12:23pm update: parade 39 has been tweaked and is now resolved. as i mention below, the area i worked on is the blue jacket on the upper left, which is no longer a solid blue, but has been broken up with the fleecy texture you now see. this has successfully resolved the problem i spoke of earlier, where the eye kept going to that unbroken blue to the detriment of the rest of the painting.
the transformed jacket can be viewed below, in the top row left. the rest of the details illustrate more fully the point i made below in my 10:30 am update, regarding the abstracted figures in this painting and what they portend for the future paintings in this series.
so now, after a little brunch, i'm going to choose the image for the next in this series: parade 40. then i'll prepare and stretch the canvas so i can get back to work tomorrow or possibly saturday.
the completed parade 39 32x78"
10:30am update: when i walked in this morning, parade 39 passed the first glance test. it just needs a small tweak, which i mentioned yesterday, in the blue jacket on the upper left....to break up that blue a bit so your eye doesn't keep going there.
the abstracted figures on the upper right continue to be my favorite passage in this painting. as in parade 34, they are like signs, pointing the way to a personal language in painting human figures. BELOW: details from these 2 paintings side by side, showing a striking resemblance in the simplification and abstraction of the figures in a very personal style.
WATCHNEUZE: the latest twist in my ongoing watch obsession is the kenneth cole on the left. it's cheaply made in china, but exhibits a cool sense of design missing from many far more expensive brands. it has day and date functions in a minimalist display somewhat reminiscent of the very high end a. lange & söhne brand, which is clearly no accident. recently i purchased a watch which, after a few days, i thought was crap. so i returned it free of charge (amazon) and got this one for a third the price. this is day 2 and i still like wearing it, so it may become part of my slightly OCD watch rotation. i currently rotate about 6 in my collection, the most frequently worn being my relatively new ball engineer master illuminated by tritium tubes, which is in the photo on the right. it's rated to 1000 feet, so i wear it in the shower with no fear of damage, and it has a GMT function, allowing me to see at a glance what time it is in a second time zone, which of course for me is greece. you might be perplexed at my fixation on watches, but they give me incredible pleasure, so WTF.
last night in alamosa we attended the weekly meeting of the steamshop group, a new makers space in alamosa, which we've supported them in creating. the image for parade 39 was shot at the opening event for steamshop a few weeks back. a big part of the conversation last night was about logistics for our slv (san luis valley) summer camp, which will run in alamosa from july 6 to august 7. to view the schedule of classes, copy & paste this link and click on summer camp.
http://slvsteamshop.org/?page_id=19
this is a small drawing i made last night of one of the participants.