Life, can it be still?

I flipped through the latest Chicago Gallery News magazine and came across this image…please click on it to make it bigger…

It is titled, “Still Life with Ultramarine Vase” and it was painted by Joseph Hronek. I have been mulling over the term “Still Life” ever since one of my teachers threw a bunch of random objects together on a big white table and randomly taped it. I don’t have a record of it, besides the disaster of a painting that came out of it. Weeks after that whilst strolling in the art building I came upon this disaster which sums up most of the “still lives” the teachers set up for us. Hold my hand if you want…

(yes, I did add that little note in there. )

Ok, back to the first one. I was puzzled when I looked at, I couldn’t look away from it, because I was flooded with confusion. I looked and looked at it, and could not see any life in it. I am not getting any communication from it besides it being a painting of an interesting composition (what the artist thought was). For me it was like looking at a car accident, you can’t help but be drawn by it. A painting that is speaking to you will do that too, but it will stir your emotions, it will make you feel things on many levels leaving your mouth gasping trying to find the words to talk about it. The vase one only tells me exactly what it is, a painting of a vase and an orange. An illustration. (Please refer to Endless Slugs art definitions). I won’t lie the painting has my attention, but then I hear the crickets chirping. What are you trying to talk about mister? I see your nicely painted vase and your big juicy orange contrasted by a wooden block. It is a beautiful painting, but well so what? It’s not wrong but I think it is confused, why call it a still life? I feel no life in it…(yes I am taking the words literally) I think of still life as a composition of objects that was not forced. (we can call it a happy accident.) A composition that has evidence of life in it, yet still is able to say something more. But, I also believe you can arrange objects to make them talk. For instance like this,

Did you feel it? When I look as Morandi’s work my reaction is different. I get involved, the painting talks to me, within seconds it brews my emotions, not on the surface like the painting by Hronek, this brew is thick, it is very rich, warm, comfortable…kinda like a good calm buzz. Go ahead and enjoy it…I wish I could send you all an actual painting of his, but I feel even a digital image of his work is still powerful. Morandi, I think is master of the still life. If you ever pick up one of his books you will see hundreds of paintings like this, yes they are all of bottles, and some containers, but every single one is talking. This I think is what the Endless Slug might call fine art. And maybe that is the distinction among these three images, they are all fit in the “still life” category, but one is an illustration, one is fine art, and the last is a void that just makes you want to cut youself. That awful tape disaster, I strongly feel, is dangerous. It is doing a whole lot of damage that none of the teachers realize and the students are too careless to speak up. And when we do, we get beat down to the ground for not following suit. Peh!

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy his work. There are many things that he does, that I would like to share with all of you at one point, but that’s a post for some other time.

Peace!

WTF?!

Today I found this disaster http://www.zarolla.com/. It is an online art academy. I am still stunned. Really? Online universities are bad enough but online art school? Who in the right mind would do something like this and why? Now all the Sunday, one painting a day, people have a chance to be certified making my fight harder. Just great.

A few things right off the bat that are wrong about this…
-IT IS AN ONLINE school, meaning no interaction with physical people or space, and that is really important. Sure you are more comfortable in your own, private, studio and that’s when you feel in the zone blah blah blah, no excuses! A good (usually a professional) painter can paint anywhere, what is important is that it is comfortable and you won’t get distracted by bulls*** or hipsters. You need to see how others are painting, you need to learn how to set up proper models, or still lives etc. It is like going to school for any other degree, you need to interact…I should mention that only applies if the teacher knows what they are talking about and there are no hipsters, hippies, craft people, or art education majors…. otherwise get the hell out of there! Anybody interested in the arts should get their butt’s on campus and get away from the computer, because it slowly kills your creativity. Especially that addictive thing called Facebook.

-all contact and critiques are done through email :O Any good artist knows that you should not paint from a photograph, but you can use it as a reference tool. Oh but why shouldn’t you use photo’s? Well, you are looking at a flat representation of something that is three dimensional,and the clarity is altered, HD my a$$. Painting from or a photo is a big NO NO unless you are well aware of these cons, then be my guest. Now that that’s established how is a teacher going to critique you based on a two dimensional reproduction of your work, regardless of it being HD? hm? Ever look at a painting in a book and then see it Live in 3-D with these special tools called “eyes” at the museum? There is a difference right? You bet! This is where I think this school FAILS. Painters paint live because their works will be seen live, by a real breathing human being, who will be able to interact with the work. When you are looking at photo’s of paintings, you are looking at dead paintings, it is like looking at a documentation of something that was, memories. Is that how you want to be graded? You miss out on the communication. It is important to see paintings “live” wouldn’t it be important that the teacher see it “live” to? Or how about watching someone paint?
-Demos/workshops are done online as well. Argh. How do I interact with the master painter then? chat? please…

Ok, my poor little head hurts cause of this nightmare.

See you next time.

New place

To whom it may concern…

Well, I am not going to apologize for any delays, since I don’t expect anyone to be following this. Bless those hearts that do care a little.

a few updates…
-I quit working at Subway and am now still looking for a new job (kinda) I already have a 24/7 job, this blog is some evidence of it
-I am back in school feeding my love for learning. mhm.
-I have a new apartment, which is the greatest in the world with an awesome roommate =)
-have my own private studio , public studios where there is a bunch of unformed artist wannabe’s (not their fault) is a hazard for anybody that cares about fine arts.
-and updated my blog

There is much to discuss…for instance why Art Historians are…em…#$%@ies *cough*

…

Expect more post soon.

With love,
author of this blog

Studio Day 3

Coming along nicely. One more session and it will be finished.

Studio Day 2

In studio day two, I put down the underlying color of the background and foreground.  Also developed the color in the cherries.

I did the same thing here.

oh and in case I forgot, the one day I spent in the studio I also sketched out two more paintings. Here they are

First day in the studio

okay, finally got a chance to post again. Please bear with me as I figure out a schedule for blogging, painting and working at Subway all week.   Like most, if not all, of the daily painting people I do not have a financially  supportive partner that makes tons of money. I am a broke ass college graduate.

Anyway, here is the under drawing I did on the first session, consider this layer 1.  This is one of THE most important parts of starting a new painting, I find and so have my good teachers.  I say good, because there are some that know knowing about the complexity of painting and some how have the right to teach painting to innocent students.  I can’t understand why some people choose to neglect this step, for instance the daily painters.  There are two things happening here, one I am establishing a color ground and secondly I am organizing my composition.  I use only some turp and two colors to get things rolling.  I should mention, this entire blog started because of one painting I saw on a daily painters blog, which is found here http://artisttonigrote.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-01-25T22%3A20%3A00-06%3A00&max-results=20 it was on January 7, the cherry painting.  Click on it, and make sure you can see it as big as possible.  The more I look at it the more upset I get.  This is considered finish? No, I say! It is still a sketch, and I would like to point out it has no color ground, which is not necessarily a good or bad thing (in her painting I think it is a bad thing, but that is just one issue) but hopefully I can demonstrate how richer the color is with a color ground.  Color ground is used to distinguish the other ground, the “white” ground which primes the canvas before painting.  Phew, I am beginning to realize there is so much information being lost doing “a” painting a day.

Painting is complex.  On many layers.

Studio Day 1

Oh what is this…

that’s right another painting, these things are so small I can do two in a painting session.

Hi there,

The point of this art blog is to test if one can really make a painting in one day.  I just graduated with my B.F.A in oil painting from Northern Illinois University and based on some of the information my teachers taught me and the countless of hours I spent researching painting methods, I find that doing an oil painting in one day from start to finish is just bizarre.  I am not saying it can not be done, when obviously it can be, for instance the website www.Dailypainters.com has hundreds of paintings that were painted in one day, don’t mind the illustrations, here we will focus on oil painting.  It sort of breaks my heart when I see these websites putting up for sale paintings done in one day, which I would consider sketches.  But then again, the “process”  of an artist “developing” a work is a big hit in the contemporary art world. Why?

Anyway, it is common knowledge that paint, any kind of paint, takes hours to dry, we even have an expression based on that fact, we all know it “watching paint dry”.  If we all know it takes a “long” time for paint to dry, why are these one-a-day painters a huge hit and selling wet paintings to people?   The second bit of information most people know about oil painting is that it takes a while, more then one session, to finish one painting, why? As any good painter should tell you, it’s because an oil painting is made up of layers.  It is made up of layers of paint on top of one another, and every single layer should be dry enough so that it doesn’t mix with the layer on top of it (unless such an effect is desired).  It is a process, but we cannot stop there, once a painting is done there still is work to be done, this I will tell you later.

So, as my blog continues I invite you to watch as I set a reasonable minimum to complete a painting from the first layer to the last (this is excluding what has to be done after it is finished), I give you all, one week.  One week should be enough for me to start with a sketch and refine it to the last stage, this includes paint drying time. *Note to painters, I am not using any quick-drying mediums or additives.

Again, I should remind everyone this is an experiment, after this I might find I can in fact complete a painting in one day, or perhaps like the masters it might take me some time to finish one.  Also, I would like to point out these paintings will be up for sale as soon as they are done.

Let’s begin!