Assembly Line

I have a little assembly line going today as I paint at home.  I was thinking this morning how amusing it is sometimes the way I work in my studio at home.  The picture below is all the work that I have done today sitting on sheets of cardboard sitting on my bed to dry.  My apartment is really tiny so I am limited as to what I can do.  It becomes a problem when I need to let my work dry.  A few months ago we had to use a bunch of cardboard one day at work.  We sell it by the sheet but since we were transporting a piece of glass to be cut, the frame shop used maybe about ten pieces to protect the glass.  After using the cardboard, they were going to throw them away, so I claimed them.  They make great places to let my work dry.  If I paint at night and the work is not dry before I go to bed, you should see these pieces of cardboard sitting around stacked on everything.  It’s really quite funny.  Anyway, I am trying to break my record this week and get 8 paintings done in one week.  My previous record is 6.  I am well on my way.  I usually paint one layer and let it dry, then come back over top of that and rework it.  I tape the edges that I can then pull up when it’s done and it’s amazing how the piece comes together when I pull that tape up.  Hope you enjoy!

Paintings 3/26/2011

Sold a piece

I got a call last Friday night that one of my pieces in that show at Founder’s Hall sold.  At first I thought I had only sold it for $25 but when I went to pick up the work yesterday I realized I had put a $75 price tag on it, which is great.  The exhibit is in an area downtown that sees a lot of foot traffic as there is a theatre and shopping nearby and the lady who called said that her and a friend had been walking through the area and saw it and her friend loved it, so she is getting it for her birthday.  I am feeling rather nicely about having sold some work as this not only validates my efforts as an artist but is a nice complement as well, for someone to like my work enough to want to buy it.  Here is the piece that sold:

Notes on current processes

Just a few thoughts… I painted a little while today and realized I haven’t said much lately about how I am working, i.e. what I am doing and so on.  Basically, I think I have discovered the utilization of layers.  Oh, and oil pastels.  I mean it just happened one day.  I was working on a painting and I finished it, or so I thought, and then the thought occurred to me: why not add some oil pastels?  See what that does?  Next thing you know, 40 paintings later, I am still experimenting with that process.  I must admit though that I don’t really know much about how safe or sound it is to intermix oil pastels and acrylics.  I attempted to find out a little more about that from a few sources and no one seemed to have any objections.  Of course, you can’t varnish oil pastels I was told, as varnish will in essence just “slide right off” the oil pastels that never fully dry.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t put your finished piece behind glass, which I think I need to start doing by the way.  I need to find some homes for my work.  Perhaps the highest complement someone can pay an artist is to hang his work in their home.

I am enjoying what I am doing right now though.  I wanted to try the oil pastels because I like the way that they feel.  I knew that much, and sure enough, the freedom that they give carries over into the mixed-media application as well.  What I am doing these days is setting up something of an assembly line here at my art desk in my apartment.  I start with acrylic paper and I tape the edges and then I put down a layer of paint.  For a while I was simply working from color to color, squeezing out each individual color as I went.  But I went to a demo a few weeks ago and discovered that I could put out several colors all at once and this has really quickened up my process.  Now I churn out several ‘first layer’ paintings and then let them dry for a few hours.  Then I come back over top each one of them with oil pastels and more acrylic.  Each painting gets two or three layers.  For a while when I first started this little creative excursion, I only painted with one layer.  But adding the subsequent layers has really made it so much better.  And it all happened one day just at the drop of a hat.  One day I just decided to add oil pastel and so much has changed since!

What I mean though is that I am learning to work so much quicker.  I am nurturing great faith that if I keep going with all of this that it is going to take me somewhere.  I am literally watching my paintings get better and better, and, I am watching myself grow more and more comfortable with the materials and processes.  When all of this began, I was lucky to finish one or two paintings a week.  Now I am churning out as many as six a week, and if I had more time I know I could do more.  I just know that all of this is only going to get better and better!

Here are two pieces I have in a show in downtown Charlotte right now:

 

More paintings 3/7/2011