5-1-22 oil/collage as it looked moments ago, following some collaging.
noon: gotta leave for our physical therapy appointments. did some collaging, and here’s the current state of the painting.
5-5-22 PT collages onto 5-1-22 oil/collage
11 am drawing with reed pen on paper, to be cut up & collaged onto 5-1-22 oil/collage
11am: made this drawing just now, which i’ll cut up and collage onto areas of the current 5/1/22 oil/collage painting.
5/1/22 oil/collage as it looked at the end of my painting day today
4:31 PM: ABOVE is where the painting is currently at at the end of my painting day today. there’s more complexity, and I do like those grays that entered the composition beneath the dancing figure with the red shoes and patterned black trousers. I put a bit more red into the shorts of the central figure, which is like an anchor and counterpoint for all the blues floating about.
waddaya think of my new blue/green shoes?
3:18 PM: I spent all morning putting together a going away present for k., who I mentored here in the studio a few years ago. he’s leaving for college, where he’ll study art, and we’re invited to his going away party tomorrow. at firsts I was hjust going to give him a brand new travel sketch and drawing book; the kind i’ve been using for years when we traveled. I made hundreds of drawing in those books, almost all of them with colored pencils.
but slowly my desire to give him a going away present turned into a project. I used a melange of photos i’ve shot of him at work in the studio to decorate a cardboard box, which once housed my new indoor/outdoor wireless weather station and was the perfect size.
i’ll have to get his permission to post pics of the decorated box, which he’ll likely give me tomorrow afternoon at the party.
so once I completed that project, I unstretched one of the paintings I didn’t include in my current show because of the warped stretcher bars. the gallery has a guy who makes totally true ones, so I ordered one to fit this painting and will stretch it when we’re in denver for my talk on friday, then include it in the show.
then if finally dove back in to 5/1/22 oil/collage. i’m still taking it slow, to preserve precious while space. so here’s where it’s at:
k. in my studio, at work on a sky painting a few years ago
3:24 PM: today I took 5/1/22 oil/collage to the next stage. BELOW is a comparative view
DETAIL: 5/1/22 oil/collage
5/1/22 oil/collage as it looked this afternoon at the end of my painting day.
6:34 PM: i did runover to the studio and shot 5/1/22 oil/collage with my iphone. i’ll have to wait till thursday afternoon, when the new SD drive will be delivered, to start shooting again with my nikon. come to think of it, maybe i should go back & add one more to the order, just in case.
DETAIL- 5/1/22 oil/collaeg
5:34 PM: looks like i’ll have to wait till tomorrow morning to post pics of the work i did today on 5/1/22 oil/collage.i didn’t have time to post in the studio, and when i brought the SD drive to the house, it wouldn’t register on my laptop. it’s been acting funny for a couple of days, and it finally gave out. just got a new one which will arrive thursday, but i have a couple of old ones that still work in the studio, so i’ll re-shoot in the morning, after i send the 3 birds & a goat off to greece at the p.o.
2:46 PM: i’m continuing work on 5/1/22 oil/collage and will post pics at the end of my painting day.
my new weather station was delivered this afternoon, and here it is in the studio.
5/1/2022 watercolor/collage flipped 90° so that it’s now a horizontal composition.
7:04 PM: as i gazed at yesterday's watercolor/collage, it started bugging me. i saw a face i didn’t like at all. it looked somewhere between angry and agonized. so i tried turning it and finally ended up with it flipped 90° on it’s side. for now that seems right. and when i get to the studio, after going to the post office & mailing the bird & goat paintings to my grand daughter in greece, i’ll resume work on the new, long narrow 4/30/22 oil/collage. i’m getting some ideas about where to go with it next.
it’s a partly cloudy morning, but the sun should break through by the time i’m back from the p.o.
5/1/22 oil/collage stage 2
3:52 PM: I continued work on 5/1/22 oil/collage,which is now in stage 2. the drawing of the interior of space gallery from above, where i’m currently showing new work, has been flipped 360°. some oil colors have been introduced, and a checkerboard pattern has shown up (again) behind the two sketched in figures. lots of blotting and scraping but so far no collaging.
5/1/22 oil/collage (the best space) stage 1
1:53PM: here’s 5/1/22 oil/collage stage 1 and my morning drawing, stages 1, 2, 3 and 4.
11:22 AM: well, as I said yesterday, I still have no idea what will happen on this new canvas I tacked to my east facing studio wall, but i’m getting some inklings, many of which came to me in the shower this morning. I started my day with a quick drawing of some plastic containers in a box under my studio kitchen sink. lets see where it goes from here; i’ll post once I Strat making marks on this pristine white surface.
2:48 PM: I did a major cleanup of everything in my studio associated with my current space gallery exhibition. then I tacked this piece of blank portrait linen to the wall. it’s what’s left on the roll, and measures 27.75 x 85”
so what will happen in this space? stay tuned; right now I have absolutely no idea! a great place to be, wouldn’t you say?
7:28 AM: in 2018-19, i created a series of paintings inspired by the work of 18th c. landscape painters and masters of the brush: ike no taiga and his wife, tokuyama gyokuran, legendary figures in the history of japanese art.
the paintings all measure 78x26", in oil on linen. a select number of these pantings will be shown for the first time in my upcoming exhibition at colorado mountain college museum, september through december of this year. during that period, i’ll be giving talks and mentoring art students at the college.
here you see one of the paintings in this series, titled 10th month. click on series in the drop down menu above, and scroll down to sound of a flute to view the series:
little bird I, II and III
3:14 PM: today I painted the third and final little bird, titled little bird III. all 3, along with little goat, will be mailed to my son Dimitri in Painia, a suburb of athens, where he and his soon to be wife live, with their new daughter. the four paintings will be framed and hung in my grand daughter’s bedroom.
at some point, probably in a year or two, she’ll notice them and know that her grandpa philip the painter loves her very much. I haven’t yet met her, but that will happen in good time.
little goat
little bird III watercolor, gouache & collage on arches watercolor paper
little bird II at the end , the very end, of my painting day
6:15 PM: as i am prone to do, just before walking out the door and going to the house to meet mikela and go walking up the trail, i glanced at little bird II and found it…..yes, predictable and thus a tad boring. i strode over to my collaging table and, after playing around with spacing and using the scissors to cut and crop two pieces of a cut up map, i added them to the painting. the blues of the map lifted the painting to another level, and balanced the pale orange to the right of the little bird.
2:22 PM: I started the second little bird to send to my new grand daughter. i’ll continue working on it for a little while, and then mikela and I plan on taking our trail walk. I don’t know the names of either of these little birds, so little bird I and little bird II will have to do!
the combination of blues, yellows and reds is yet another masterpiece of nature, with the black around her beak sealing the deal!
little bird II 6.75x6.50” watercolor & gouache on arches
portrait of my dad, roy tarlow, 2004
12:24 PM: while searching my flat files for tracing paper, I came across the 1994 painting in watercolor of mikela at David Hockney’s Malibu house, 1994.
we used to visit him regularly in his hollywood hills house, and he had just purchased this one so it was our first time. right on the beach, it was really lovely. we had some lunch together and walked on the beach.
during the same search, in the same drawer, I discovered this little portrait of my dad, painted in 1994, a year before he passed.
mikela at Hockney’s Malibu house, 1994
4:49 PM: i completed the little bird before leaving the studio for the house about an hour ago. i like how delicate it is, and how well the lightly brushed background works. i also love how the first drawing i started works like a ghost image above the little bird’s head.
it makes me want to re-do the little goat tomorrow. the first one, although i like it, was like a warmup after days of not painting or being in my studio because of the gallery opening.
2:21 PM: I started a second small watercolor/gouache painting for my new grand daughter’s bedroom. here’s stage 1.
a little bird. 7x6.5” STAGE 1. watercolor & gouache on arches watercolor paper
12:09 PM: while reviewing some 2015 photos, I came across these two; it’s a stage in the development of one of my gaze series paintings, inspired by vermeer
