know.  It would be my little secret.  Ha!

It's not my usual style, but I'm not used to painting being like this, so this was great to do.  Looking at it now, I'm thinking it's maybe a little over the top, but I'm leaving it as it is.  What might make your eyes cross in a larger size is less garish in this smaller one.   Maybe.

I wonder, do a lot of people find making paintings relaxing and fun most of the time?  I really can't say that I do.  It's intense, interesting, nerve wracking, and it wears me out.  I still love the challenge, but I never understood the concept of it being simple fun.  Moments can be exciting, like when there is a passage that really works, but fun?  Nope.

Well, today, it was fun.  Two hours of it!  Maybe this is something this daily painting practice might give me.  Courage?


 (It's taken me a few days to put this up since the paint is pretty heavy impasto, and I like to scan these little ones in rather than photograph them.   I needed to wait for it to partially dry.)

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Getting This Whole Thing Rolling...

Today, I made myself a promise that I will complete at least four small paintings per week, and I'm 3/4 there now.  I have three finished, drying 8 inch squares.  I'll post them one at a time, probably starting tomorrow.  It's already an exciting and interesting exercise.   My old way of working was (is still) to generate a large composition from various references and take what usually was a few weeks to complete the painting, working in successive layers until I was satisfied with the result. 

This method of working is exciting because it allows fast decisions, quicker turn around time and more risk taking.  And, it lets me express ideas in almost a visual shorthand, which I love to do.  I can play!  And I know it's going to teach me a lot.  I'm going for the gestural, rather than specifics.  And I'm going to use as large a brush as I can to force me to deal with the most important elements and learn to get rid of distractions and unnecessary detail.

I'll write more about my thoughts on the process of each specific painting as they are posted, but already with only three under my belt, I found each successive one was more fun, and more freeing.  For some reason, I started with doing little animal sketches, and so my first three are that.  

As I was working, I began to notice that the biggest kick I was getting was in working with the mid-tones and the temperatures and values within them.  So, I guess my focus so far visually is that, looking for shifts and unexpected color changes within a mid value area. 

The joy of this is that one thought leads to another, and once I recognized this curiosity of mine, it led me to want to do very gestural landscape pieces, looking for nuanced mid-tones and playing with intensity and temperature in them in landscape work.  And it is also making me want to play with my values, perhaps not having white as the lightest color, but a more subdued Naples yellow or cream as my lightest tone - tightening the value range and making distinctions simply with temperature.

I am pretty excited about this.