starting the motion 15 under-drawing & plein air at the creek / March 17, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

5:10 PM: this morning i started work on the under-drawing for the new motion 15. i got this far when i heard a knock on the door. it was my mentee, K. who had arrived for our creek adventure. as i told him, i've always gone out to paint at the creek alone. so this was a brand new experience.

we went to the start of the tashi gomang stupa, got out collapsable tables, stools, painting materials & sat down to paint. K had never used gouache before, so i gave him a 2 minute lesson and off he went. I'm very impressed with what he did. gotta help make dinner; more soon....

BELOW: just look at K's very first gouache painting!

a minor tweak to motion 14 / March 16, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

11:36 AM:upon entering my studio, motion 14 looked resolved. not only resolved, but in an interesting and new way, compared with the previous paintings in the series. i called mikela over for an opinion and she fully agreed, except for one area on the mid-right, which she felt needed something in that area of the composition to keep it from creating the appearance of straight line.

if you click on the left image below to make it full screen, then click right to move to the tweaked painting, i think you'll see just how important that small change was to the entire composition.

so now, on to motion 16, for which i'm about to stretch the canvas.

before tweak after tweak

a 90 degree flip, white-over & re-draw / March 15, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3PM: it's unusual for me to leave a painting in such a state. but it got cloudy & dark & i need to make the p.o. before it closes at 3:45. so now i have something to look forward to tomorrow. see ya then,my friends.

now that i look at it from 30 feet, it's definitely got something....something i rarely allow to happen without quickly moving towards greater resolution. could it be this is resolution? i'll know in the morning...

12:38 PM: what i did yesterday was good but not good enough. i kind of knew that even before entering the studio this morning. so i flipped it 90 degrees & covered it with an off-white, then scraped off the excess & started drawing into it with warm grey oil stick, which you see here.

updates will be posted as they occur.

1st plein air of 2018, starting the motion 14 over-painting / March 14, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

5:34 PM: back at the creek again, back at the creek again, thank god almighty, i'm back at the creek again!!!

it was an especially mild day, with temperatures reaching 58F & very little wind. the creek was in a beautiful state, with just enough ice to create elegant curviliniar white shapes contrasing with the deep greenish-blue-brown of the creek, peppered with water-worn siena-orange rocks. there were no humans about, but i was surprised, considering it's only mid march, to find flying insects annoying me.

admittedly, whilst the remainder of my body was warm enough, after 15 minutes or so, my butt started getting cold. so next time i'll bring something to place on top of the little 3 legged canvas stool i sit on.

oh, the joy of it! oh, the richness....and the spring frangrances haven't even kicked in yet! the buds; the pale green emerging leaves; the mosses & grasses...

*motion 14* as i stop painting at at 2 pm

1:40 PM: i'm stopping here for the day to have time for clean up before heading to the creek. todays plein air(s) will be gouache on paper, but i placed an order earlier for 50 16" stretcher bars which will allow me to stretch 12 16" square canvases to use for painting plein air starting in a week or so.

it definitely was an advantage, having to stop so early. i didn't overwork it.

noon: although it's partly cloudy, today is a better day to venture out to the creek. so i started the over-painting on motion 14, and the time constraint of having to head out in a fe whours will keep me focused & conscious. taking it slow, taking it easy while listening to neil young, who i'm especially hooked on lately.

slow & easy does it, philip. "don't let it bring you down..."

"find someone who's turning, and you will come around....."

completing the motion 14 under-drawing / March 13, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

4:31 PM: the weather turned a bit chilly & cloudy, so i'm going to wait till tomorrow to go out to the creek.

1:32 PM: i completed the motion 14 under-drawing & am ready to start the over-painting in oil. but first, i'm preparing to venture out to the creek for my first 2018 plein air adventure. i'm taking gouache colors today, which makes sense for a first foray, and i'll get into oils later in the spring.

BELOW are candidates for the over-painting in oil. all are 16x16" oil on linen.

continuing motion 14 under-drawing / March 12, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:40 PM: this under-drawing is progressing slowly. it's giving me ideas about future dedicated under-drawings on large sheets of paper, which could be a part of the mix once this series is shown in houston.

12:43 PM: here's the current state of the motion 14 under-drawing.

8:38 AM: these images are reminders of the direction and aesthetic that i find most compelling right now, as i enter day 2 of the motion 14 drawing. at the same time, i'm preparing my materials to venture out to the creek for the start of my 2018 spring plein air series. initially, it will be gouache on paper, but oil and or acyllic will follow later on.

starting on the left: guston, guston, gorky & zhao mengfu (ca. 1300 ad, chinese)

starting prep work on motion 14 / March 11, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

starting the under-drawing for motion 14

4:06 PM: i stretched a new 36x36" canvas (portrait linen), keyed it out to smooth out a few wrinkles, which i hate, & started the colored pencil drawing, which i'll be working on for at least a few more days before i start painting in oil. the image i'm using for the under-drawing is a close up shot of rocks & water from one of our walks this past fall.

12:54 PM: upon entering the studio & giving motion 12 & 13 the usual first glance, they appeared resolved. so the next step is to bring them over to the house this afternoon & see how they hold up on the walls there.

BELOW: are some iphone pics i shot this morning, and i'll post pics of my prep work stretching the canvas & starting the drawing for motion 14, which looks like it too will be 36x36."

CLICK on an image to learn details

hello again / March 10, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

1:15 PM: following 3 very productive and gratifying days of intensive meetings with our actionlab team, i'm back, albeit briefly, in the studio. i'm a bit wacked out still, but i was able to make a small but important, i think, alteration to motion 13. the green bit at the very top kept grabbing my eye, so i did away with it, to the benefit of the entire composition. in addition, you will notice a white line tracing the top of the grey/brown triangle at the top, and a broken white line beneath at the bottom of the grey of the rectangular box-like rock at the bottom left.

one of the rewards of not being able to look at a new painting for a period of days is fresh vision. see what you think of the before (left) and after, BELOW:

motion 13 becomes more complex / March 6, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:16 PM: today i made significant changes to motion 13. i kept finding my solutions too pat & predictable, so while the painting didn't by any means look bad, i simply wasn't satisfied with it. so i worked on it, stopped & photographed it thinking it was resolved, then found myself diving back in. this happened 3, maybe 4 times. oil pastel played a role, which is where those blue-greens come from. and when i couldn't find any more jumpung off points in the oil pastel i was using as my inspiration, i didn't hesitate to let my eye rove to another painting for ideas & inspiration.

we have our team actionlab members coming down form boulder tomorrow for 3 days of meetings, so it's likely i won't get back to work in the studio till saturday. in the mean time, this painting will sit & decide for itself whether it's resolved.

BELOW: the painting at 1 pm and 3:30pm.

continuing motion 13 / March 5, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

11/7/14 plein air oil, the current inspiration for *motion 13*

3:49 PM: the source image has once again shifted, so i did quite a bit of work on motion 13 today! it looks close to being resolved, but it's always hard to tell at the end of the day, when i'm tired. this is a good example of how the painting has, one could say, a mind of it's own. if you as an artist are commited to not knowing, to the never ending process of discovery and to avoiding repetitve , easy solutions, then you just follow your intuition and listen to where your body wants to go. it's very physical. you must be willing entertain the possibility that it might fail.

what i'm slowly discovering is that there a limited, very limited number of plein air gouaches & oils that can get me turned on enough to carry me through the entire process, as tsarouchis told me years ago.

here's how it looks tight now:

noon: upon entering my studio, my first glance, as always very important, gave me the queues as to where i needed to go next with motion 13. i'm in the thick of it & just stopped long enough to compose & post this. more later...

yesterday today at noon