eil torrente in spurts / k’s self portrait progresses /  by Philip Tarlow

6:44 PM: k, my 14 year old mentee, came to the studio this afternoon and continued work on his self protrait. i watched as he spent time mixing his colors with a touching amount of care and attention to detail. the result shows it.

il torrente at the end of my painting day today

1:53 PM: both yesterday & today I had time considerations that made it necessary for me to work in short bursts, which i found very interesting. it is what it is, and that’s it for today!

so if you remember where it was at yestarday, you’ll notice that today i did some work on the lower portion of the painting, making it clearer that we’re looking at an ice bound creek.the blue of the water was also added, further modifying the starkness of the image as it looked yesterday. BELOW are the comparative images of yesterdays & todays versions, with two details of todays version on row 2.

Il Torrente simplified / k's self portrait /  by Philip Tarlow

4:21 PM: before leaving for santa fe, k came to the studio to continue his self portrait in oil on linen. i ocntinue to be amazed by his ever-ripening talent, and this portrait is now exception. sensitive; beautifully painted & conceived, it shows all the signs of a budding natural talent, a really fine painter in process. he gets it. he knows in his bones what painterly means. many artists i know who are much older than his 14 years still don’t get it. not to mention art historians.

this morning we had to leave about 11:30 for salida to pick up our car, which was driven by an acura employee, and exchange it with the loaner we’ve been driving for the past week. so i had no more than 15-20 minutes to make some changes to il torrente. below are images of the before (left) and after. an improvement, wouldn’t you say?

a scrapeover tones it down a notch /  by Philip Tarlow

il torrente post scraping

1:09 PM: this morning il torrente popped just a little too much, so i scraped over it 3-4 times with a palette knif & a ocnstruction tool with little teeth. i think that did it.

first of all, it subtly took some of the yellows, reds & blues and distributed them over and into the white. as well, it lowered the temperature and intensity of those colors so that the eye is now able to read the entire composition more smoothly. the blacks are a bit more towards grey. the effect is more akin to glancing at the frozen creek when we walk up to the stupa; it sings but in a mellow tone.

BELOW: yesterdays version on the left, and todays on the right. click back & forth 3-4 times to begin discerning the differences in various quadrents of the painting. notice, for example, the difference in the balcks of the rock on the lower right.

il torrente continued /  by Philip Tarlow

2:03 PM: i did a bit more to il torrente just now, softening the yellows, adding some oranges & pinks and dark reflections beneath a few of the rocks, all of which you can see if you compare the image on the right with the one below.

BELOW details of il torrente at 2 pm

1:28 PM: i had intended to continue preparation of my email to the gallery in tokyo, but out of the corner of my eye i spotted il torrente leaning against the wall and felt inspired to do more work on it. i used the white surface with faint markings in italian pompeii red as a ground for creek & rocks. the white now suggests ice and a bit of blue above, sky. i had a terrific time making the watery marks in red, blue & yellow., which may need toning down now that i look at them.

more fine tuning of sparse reflections /  by Philip Tarlow

12:50 PM: this morning , although i had considered this painting finally resolved, i was moved to do more. yesterday as we hiked up to the stupa, i had an unusual experience. i felt i was in this painting, that it was all around me and at the same time i was in it. this reminded us both strongly of the aboriginal cave paintings we saw in the outback of australia. for them, these were not paintings of a place; they were the place.

so this one seems to stand apart from the others in the series. today i refined the waterfalls in the center of the image, as well as refining and tweaking the lines representing the mountains and the trees growing on the contours representing the peaks of each successive rise. i don’t think i’ll do any more today.

sparse reflections: stepping back, going forward /  by Philip Tarlow

2:34 PM: so i went back into sparse reflections and made additional changes following my 11:42 am post. i was able to bring it closer to the state it was in before yesterdays intervention. i’m not yet sure, but i may have actually improved it. i like the rock formation on the bottom better, especially due to the treatment of the water beneath both rocks, and i think how i handled the waterfall in the center is more compelling and more magical. it now has an otherworldliness i like a lot. lets see how i feel about it tomorrow morning.

11:42 AM: i realized yesterday after leaving the studio that it was a mistake to mess with sparse reflections. influenced by my recents experiments whiting over illusory city and il torrente, i was bothered by what seemed to me to be the business of sparse reflections. actually, it was perfection! so now today i’m trying to execute the virtually impossible task of getting this painting back to where it was. my highest thought is that i can actually make it better, but it ain’t there yet! the beiges need more yellow, need to be a bit brighter.

BELOW: the version i messed with on the left and on the right, where it’s at right now, following a few hours of work this morning.

revisions to sparse reflections /  by Philip Tarlow

3:50 PM: just before cleaning up to leave for the house, i made some further changes to sparse reflections. most immediately noticeable are: the blue surrounding the mountain, the addition of more buff white and the renewed black marks defining the rocks at the bottom.

BELOW: left is the earlier version and on the right, how it looked 10 minutes ago

at work on sparse reflections about 1pm

2:17 pm: the work i did recently on illusory city and il torrente made sparse reflections seem harsh. so i went over it with white oil pastel, then scraped, then went in with grey oil pastel around the contours of some of the mountains.

at first glance, it seems easier for my eye to take in this long, narrow composition without getting stuck on the details. the buff white i put in the sky portion of the painting covers the white with dashes of blue sky that was there previously. this helps unify the composition. you can compare the two by clicking back & forth on the two images below. i may do more to accentuate the rocks below. in the earlier version they help anchor the image, and have gotten a little lost now.

ILLUSORY CITY and il torrente REVISIONS/todays bedside drawing /  by Philip Tarlow

il torrente at the end of my painting day

3:59 PM: at the very end of the day i made revisions to il torrente along similar lines to what i did earlier in the day with illusory city.

now i have an almost irresistable urge to white over the entire sound of a flute series, which would be radical.lets see how i’m feeling in the morning. the entire sound of a flute series seems to me too obvious, but could contain the bones of more suggestive, less specific works.

illusory city, 42x48” at 1 pm today

1:31 PM: i had whited over illusory city with oil stick, which allowed portions of the painting as it was to peek through. i liked what happened, especially the bit in the upper right corner. so i painted over that with red & a bit of green, using objects in my studio as a guide to the shapes you see.

so is philip wacko, or what? hopping from one style of painting to another like a jack rabbit?

at work today at noon

the marks you see on the surface you see have some magic. i can’t wait to work on il torrente which, you may recall, is a sister to illusory city, both of which were inspired by 11th century chinese paintings.

BELOW: the evolution of illusory city:

left: the painting at 1 pm today, middle: at noon, and right: on december 25th.

12:22 PM: this morning while preparing to meditate, i made my second bedside drawing; this one in the bathroom magnifying mirror. the strip of the lower portion of a painting you see above the drawing below left is a 16x16” ano kato series painting hanging next to our bed.

bedside drawing series /  by Philip Tarlow

a 2014 plein air creek painting and a recent collage just hung (temporarily) in my studio bathroom.

11:44 am: i found a small drawing book purchased in paris at museé d’orsay last year. it was in one of my many bags.

it occurred to me this morning that i’m missing out on an opportunity. i could have this little drawing book next to our bed, and while i’m engaged in my morning or evening rituals of shoulder exercises & toiletries, i could be making drawings in this little guy, which will now be used exclusively for that purpose. they will likely be in pencil, using the zippered little leather container of pencils i take with us on our travels, when i make my h&h and bonfire coffee shop drawings.

here’s the first one:

the drawings will likely be inspired by stuff in the bedroom, of which there is no lack!

new drawings made thus far in edwards and carbondale /  by Philip Tarlow

1:33 pm: while waiting for mikela to complete her actionlab360 meetings with teachers, i’m making drawings at bonfire coffee in carbondale. yesterday i was doing the same at h&h in edwards. here are the drawings i’ve done thus far. still at work here at bonfire till mikela comes to pick me up in about an hour.