It was quite a surprise to see this site completely changed without warning, but worse to find it unaccessible from my home computer, hence why I'm closing this site down from a neighbor's pc where things here perform terribly even when I do get in. I can't begin to understand the tech behind why and support hasn't been forthcoming, so I'm packing it up. I have had very little luck finding any service (short of paying for one) consistant and reliable enough for my needs. I have gone the distance to learn html and build sites and have used other blog services and have had no luck in any of it. I suppose technology and I are like oil and water, we don't mix. It was fun to touch bases with other artists and read other blogs. I will still frequent them and will visit the forums as usual....as long as those areas behave. So, thanks again for all the great comments and support! That has carried me a long ways in my pursuit of painting and it still does! ThankYou!

On my wanderings around the net, I came across this piece about Disney laying off some 650 animators who work in traditional methods in favor of retaining those who work in the digital media. Given the success of Pixar's work, I'm not surprised. I remember reading in some book a while back, could it be Walt Disney's bio by Bob Thomas or Shamus Culhane's account of working for the studio in the late thirties?..one or the other, I can't readily put my finger on it, but a quote really struck me as unforgettable. In a meeting with his animators and in a fit of temper, Walt was quoted as saying, "if I had machines to replace all of you, I would!" Whether this was accurate or not, I don't know unless I can recall the source, but it is interesting to see that very thing happening now. Walt was an innovator without question and would accept digital art as the next medium to explore, but I know he was shrewd enough to keep the traditional method of handdrawn animation for any projects that required it. Much like the Disney studio archives in California that houses millions of sketches, drawings, paintings, and sculpture for film and parks alike, nothing is thrown away as it may provide the answer to a perplexing question that may be faced in the future.

 

The article goes on to mention that many of the traditionalists, (probably considered "old-timers" with no inspiration and lacking vision) have formed new studios in an attempt to save handdrawn animation from extinction. One of the most important ingredients for success of this move (in my opinion) is to really hone in on story to carry the animation. One of the mistakes the Disney Co. is making is relying on the unique and cutting edge quality of digital art to sell the final product. In fact, "keeping up with the times". What is saving them from such a folly is the fact that Pixar already knows how to deliver entertaining stories and knows how to benefit from that with their new animation. This is the ongoing differences between corporate and artist. One thinks in figures and the other thinks in emotion. What gives corporate a product to manage (or more to the point, a job) is the artist who delivers a good story that entertains the paying customer who must decide whether the next escape is really worth paying for! If the traditionalists intend to stay viable, they need to pull on some heartstrings in the theater and they will raise eyebrows, because a good story survives regardless of the medium. Walt himself believed in this approach, hence his success and dominance in feature animation for so many years until his passing.  

 

Now there is that situation where one medium does work for a story better than another. Always is there that argument that the book was better than the movie. Disney discovered that was the case with a cool reception of it's feature animation of Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps no medium could save that piece other than Lewis Carroll's own words, but these are rare instances where genius can't likely be tampered with by any meduim.

 

Personally, I'm for both traditional and digital forms of animation. It isn't right to toss out the symphony, because we can produce synthetic music, or quit painting on canvas, because we have the latest edition of Paintshop Pro! Handdrawn animation, despite the arguments on what looks better or one technique is superior to another (and there is plenty of that) should not be tossed out entirely for the sake of a new toy that we will quickly grow tired of. More choices of mediums does enrich art as a whole and hopefully these new studios can succeed in keeping some traditions alive.

 

As the summer continues, I have been running hot and cold with my painting and drawing. Basically from being distracted, but that is getting better. Even when I don't accomplish anything, I should update every now and then to let you all know that at least I haven't skipped town! I appreciate the comments left here. Even when I reshuffle the albums and lose some of the comments posted, I'm very grateful for such encouraging words! So, thanks again. 

 

I finally have a new project underway. 16x20, stretched canvas in water-mixable oils. I started with a drawing to work out where everything will lay and to "rehearse" the shapes. I toned the canvas with a wash of viridian and cadmium orange and propped in areas of color. The green is being done the way I had mentioned earlier while practicing landscapes. By tossing out viridian altogether, I'm mixing cadmium yellow pale and french ultramarine blue as a base. For the foreground, I need a high value, so instead of tinting with white, I use naples yellow and to tint the background I resort to white. Naples yellow tints some colors nicely while retaining vibrancy. White adds a bit of chalk to some colors, which I want for the background for atmospheric effect.

 

I'm still making some adjustments to the shapes of the horses, much of it the legs. Once I'm settled with the layers to the background, I can add heavy doses of brushstrokes to form the legs. Here's how things look now.

It feels good to be back in the saddle. I started the portrait class this morning and finished a 14x18 oils on canvasboard in roughly two hours time. Painting from a live model is much about problem solving on the fly and I had a crumby start. The main challenge was painting in white as you can see! So, the first thirty minutes was struggling with that fact and I had to wipe the mess down and start fresh. I built up on what immediate darks I could see which was the face, neck, and shoulder, treating it like an abstract shape on a white surface and then gradually introduced the warm and cool middle values and some lights. Dress and hat was worked out ok, the folds gave me the worst trouble, being subtle as they were in value and they never look the same when the model moves. As time went on and got that scrub down behind me, I felt more confident. It was fun and I learned a few things.

 

I noticed the photo album here was acting funny, so should you find it doing so, I notice it takes it a minute to correct itself. Not sure why, but it works slower than previous, when you are going from one album to another. I had to do a few things to it and may yet work on it some more to fix the content.  

I signed up in hopes to take the eight weeks of the summer portrait class. The main difficulty is finding enough people who will take the class to make it a "class". If it doesn't work out, I still have open studio on Fridays. In the meantime, I'm priming some canvasboard just incase.

 

Finding a decent palette recipe for portraits took some work. I browsed the bookstores and library and copied everything I could find. Howard Sanden's palette was one system out of a few (Burns and Singer to name a few) that I was impressed with right from the start and even to my benefit, his system consisted most of the base colors that I had in my palette. I cut a large card, painted and labeled as many variations of the skin tones as possible. When working in a class environment, this palette became ungainly for painting alla prima in two hours. For one, I haven't had my favorite mixes on memory and second  there is so much variations that I studied the skin tone of the model too hard. My more recent teacher noticed my struggling and asked me to streamline my palette and add more color.

 

What resulted was based on very simple needs. First, I needed one light, medium, and dark skin tone color. With three values, I can render anything in three dimensional form. I always liked the light which consisted of naples yellow, cad red light, and white. This I decided to keep using. For a medium value which I will call my base color, I chose to remove the white making it simply naples yellow and cad red light. For the dark, I found viridian and cad orange to be perfect. With that mix, I can slightly add a dab to the base value of naples yellow and cad red light for a dark medium. Too much will muddy it, so quantity is important!

 

Now, with the palette fixed to work with speed and reliability, I can now add french ultramarine blue, cad orange, alizarin, indian red and so forth to enhance the base of naples yellow and cad red light to suit the mood, temperature, or colors I see in the lighting. My palette may not be perfect or even professional, but it has made many of the moels happy with my results! If I have a cool light with blue or white, I need warmth in the shadows which I could use viridian mix heavy on the orange for contrast. With more cad red light or orange (carefully I might add...not needing the model to look too sunburned!) I can warm the lights and paint cool shadows with blue thrown into my base color and lessening the orange in my dark value of viridian and cad orange.

 

I suppose I will improve on this current system, but for the meantime it allows me to work more on likeness and brushstrokes. That is if the class will go on as planned. 

I did this over two days, last open studio and during open studio today. 11x14, so it wasn't much effort to cover the canvas, but there were plenty of challenges. Primarily photos just doesn't do such scenes justice, so I had to tweak the palette to be more warm to overcome the heavy blues in the photo. Its a shame I can't get a better photo of the painting as there are some brushstrokes that I'm very pleased with. I kept the strokes in the sky very subtle, since the scene is very busy as it is.

I'm falling way behind on my painting! Portrait class ended and will resume next week. I also have open studio which still is available on Fridays and I'll be attending them. However, with the summer vacation here and my son being home, I'm more free with my time and less dilligent in staying on course with painting, because I could easily be a nonexistant dad and that isn't good.

 

Not all is lost however. With his interest in photographing, I'm getting a lot of ideas for subjects to paint! So much so that I'm itching to start. Some of them landscapes. I took the easel out for a little outdoors painting last week and didn't do anything worth posting. I will have to rely on photos more until I tighten up my technique and how I see things. It's easier to know what to do to paint a landscape in life until you are confronted with an incredible amount of detail, values, and color! The trick is to rely on shorthand, breaking the whole scene down to basics and working up towards more detail as I work. I just have to make that a habit.

 

I made a few decisions on my palette. For foliage, I'm tossing out all my greens! No more viridian or phthalos! In place I'll be playing the balancing act of mixing french ultramarine blue and cad yellow pale and controlling the portions of each color for an alternating warm and cool quality of green. The other greens look too much like easter egg colors, so lesson learned.

 

I have open studio in the morning and will post my efforts for the day. I have a lighthouse on an 11x14, so I hope to finish it and post it here! We shall see.

I don't know if I can properly introduce my son without being a bit proud and biased! He is named after me, (Stoy) with the exception of having a different middle name, but he is forth generation of Stoys. This is his first full week off of middle school starting the summer vacation and to make some use of his time off, he endeavors to master taking pictures with our digital camera. I passed on to him a few tips on what I learned about composing pictures and let him go to it and to my surprise, he seems quite the natural! I also taught him the basics of uploading photos, managing the files on the computer, and manipulating them with our Paintshop Pro 7. It is a huge program I know very little about, but what I do know, he knows now and does cropping and enhancements with contrast and color on his own. So, what you will see is his vision.

 

I'm adding a photo album titled SC's Pix here for anyone to have a look at his work and be sure to check back at his album on occasion as there will be updates with new photos as the summer continues. Enjoy and feel free to comment!  

This week has been a short and busy one. Two portrait classes and an open studio. The portrait this time around is of the same model. She was sitting, not reclining like last time. It wasn't the pose that gave me trouble as it was all those greens and blues. Well, I'm glad to say the colors translated better this time, so I'm pleased with that. I think the proportion is looking a bit strange and I may have to rephotograph this. To top it off she's looking a little stiff only because she tended to do that to keep still, but she was a great sport and we really enjoyed her sitting for us! Once again, the model is making offers for my painting! I guess this is a good sign to start taking commissions soon! I told her I needed to sign it and photograph it, so I took her number and will be in touch this coming week to make the delivery.

 

With these classes falling on early mornings mixing with my late night work schedule, I get really tired. One class on Thursday and open studio on Friday, I'm usually beat by Friday night and can get caught up on sleep over the weekend. This week with the extra class, I'm a little cross-eyed. So, instead of painting during the open studio which I normally do, I'm sketching.

We just sat around the whole weekend! Oh, we went places, went on a drive at dusk the other night and went down to the fishing spots and it was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop. Very relaxing, especially for my noisy mind! My son discovered a few trails that we will likely come back to hike. Sounds like some landscape possibilities to me! I did try to do a "little" work around the house, though. My wife ran to the store for groceries and I tried to vacuum. The Lord was watching out for me, the cord was apparently loose or exposed inside the housing and when I threw on the switch, it was fireworks! It is an upright and where I was holding it, I nearly got burned or electrocuted. Very scarey. Where the cord runs into the housing was charred pretty good. I guess housework is detrimental to my health!

 

I took in the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday. Great race with a really good outcome. Sam Hornish Jr. wins it and he's been with the league for some time now and has yet to win it. He finally does by a little more of a car length. The media has been relentless with poor Danica Patrick. The commercials have her overcooked, the fans have her winning at any moment and the critics have already written her off. Here's my idea that is entirely revolutionary for the world of auto racing spectators, "let's follow her career for a few more seasons and find out if she does make it or not and then decide!" Son and father Andretti mark the second and third place finishes, how amazing! It will be fun to watch how Marco (the son) does for the remainder of this season.

 

Well, o.k. back to buisness. I had another portrait class today and will finish this four weeks on Thursday. We really had the model set up with umbrella and lawnchair. Lots of greens to contend with! I'm not crazy about it, but I'm happy with the face! This took a couple of hours.

I had a good productive day today at open studio by practicing from a reference of a gate leading into a garden or park. The palette consisted of indian red, phthalo green (yellow shade) as the basic compliment and tossed in some naples yellow for tinting some of my colors. I stuck to blocking in the values, since they were very solid shadows and worked other colors in the lighter areas in an attempt to make the foliage come forward or recede. It isn't anywhere finished, but that is ok. I might work further with this or try some other experiment on something else next week.

Today's portrait session turned out to be a lucrative one. First, we are still having model troubles, so I offered to pose. I know I don't get to paint, but I do get compensated for my time and it's for a great cause! I think the trouble comes from the fact that graduation for many students is this week, so plans are being made that runs counter to our needs. No problem! I stepped up to the plate and delivered a very "still" performance!

 

I also brought in my painting of the daughter who posed for us last week to give to her mother, since she asked to have it. I took it home to photograph it for posterity and promised to bring the painting back to her this week. I was happy to pass it on since it was a practice piece, but she really insisted on paying for it. Her offer far exceeded what I expected, but she complimented me still and insisted again, so I accepted such a blessing! 

 

Party time is up, back to work! I have open studio in the morning, if I can outrun the thunderstorms! I'll be taking in a new reference and practicing more on my landscapes.   

Life can be like juggling! While I mull over what I might do to improve my landscape work, I got an email from the music council that let me know the drawing they want (the one I did of their conductor) did not take on the digital camera, so I must find a better solution. One is to either draw it in darker or redo the drawing on a smaller scale. Since it is a gesture drawing, very fast and loose, based on the subject that was in movement before me, reproducing that effect is pretty much impossible without having a model. One of my other options is to try to take a picture myself and see what results I can get. I'll have to mull this one over and let them know what I can do.

 

I reminded myself that portrait class is in the morning! I had better get to gessoing my canvasboard in preparation!

Well, it looks like I set the field on fire. Lots of oranges there and perhaps too much. I look back at my painting and it looks more subdued in life...hmm..I neutralized a lot of that with french ultramarine blue, but it still looks hot on here. I can't say I'm entirely pleased. I think I can handle those trees a bit better, vary the branches much more. I'll have to see.

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I checked out the "Daily Art" and saw the famed PreRaphaelite, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Beata Beatrix". The subject was his late wife Elizabeth Siddal. When she died, he was so overcome with grief, he buried his book of poetry with her and five years later, apparently changed his mind and retrieved it. Yikes!

I start off Monday morning with a test. I'm using a 12x16 canvasboard and a photo reference of a landscape in fog. The colors are basically a burnt umber to lay out the field, french ultramarine and cad orange mix with white to add a bit of atmosphere and french ultramarime and indian red mix for the trees. I'm keeping the underpainting thin like a wash and I intend to paint over that in thicker paint in smaller strokes and try my hand at a little bit of broken color.

 

The first photo just stinks. More overcast skies and I'm not sure when all of this is going to end. However, the other two look a bit more like it should with the light outside breaking through that thin film of cloud that seems to have stalled over us for now.

Had a good one despite the model was a no-show. One of the members called her daughter to come and sit, so we only lost the first thirty minutes. That gave us still two hours to put something together. We had her lit from two directions which gave us a lot of interesting lighting, especially warm light. I'm pretty pleased with it considering the time element. I used a 16x20 canvasboard pre-primed with gesso and a wash of burnt umber to give me a good middletone to work from.

 

The palette included naples yellow, cad red lite, and white for the lights. Viridian and cad orange for the lighter shadows and hair. For the cools, I used a compliment of cad orange and french ultramarine.

...came to me this morning from the local music organization that opened it's doors to artists during the rehearsal back in early April, I believe. I'll have to look through this blog to see when it actually was. Time moves on so quickly! In anycase, during that event they did express interest in using my sketch of the conductor for a show pamphelet and I had completely forgotten about it. Well, they are ready for it and asked me if they could use it and have it scanned for the layout for next years pamphelet. For compensation, they were willing to offer concert tickets and having heard the rehearsal, I'll certainly take them up on that! 

My son found a game called Graffitikingdom for his Playstation 2 that on first glance looked a bit below his level of interest with cartoon characters and bright cheery lettering. Since there doesn't appear to be any violent doom and gloom, how could he like this...I say that in tongue and cheek. He knows what I would accept and not accept as far as games are concerned and he gravitates to things like Star Wars and sports titles anyway, so I don't have to worry.

 

I turn the case over and read "Dream it! Draw it! Play it!" The game has a built in graphics editor that you use to draw freehand from scratch anything you can imagine, give it three dimensional form, color it, assign various moves and abilities and even sounds, give it a name, and play it like you would Mario in a three dimensional world.

 

Apparently you start out as Prince Pixel in Canvas Kingdom which is enslaved by the typically powerful, but foolish bad guy. Pixel finds a magic wand which is a paintbrush with a palette that helps him (you as the player) draw and transform into that character you design to battle through twenty-one levels of baddies and bosses. At first it looks strange when played making me think we bought the wrong kind of game...that is until we started drawing!

 

You do use the standard controller and it does take some getting use to. As you play on, your editor, called the graffiti notebook aquires new editor abilities making your efforts in design more easy and detailed. The instruction manual even gives good advice about drawing! "There are lots of people who can't draw very well at first. However, if you keep playing and constantly draw, you will gradually get better." Hmmm, o.k. I'm won over. You can modify the existing 220 characters or if you have the memory card space, create 144 of your very own. It is a unique experience to see my own works of art move about at my command and becomes quickly addicting if you are not careful.

 

The game sports decent graphics and sound, perhaps a little less than what games are offering or soon to offer if you want to look at it that way, but it works very well for what it is. The levels do get more challenging, requiring you to draw new characters or add new moves to the existing characters of your own deisgn. The game's built-in characters can inspire you to try new designs as they get more clever as you progress. It is certainly good to see a game come along that challenges you not only to think, but actually have a hand in creating as well. I highly recommend it to anyone who has kids and adults who can still think like kids do and loves to create.

Open studio gave me the chance to put the finishing touches on this and call it complete. I can't say that I am absolutely pleased with it and see that there are things I could probably do better. I know, that's how it always is, but this time there is that nagging feeling that some areas could have been dealt with better. Something for me to dwell on for a while, come to a conclusion, and work out whatever it is and keep it in mind when I move on to a new subject.

 

What I did do was lighten the shadows below the boat in the foreground. They were as strong as the shadows behind the boat (opposite of the lightsource) and had to go. I took a wet paper towel and Q-tip and lightly removed the wet paint in that area, so I don't get an unwanted build up of paint layers and get that impasto effect that I'm tring to avoid. With the ground peeking through, I let that thuroughly dry and mix a new lighter color sticking to the compliments of blue and orange and adding a little naples yellow instead of white for the tinting. For the lettering on the boat, I painted the letters in full strength hue of french ultramarine and a light touch of cadmium orange. Next, I took a #12 round and wiped through the lettering, scumbling the wet paint to lighten up the letters and went back through with the light tone and painted around the letters to define a few areas.

 

The photograph isn't the best, since it is an overcast day. I have got to get better lighting!...But, you get a good idea how it looks.

 

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I got a call from a local bank that I did some freelance illustration work couple of years back and it seems they are still using my work! They gave me a call and asked me to come by this morning to do a quick job on their markerboard welcoming the Chamber of Commerce and Mayor to their ribbon cutting and reopening under a new name. It was very easy and I didn't ask for anything, but for payment they offered me gift cards and the fellow who called me, offered his services at looking into helping me produce a portfolio book for my work to take to shows and events. He seems to be knowledgable about that sort of thing, since he does that line of work there at the bank and hinted at being interested in portrait work of his kids! He asked me to leave  my signature and phone number on my work, so no telling what may or may not come of this little project. In anycase, I had a good time and glad to see they still know me!

I mentioned last week that portrait classes will finally start,...well they haven't. It seems that our instructor was felled by an illness and she is still recovering. I wish her a hearty "get well!" and continue to plug along with what I'm working on. Open studio is open in the morning at the artcenter, so I will relax today. If I paint today, I'll likely finish and have nothing to take to open studio tomorrow. So to get the benefit of painting and getting feedback, I'll wait. It would be great to add this Low Tide painting to the finished painting album and put some new material up for a change! 

 

In the meantime, I hunt for landscape ideas to practice with and mulling around other new ideas in my head as well to keep a few paces ahead. I have no trouble with inspiration as long as I keep the "what if" equation alive and in the middle of what I do. I had times where I had nothing to work on and had no ideas. "What are you gonna paint today?"..."Dunno." Shrug arms and stare at the wall. Not a good place to be. There is enough of life to keep me busy, but when things slow down to allow for a moment to create, I must be ready or that opportunity can easily slip away and escape. 

 

So, to keep the well full,...the campfires burning, however you want to put it, I think of the "what if". While still learning, this is easy to do. There's so much to soak in and try, the list remains long, but there are moments I don't feel like I'm ready. "Ready, shmeady...go out on a limb and do it already!" Here's a few other things I do to keep inspiration and creating not perfect, but easier.  

 

One, I keep a load of reusable canvasboards around, so I don't feel I have to produce a great piece right away. Exit pressure to perform and enter a chance to relax.

 

Two, I watch the paper for local events to occur. I took in a few events so far and plan to take in more. We have an auto race coming up at the local track, another festival that involves WW2 re-enactors, and a rodeo ring I have yet to visit.

 

Three, I take classes when I can. The subjects are often a given and you simply do what is in front of you.

 

Four, I look at all these opportunities and think in terms of technique and whether it may or may not work.

 

Five, I read, read, and do a little more reading. When I comb the newstands and bookstores once a month, I see other artwork in magazines and books and I think.."man, I want to do that too!" Often I don't, but that shot of enthusiasm usually propels me into taking on a new project of some sort.