1/20/2022 watercolor/collage at 3pm today
2:46 PM: this is the end of my painting day today, following some adjustments to the work I did earlier.
BELOW: 5 stages of this watercolor/collage
1/20/2022 watercolor/collage at 1:30pm today
1:42 PM: it’s an overcast, cold day, with snow about to happen. I did more work on 1/20/2022 watercolor/collage, adding quite a bit so that it reads way better from a distance. i’ll continue painting for about another hour & post more then.
BELOW: before & after
2:30 PM: that’s all i’m going to do on this one today. I like where it’s going & want to wait till the morning to determine next moves. I may take it back to the house & sit with it tonight. we’re taking our trail walk in half an hour anyway, so it’s time to stop.
12:46 PM: I was getting a tad fatigued making all this small oil/collages, so i’m taking a break and making a watercolor/collage, which measures 11 1/4 x 30”. here are stages 1 & 2:
continuing work & will post later this afternoon.
1:06 PM: 4 of my watches are telling m it’s time for a mid-day snack. (the one in the black box is in a watch winder.)
how’s about some of that hummus mikela just made? PS: the lines in my thumbnail are an indication of a zinc deficiency, so last week I started taking liquid zinc, but it takes 3-6 months for nails to grow out. great hummus though, on trader joe’s delicious some enchanted crackers.
1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 9 today at the end of my painting day. shot with my new iphone 13 pro
2 details of today’s painting
2:33 PM: I made some deep changes to 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 9 today, adding 2 figures and using totanium/zinc white to open & simplify the space. yesterday I got my new iPhone 13 pro, which is reputed to have a very high quality camera. BELOW are two photos of the painting as it looked at 2pm. on the left is the one shot with my Nikon D 7200 with a telephoto lens, and on the right, the one I shot with the iPhone 13 pro. now of course a lot has to do with how I adjusted them with photoshop.
but so far, I can say I definitely prefer the nikon, which has truer colors an less glare. for some reason, the iPhone camera picked up a lot of glare. I have to do a lot more experimental shots to reach a decision as to the quality of the iPhone camera.
on the bottom row: 2 experiments with different adjustments on the iPhone.
5:29 pm: i wiped out coolj; it was too much like the other one with llcoolj. i’ll pickit up again on wednesday, when i’m back in the studio.
2:08 PM: I began work on 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 9 this morning, and took photos of 4 stages of development, BELOW.
as you will notice, collage was applied in the very first stage, albeit sparingly. i’m becoming more relaxed about where I stop, and less apt to say “I should have stopped at….” well, I didn’t. this suite of 12 paintings, of which this is #9, has gained an identity. unexpected and unplanned, of course.
this morning I gave a telephone interview to a reporter from the greek newspaper ta nea, about my memories of the greek painter, fassianos, who died yesterday at age 87. I had good things to say about his work, but left out this part, which is in a message I sent Dimitri:
“I like much of his work, but when you go down that path of repeating the same imagery over and over, you better be damned good. Otherwise, it’s predictable. I said good things about him in my interview, all of which I believe, but right now, looking at a page of his work on Google, it doesn’t sweep me away. It doesn’t Move me. I have high standards, so while I think he uses the picture space wisely, has a good coloristic sense & makes beautiful marks, that’s simply not enough for me. Personally, I think Stefanou is a better painter, conveys more feeling in his work.”
9:55 AM: looks like a mess, but it’s working for me….
one of my two tables on wheels with some of my materials
12:26 PM: I didn’t sleep very well, so this might be a short work day. when I entered my studio and glanced at 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 7, I felt like it needed some breathing space. so I collaged a piece of a magazine article which contains black geometric lines on a white ground. it’s just what was needed, giving your eye room to wander more freely and explore the finer details of this new painting/collage.
1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 7. day 2
then I moved on to a new one, which at the moment has a delicate painterly touch and gives the impression of a flying skateboarder with a minimum of painterly strokes and just two colors: violet and yellow.
i’ll likely do some more once I post this, but I don’t have much juice left for today.
1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 78 day 1
2:17 PM: I added a second skateboarder to the composition. after resting for a bit I got a new burst of energy. I like what happened to the composition, which is now much more vibrant. lets see what happens tomorrow morning…
1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 78 day 1,with a second figure which I added at the end of my painting day today
1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 7. day 1
2:39 PM: today I began 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 7. right now as I look at it, I can’t tell whether it’s more complex & interesting than it’s siblings, or just too much. looking at it from afar right now is a bit like looking at a colorful map, and indeed there is a piece of map collaged on the right. unlike the others in this suite of 12 paintings (5 more to go) it has no central human presence. it did start out that way, with the figure of a skateboarder on the left, but now it reads more like an abstraction, give it till tomorrow morning, and we’ll see if and how it evolves.
7:30 PM: we both looked at it on our way to our trail walk, and found it to be excellent and resolved. it’s a bit different from the other 6, while clearly in the same stream of energy. so tomorrow i’ll start a new one.
3:16 PM: this morning I made a slight adjustment to 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 6 - day 3, then started 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 7 - day 1. AND had viber conversations with each of my 2 grandkids in athens.
so the modification I made to 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 6 can be seen in the red area to the left of the skateboarder. yesterday afternoon before leaving for the house I temporarily attached a piece of cut up drawing to see if it works. this morning, I determined that it did, so I collaged it. in so doing, , a corner tore, thus altering the red area slightly at the top, and for the better. you can compare the two in the images BELOW. before is on the left.
…then, I launched in to 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 6. it’s inspired by a photo I shot off the tv screen of ll coolj playing. a set, with a landscape at the bottom inspired by 18th century Japanese master of the brush, taiga.
1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 6 - day 2
2:28 PM: I continued painting 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas6 today. the main figure thus far is a jumping skateboarder in red & blue. right now, although it may be hard for you to make out, he’s located creek-side. some sketchy trees have appeared above him, with mottled rock formations to his right. on the right side of the composition sit two workmen, who have appeared in previous paintings, restoring an ancient mosaic damaged by an earthquake.
as a composition, it hasn’t yet ripened, so a quick glance, while it’s striking, it doesn’t have the same kind of coherence we observe in the previous paintings in this new series. give it time.
11:12 AM: I dove back into 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 4 this morning, adding a few collaged elements. the most significant one was a piece of a cut up ink drawing I made a few weeks ago, which you see in the lower right quadrant, and a piece of that, by now famous note I wrote to the ups delivery guy, in blue on the upper left.
if you take a look at the images BELOW of yesterdays version next to what I just did, you may notice that, which todays version is, in a sense more complex compositionally, it is, at the same time, simpler; easier for the eye & mind to absorb, and less literal. so, for example, the patterning surrounding the big drum, which defines the circumference, is now interrupted by a collaged piece of blue map, creating a visual transition from the red to the siena. in general, the predictable rectangular shapes being moved about by the figures have been interrupted and staggered into a syncopated rhythm. an important role in this transformation is played by the blue letters on the upper left. thelonious monk would appreciate what’s going on here..
1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 4 as it looked at 11am today, following some collaging
BELOW: yesterdays version, on the left
every night before we go to sleep, I read a short excerpt from moby dick and from the collected poems of wallace stevens, both of whom I find poetic in a complimentary way. so here’s a paragraph from Moby dick that struck me a few nights ago:
1:35 PM: I started 1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 5 this afternoon. right now, it’s just a drawing. i’ve been working all morning and my energy just dropped off, so i’ll pick it up again in the morning, here’s the initial drawing. these two guys are working on an ancient mosaic which survived a major earthquake. so the ripple you see is what happened to the mosaic in the earthquake, but aside from that it wasn’t damaged!
1/8/2022 polyptych, canvas 4
4:09 PM: so today I started the 4th painting in my polyptych. it’s along the lines of the others, and i’m thinking that instead of mounting them next to each other on a board, I might frame each of them individually and then they can be hung in a variety of juxtapositions.
BELOW are 1, 2 & 3 temporarily mounted on a piece of masonite.
polyptych canvases 1,2 & 3
9:37 AM: just found this in my files. pretty impressive!
