StudioCam is now broadcasting live, the project has begun. Now you will be able see me painting. And when I say you will see me painting, I mean mostly you will see paint drying. I spend far more time looking at my painting than actually painting. But you will be able to check in over time and see how the painting is progressing. Painting is a slow process.
I’ve got my paper mounted and have started to paint. I like to staple paper to a board and put tape around the edges, so when I finish, it has a nice clean white frame. My photography background is obvious. I’m working in black and white mixed media, using tempra, sumi ink, and various watercolors and gouache. I’m working strictly abstractly, which is the hardest way to paint. At this point, it makes little difference to me how the painting looks, most of this will be covered up and repainted 5 or 6 times before I even get an idea where I’m going.
2:40PM – Working in water media is slow, I have to wait for the paper to dry before I can paint further. This forces me to work more like printmaking, planning the image in layers of a single color of paint. I’m more accustomed to oil painting, where you can work wet on wet and get really good effects. I always try to work with water media like it was oil paint. I remember a long chat with Brice Marden that put me onto this theme. Well, I mostly remember it, we both had too way much to drink. But anyway, I asked him about his Cold Mountain drawings, and he said he liked the immediacy of drawing in ink, how it was like calligraphy in that your first mark was the final mark. But in oil painting, you can continuously work the image until it’s perfect, you can even scrape it down and start over. I decided to prove him wrong, and work on a single sheet of paper continuously, to work the paper and ink as hard as oil paints. Unfortunately, it’s almost as much work as oil painting. More, really, since you have to go to a LOT more work to get nice transparent effects. I wish streaming video had more resolution, it’s impossible to see these effects in the tiny, blurry video image. I just found a way to pump up the rez by killing the blank audio and using full bandwidth for video. I’ll see how it works. When I stop working and take a break, I’ll leave the camera zoomed in so you can see some details.
5:45PM – I’m back in the studio, I’ll do more work on this painting tonight, over the next few hours.
Nice Job. Can you zoom in a little so we can see what you are painting more?
Whoa! Sweet. Just installed QuickTime 6 and it’s the first time I’m able to see BlogTV. Thanks also for the OS X Spam help.