More from "Productive November"!

The top drawing (charcoal and pastel) seems to me energetic and simultaneously still.  I'm captured by the ambiguity and feel satisfied that I have recorded myself in a moment I wasn't fully aware of at the time I did the picture.  Not to sound like a tired beer commercial but it actually doesn't get better than that.  Reminded of what I didn't even notice!  Or didn't dare consider?  A little like living on the edge.  That explains the energy part.
The oil portrait might have something going for it, I'm not sure.  This is how it looked about two weeks ago; I've made revisions since.  Although it isn't as loose as I might like, I've obviously taken license with color and line to fracture some of the reality....the structural, material reality...in an effort to plumb myself in the dynamic and capture something ephemeral. In my mind more important, more significant, more elusive, more satisfying than a life-like rendering.  More satisfying?  Well, maybe my satisfaction is in trying to obtain the short-lived experience and making it last.......which isn't all that different than what the representational realist has in mind but I want to remember how I felt, my emotion, my awareness.  That seems much more "active" if you will.

Portrait

18 x 20
Oil

I've pushed paint around on this picture for far too long.  I think she's done...maybe a few little jabs with the brushes but maybe not, too.  I want to do more oil portraits, get my hand, arm and head (mostly) to loosen up and get out of the tight zone!!!!!! I like the detail here and I dislike it too.  Ah, the totally ambivalent painter.

Finished picture, plus

At the top of this posting is a piece I finished last week; the images which follow are works in various stages of completion. The finished floral represents a departure of sorts from my usual selection of subject as well as a shift in style. Although essentially representative, I feel it has an expressive quality I would like to grow in similar work, including figurative and landscape pieces.

Portrait/work-in-progress

"Why Don't You Dance" and other images

What's the work about these days? "Why Don't You Dance", Raymond Carver's short story which appeared in a volume entitled "Where I'm Calling From" and which describes a random intersection of lives, young and not so young, personal transitions, plans and failures, is a focus right now. The image set in the middle of this post is 24" x 36" and is the first of two I plan to illustrate the story. It (the image) is my progress thus far as I attempt to zero in on lines, trajectories, light and shadow. Colors are revealing themselves to me....since I think you really can't shape lines, trajectories, light and shadow without using color in some fashion...so I think I am progressing.

The second canvas will move the view more to the right and include the young male and female couple in the story. Haven't decided if I want to include the third character in the view....the lone male resident of the house whose life seems in major disarray. I'll have to re-read the story. It's great how the picture informs the story and vice versa!

Oil on canvas and conte, watercolor and gouache in the images above "Why Don't You Dance".

The orange/white picture is a modified version of the picture I posted previously. Better proportions, I think.

I bought a book at a local used book place a couple of weeks ago: "The Human Figure" by John H. Vanderpoel, published in Chicago in 1913. The pen and ink images are copies I've done. Great fun to do!