Hazards of Collaboration

This week the birth of our nation's first president is getting in the way of my older daughter's education. She's been spending her leisure time hanging around the studio and messing with the paint. We use the same palette. She churns out a picture every fifteen minutes and quickly ran through all the old canvases that were laying around. This morning she asked to work on my painting of Fatty fish. Its for her, so what the hell. Also, I'm not happy with it. It isn't right and I keep hacking at it - glopping paint on, scraping it off, glopping more on. I wish cadmium yellow deep were cheeper.

The most awkward part of our working relationship is that she's started to notice the words to the songs that iTunes plays - and today iTunes seemed determined to push it - it played LCD Soundsystem's "Drunk Girls", Tom Lehrer's "Smut," and "Lobotomy Eyes" by the Mexican Blackbirds (she started singing that one - I'm gonna hear about this when kindergarten is back in session).

Fatty Fish, Various States

Images from yesterday. Still a long way to go.

Hey, Bud!

I was happy to discover I had a canvas, with a painting already on it, about the right size for my painting of Fatty fish. Painting over another painting is usually easier than painting on a new canvas. Fortunately, I produce lots of paintings that deserve painting over. I'm blessed.

I went right in. I don't like painting from a sketch - it feels too much like paint-by-numbers. I was ably assisted by iTunes in a rollicking mood:

Bessie Smith - Me and My Gin
Sub Hum Ans - WORK.REST.PLAY.DIE.
Cramps - Uranium Rock
Ultramagnetic MCs - Moe Love's Theme
Jay Z - Blueprint (Momma Loves Me)
Woven Bones - Sunk Down in the Seats
Hippies - Spray Paint
Butthole Surfers - Butthole Surfers

and finally, Public Enemy's screed against soap operas (?) - She Watch Channel Zero?

(Not) Sleeping with the Fishes

This is my daughter's beloved pet fish, Fatty. He's an Oranda - a type of decorative goldfish bred in China about four hundred years ago. Yesterday evening I found him floating upside down in his tank. I though he was dead, so I was mildly surprised when he flipped over and swam away. I soon discovered that Fatty's inverted posture was caused by something less serious than death- he was constipated. Fish bred into funny shapes have digestive problems. They get constipated it they aren't fed a varied diet - go ahead, Google it and see. Fatty's fine now, but I'm still not clear what constitutes a varied diet for a goldfish.

A portrait of Fatty is my next assignment. I've never painted a fish before, but as a friend pointed out, goldfish were probably the best thing that ever happened to Matisse. Soutine also did some okay paintings of fish. I imagine my picture won't be quite as nice as the one my daughter did (below), but I'm still learning.

Women and Children First

I was being coy about chrome green - I'm out because I've added it to every color in this painting. Its an experiment. I'm trying to keep the colors in the same tonal range, and I'm trying to avoid any electro-fauve extremism. I think it makes the picture look kind of morose - like its about to rain. Like Rakim (JEEZ - I mean ERIC B: shouldn't post before 9 AM), I speak with my hands so I figure the less explaining I do, the better. But before I stop explaining let me talk more about how I work - when I come to a place where I can stop, I carry the painting around with me for awhile so I can look at it. I hang it up in the kitchen, I lean it against the wall so I can see it when I'm working.

Which means I've looked and looked, and tuned something up here, and messed something up over there and now I'm sick of looking at this picture. I'm ready to declare victory, and because I never finish, I abandon - all hands on deck.

Electra Glide in Chromium Oxide Green

Okay, that's more like it - I think this picture is almost done. Nothing left but the hair-raising job of putting in the little, fussy details (shit). The secret was playing "Electra Glide in Blue" by the Guana Batz over and over again. Who knew?

Also, I'm out of chromium oxide green again. How do I manage to use so much?

Potty Train the Chairman Mao

It feels just like starting over (because ... I'm starting over). I've spent the last couple of days goosing this painting along - underpainting, darks - yadda, yadda - just like they taught me - and when I looked at it this afternoon I decided everything was in the wrong place. It looked like this:



So, I scraped most of the paint off, and drew it again with red. I think the composition is better, but now it is way sloppy and I have to wait for it to dry. I blame iTunes - it kept playing weird shit: Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, Blond-Blond, The Butthole Surfers.

Stiff Upper Lip

If you want to feel inadequate, spend some time drawing with a six-year-old. While you labor over something Edward Hopper would have wadded up and thrown away, the child will toss off a series of pictures that could pass for early Jackson Pollocks.

At least, that's what happened to me. I closed my eyes and thought of England.

A New Assignment!

Down below is a picture of the corner of Broome Street and West Broadway on October 9th, 1935. Those buildings aren't there anymore and the cast-iron warehouse that replaced them is home to a Tommy Hilfiger store (I checked Google Maps). Charm-free booze cans like Lucky Strike and The Cupping Room are nearby. This is my new assignment.

The image is a cropped version of a famous picture by an even more famous photographer named Berenice Abbott. I know better than her (that was a joke) so I altered her composition.



Tourist trap bars that still manage to be charming:
Napoleon House
Vesuvio
King Cole Bar

Historical Update! The reason the Tommy Hilfiger building looks unfamiliar is because it is new (there used to be a parking garage on that corner). According to this New York Times article, it has only been there for three years, but it is supposed to look older.

Hit it and Quit

I once had a painting teacher who said "if you think your painting is overworked, work on it some more." Proving that even a raging asshole can offer useful advice. I went back and fixed the coffee, and I didn't have to re-paint the whole picture. A victory. First I scraped off the bumpy bits in the area where I was planning to paint -



Then, I tried to just fix the coffee residue parts, but that threw off all the other colors in the area. I tinkered some more -



And that was no good, so I re-painted everything inside the cup. iTunes played:

TI: Front Back
Sonic Youth: 100%
Funkadelic: Hit it and Quit

So I did.

I'll Probably Hate Myself in the Morning

I've decided this painting isn't finished. The coffee isn't right - the color is off, but the real problem is the brushwork - it doesn't give any information and it isn't interesting to look at. Two strikes. I know I'm going to regret it, but I'm going back to try and fix this part. But, you can't fix just one thing (or, I can't). A little change here throws something off over there, and before you know it, you've re-painted the whole picture.

I'm going to do it anyway.

Half Empty

Here's the half-empty cup picture. I've been working on it for about a week and I think it is finished. I've even acted on that notion by adding teeny details to the cup.

Before I had kids, I never spent a week working on the same picture - I painted in a mad rush. Now, I can plan. Planning hasn't made my paintings better, but you can manage different effects if the paint is dry when you go back.

What do you think, does it look done?

Start!

At the college I went to, we painted pictures instead of writing papers. Afterward I discovered about needing to make money. So, I went to law school and art-making got demoted to hobby. It never felt good, but about some things you have no choice.

Last month, a good friend mentioned wanting a painting for his kitchen - a half-empty cup of something (not half-full - I'm a lawyer). Because he is a very good friend, I decided to dust off the paints and make the picture for him. So far, I am enjoying doing it, and it is kind of freeing to paint something to someone else's specifications.

So, it gave me an idea - I could keep my painting chops in order by getting my friends to give me assignments! And, being no stranger to blogging, I could give myself further incentive to do the work by documenting the experiment here.

So, here we go.