Just a Tad

Nothing Yet

It's April 23, 2022. The only "paintings" I've done this year were watercolor and ink pieces of my animated characters. Some were sent out without being scanned. Here's a few of them.

End of the Year Dump

Once again, I've let months go by without posting. It's not like I've been painting up a storm. In fact, it's quite the opposite of that. I had a photo of my granddaughter making an extremely ugly face. I thought it would be a fun painting but in the end it made me question what I am doing with my painting.

I've noted that I need to paint more in order to improve. That remains both true and undone. The cloud piece above was done August 19, 2021. The street scene below was done August 30th. That's not too bad but I didn't paint again until mid-October. I seem incapable of treating my sketchbook as a sketchbook. Instead, I labor over images as if they were to be hanged in a gallery.

And the longer between paintings, the less confidence I have. I look back at some of the paintings in this blog and have no clue how I would approach them again. The answer, I know, is to just do it. I just need to put some colors on a palette and paint something. Anything really. Maybe I'll try painting my version of the work of someone else. The painting below was done from one by Min Ma. But instead of slavishly interpreting it, I added mountains and a huge cloud of my own. But the brilliant autumn hues of the trees and their placement came from Min Ma.

I gave up on this one on December 1st. I gave up trying to achieve a likeness and just went for a creepy face.That should have made it easier, but my heart wasn't in it. In my head, I was working on painting I had deemed a failure. And so, because I'm not in school and there are no points being awarded or subtracted and because I sit here, a stone's throw from my 70th birthday, I stopped. Life is indeed short and the creation of art should be fun or at least rewarding.

I have one last page in the sketchbook. I fully intend to finish it this week, this year. Then what?

I have another sketchbook. Same size. Filled with great paper. But I'm thinking of working outside the book, so I can play with different shapes and sizes. Nothing bigger than 9x12 inches - because that's the size of my watercolor pads. But what of subject matter.

I can now look at a landscape or a depiction of waves crashing on a beach and marvel at it. I've always enjoyed a good magician/illusionist and I've come to realize that these paintings are magic tricks. On a two dimensional canvas, an artist can depict depth, a far off horizon or a portrait that seems sculptural. Where there is no light, the trickster portrays morning, sunset, night or harsh green fluorescents. But the younger guy inside me would walk by with no appreciation. He was all about content, images of fantasy and science fiction.

 

 

 

But a couple of times, I did both. In the case above, I was painting an ordinary alley and asked myself what it might be like if Godzilla was strolling through town in the distance.

I'm thinking that I'd like to play around that sort of thing in the future. Continue practicing depictions of the real world but adding a fantastic element. One of my early ideas when I started these sketchbooks was to create a classic piece of Western art, cowboy on horseback, but have him guiding a heard of cattle-sized bees.

Maybe I'll use the sketchbook for preliminary studies of the larger paintings. You know, like in a sketchbook.

Or I might explore painting my cartoon characters, old ones and originals. If I get back to writing again, I might want to illustrate my stories with paintings.

No brownie points either way for doing all of this or none of it. I definitely need to keep up some sort of creative expression to keep me going.

That's it for now. One this Boxing Day of 2021, I wish you a happy holiday and a wonderful New Year.

 

                                                                           -- Tad

 

 

 

Clouds and Palms

I gave myself a couple of assignments. The best clouds in my paintings were complete accidents, so I tried a painting of just clouds. It would’ve been easier if I had chosen a single thunderhead over a desert. Instead, I chose a photo I had taken myself just down the street. Of course, I’m deluding myself. I’m sure the thunderhead would’ve brought its own headaches. However, you can see from my process shots how much I was flailing around. It was the opposite of the experience of my last painting. 

The sun was behind the hill. I especially wanted to capture the way its light illuminated the lower clouds from within. I felt a bit lost, but not panicked. 

This process shot is deceiving only because there were at least two other re-workings, both as different from each other as the two you see here. I finally focused on one cloud at a time. I gave myself permission to not copy the clouds in the photos, but to use them for information only.

I added the tree which was in the photo. I wasn’t concerned with composition. I wanted to practice painting tree branches <shrug>. People like the painting but it has none of the feeling of the original photo. On one hand, it’s fun to play with the “happy accidents” that occur while painting. In theory, I’m doing this for my enjoyment. I don’t have a client with specific expectations. But I want to paint with an objective in mind and achieve it, whether it’s painting the same cloud as photographed, or creating an art piece with a specific mood.

A wonderful weekend visit by my son’s family interrupted my streak of painting at least once a week. Hugging a grandchild for the first time in a year and a half lifted spirits immensely. So I skipped a week with absolutely no guilt at all. But I was eager to dive back in with a “simpler” subject. I photographed a row of palm trees in a parking lot, cropping it to fit my sketchbook's page format.

In an effort to approach the painting with a plan, I traced simplified light and shadow shapes of the trees. I roughed in the sky and started laying in darks. I didn't use a wash on the sky because I knew that I'd be using the sky color to cut into the silhouettes of the trees to suggest light coming through the branches. A thin watercolor wash wouldn't let me do that.

If I had painted this pleine air instead of using a photo, I would've had a better understanding of the basic forms of the tree, and how to emphasize the light direction. At this stage, the center tree suggests I knew what I was doing. If the other two looked like it, the next step would have been to add color accents, then finish with the sky color cut-ins. Instead, I got lost in the fronds.

I think two of the trees are decent and the third looks unfinished. Again, a better understanding of the tree structure, or more patience on my part, and I would have laid in highlights and shadows that sold the three dimensional shapes of the trees.

 

 

 

A Plan for Yosemite

The two biggest positives about this piece is nothing you can see. Number one, due to a planned power outage in my neighborhood for maintenance, I use the time to paint and completed a painting in less than a week from the last one. That's a big step toward improving by painting more often. Number two, I made a plan on how to approach this painting and actually followed it which made the process much less maddening.

 

I rescued some old photos from being tossed because I need to work on my control of values. The photos were great examples of atmospheric perspective, each level bluer and more faded as they retreated into the distance. It wasn't until I set up my easel that I realized two of the pics made a panorama, perfect for the format of my sketchbook.

I used a lightboard to trace the scene onto the page. I then used blue to lay in shadows. I then laid in some of the forest. The sky was a  wash of cobalt blue. I added to it at the end but I treated it like a watercolor wash. In the final, the most distant peaks should have been cooler and lighter still but at the point I was happy with my roadmap.

I worked from back to the front then left side to right. I repeatedly reworked the cliffs on the left with thin layers. I don't know if the end result was any better than some of the earlier stages but that's me learning. I saved the greatest contrast for the waterfall against the cool darks of the cliffs. Finally I painted the foreground trees and the branches on the upper right.

My self critique says the sky needed more paint. The thin wash seems out of place with the rest of the painting. The most distant mountains need to be lighter and bluer. But overall, it's much more successful than my previous paintings of cliffs and mountains. I'll take the win.

 

 

Jack-O-Lantern Night

The more time passes, the more I appreciate the mood of this painting. The mood was intentional. The pathway to getting it was a mix of blind luck, frustration, and pushing through the ugliness. And there was a lot of that at the beginning.

We have this big ceramic jack-o-lantern that we use as a porch decoration at Halloween. After that I drag it into the backyard where it sits through several other holidays before my wife insists I move it into the garage. One night, well after Halloween but not yet Christmas, I looked out at the pumpkin which lit by the light of the kitchen window. The lighting on the pumpkin and the shadows across the pavement had a spooky look to them so I took a photo.

I don't have the latest model iPhone, nor was it a "Plus" model that had extra bells and whistles when it comes to digital photography. But it managed to capture an image that I could paint from. Like all photos, it did not capture the subtleties visible to my eye.  But there was enough there to provide a cool subject when I revisited it more than half a year later.

Since this was for my Pentalic sketchbook, I first had to crop it into a horizontal format. Although, I love having a bound book of my year's painting that one can flip through, I sometimes feel that the biggest asset of the book is that it would very hard to rip out a page and toss it. Believe me, that urge hits me regularly. This one had an especially rocky start.

Aside from cropping, the first artistic decision made was to turn the talavera pot behind the pumpkin into a solid color. I felt like the second pot was needed in the composition but the bright colors would take to much attention from jack.

I didn't take any process shots. I started with a pencil tracing made from a print out of the photo. I started blocking in shadows and immediately felt lost. Why? Dunno. Thinking back, I would've been better served by blocking in with a light wash. Something about using gouache thickly at first, at least on this painting, was off putting. I pushed on, and once I got the page covered with color, I felt better. At least, I felt like I was at the point where I could attack it with detail, an area at a time.

But, still disheartened by the feeling of really not knowing what I was doing. I decided to stop for the day. I seem to do that whenever I'm working from a photo (which is the case with most of my paintings). The problem is that the feeling of frustration/doubt of my ability etc. stays with me until I return to it.

I realize now that frustration and doubt was amped because I kept comparing my painting with the photo. At a certain point, I have to remember I'm not trying to be a photocopier and just look at the painting. I spent most of my life drawing images out of my imagination. I have to give myself the permission to do the same as I paint.

I stopped again to let things really dry and mentally map what I needed to do. There wa a perspective problem with the bottom edge of the pots not sitting on the ground. I wanted some reflected cool light on the shadow side of the pumpkin, even though there was non on the photo. I finished up with some water color pencils to had some texture and details. Then back to a little paint.

I posted it online and got positive reactions. But looking at it in a different size, I appreciated what I had done right. The mix of colors on jack, the more impressionistic pot behind him, the overall creepiness. I keep saying how I need to paint more often to really start learning and being comfortable. Haven't done it yet but here's hoping.

Meanwhile, it's late. I'm tired. I'm posting without editing.

Why IS a Raven Like a Writing Desk?

The March Hare never answered it in the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. It was just a set up to, "Careful! She's stark ravin' mad!"

A quick google revealed that Lewis Carroll had no answer in the original editions. But he was constantly pestered about it and added an answer to later versions, "Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!" Others have produced more clever answers over the years, although it's absurdity and not cleverness that is the point of that scene. None of that has anything to do with me other than I tried painting one. A raven that is. Writing desks have too many straight lines for me.

This painting is based on a photo by Tyler Quiring that I found on Unsplash. See Tyler's other work here.  Once again, it is a small painting, just 3.5 x 8 inches to fit into my sketchbook. The bird had a nice light pattern on its feathers. Had I painted it larger, I would've had a better chance of capturing it. But I always say that. However, it was the setting I placed the raven in that led to the most changes.

Above is the first work in progress image. The background of the original photo was intentionally out of focus with a higher horizon and clouds stretching across the sky. Overall, it was a better composed image. The high horizon gave a stronger sense of the vastness of Bryce Canyon. But I wanted a more simplified cloudscape. Some dark clouds in the photo gave me the idea of a threatening clouds casting shadows across the canyon. Perhaps the raven is a harbinger of the approaching storm. I think that's a good idea that occurred too late in the process.

Cloud shadows would be best served by a higher POV that featured more of the ground plane, or a mountain range that could showcase shadows sliding across it. Note that I am trying to be a good boy, blocking in the shapes of the entire painting instead of concentrating on detail of a specific area. However, that method is to allow the checking of values and mine are all over the place. The brightness of the red rocks and canyon are turning the bird into a sort of black hole in the canvas.

Above you see my colors getting muddy as I try to dim the canyon a bit. The sky gets a little darker near the cloud. I played with the idea that a towering thunderhead rising out of frame is casting its shadow on the other clouds.

It was time to fuss with the raven and tried to fix its legs. I also really committed to the dark clouds but, composition-wise, they are now fighting the bird. On the good side, I managed to mute the background closer to where it should be. The dark color on the horizon is too dark and saturated. That hurts the illusion of distance. You can see I tied down the shapes of the landscape which helped.

Taking stock of where I was, I looked back at the photo. I considered that stretching the clouds across the page would help a lot. Here's the final painting again.

As often is the case, I got to the point where I had to stop because the colors were getting muddy. This is more of a  problem with me and how I use it than it is with gouache. However, gouache is water soluble. If you aren't careful, later layers can activate earlier layers. I know a cleaner bit of sky along the horizon would create the idea that the storm is more localized  to the location of the viewer. I added some light to the canyon walls near the center that added interest and suggested a slight break in the clouds.

The end result is okay. I stare at it now and see little changes I could do that would make big differences. But I learned which is always the point of these things. It's much better than what I was turning out almost a year and a half ago and people have been kind with their comments.

I'm taking too long between paintings. This was done a month ago. I always seem to find an excuse not to start another. How did I get two movie poster assignments decades ago yet am fearful of messing up a page in my sketchbook? But I did make a drawing on the next page, so I'm close.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acknowledging Dad Jokes

This blog is an examination of my creative process, sorta. In the last year plus it's become a journal of my struggles with learning to paint. I say "learning" because it's the first time I've taken a course, read books, generally studied the basics. I have painted in the past and have actually been paid for my work. I just sort of bumbled along. I have to remember that when I drop into a defeatist attitude as I squeeze out fresh blobs of gouache.

I've actually done three more paintings since my last update in April. I have scans of two. The third was a present to my oldest granddaughter and I tossed the thumbnail, thinking it was the photo reference. I haven't posted them or painted as much, largely because we adopted a rescue dog, Suki. She's from China and has been through a lot.

She's settled in, loves her backyard but doesn't know how to play. Generally, outside of loving walks and staring at us when we eat, she doesn't do dog things. Doesn't chew anything, including dental chews, easily digestible "no hide" stips, nothing. Probably means we'll be paying for dental cleaning. Chases squirrels but not tennis balls or toys. Still skittish if you approach her the wrong way. No doggie kisses. No cuddling. RARELY barks. Sorta acts like an old lady. But she's sweet and no trouble at all. She's under my desk as I type this. Much of this is perfect for an older couple of humans. But we hope to get her to have fun. We've had her since May 1st and have a ways to go.

However, that's not why I thought to post today. I just watched a trailer for a new cartoon show on HBOMax, Jellystone. It's a complete reworking of all the old Hanna Barbera characters in a new style. Creatively, it's a valid choice to use old characters as inspiration to launch in a whole new direction. It's weird to my way of thinking. My gut would be to create new characters but maybe the IP buys you something. It's possibly a business decision to keep the characters active in some way, no matter how much they're changed. I do wonder if there's any value for the new audience to base a show on the shows their grandparents watched.

On the other hand, a new action/mystery show based on The Shadow could be really cool whether a modern audience had never heard of the character.

But I've digressed. My purpose of this blog entry is to post a version of Jellystone that I pitched in 2014. WB asked me to pitch new ideas using the classic HB characters. I went in pitched "my" Jellystone but they already had someone working on a Yogi revamp. They were actually considering giving the Disney Afternoon treatment to the HB characters. I ended up developing a Dino project. The creative exec wouldn't use the words until I said, "Oh, you want the Rescue Rangers with dinosaurs idea" She was visibly relieved that I had said it so she didn't have to.

I developed the show, using the conceit that Dino led a small group of appliances to help those in trouble. Remember, their "appliances" were living creatures - pterodactyl record players, mammoth vacuum cleaners, dinosaur garbage disposals and the like. Those appliances see everything going on in Bedrock and knew when things were getting weird. The design style would have been traditional and the adventures would happen without the knowledge of the Flintstones and Rubbles. Fun show but was told, "This doesn't feel like the Flintstones." Well, it wasn't supposed to. But then merchandising said they actually wanted a Pebbles and Bam-Bam show that included Dino, not a Dino show. So my development stopped.

Before I post my pitch, I acknowledge my humor may be out of date without my knowing it. I remember when showrunners, Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle, pointed out to me that they were working with writers that never lived in a world without The Simpsons. I grew up indoctrinated with early Warner Brothers cartoons by Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Bob McKimson and Bob Clampett, along with the early HB lineup of characters. New writers had access to all that, just like I watched the Simpsons and later worked on Bob's Burgers.  But that's different than being indoctrinated every morning over sugary breakfast cereal. It doesn't mean older writers can't write modern shows. They just can't fall into the fan nostalgia trap of thinking that old shows were the best and new versions are trash.

But I acknowledge my humor may be out of date without my knowing it. So be kind in reading this. It's from 2014 so YouTube references would be replaced by TikTok and the like. I tried not to be the GrandTad trying to be hip. Still, this was taking a version of characters that were much closer to their origins and putting them in a new situation. Plus, it opened up possibilities for new characters. It would've been a fun show to work on. It doesn't make it intrinsically better than the HBOMax version. It's just that, I wrote this thing that nobody has seen and I wanted to share. (And now I'm wondering if I posted this before).

Download Jellystone

Catching Up

There are a million excuses why I don't paint more often. They ricochet off the walls of my skull, streaking through the lobes of my brain leaving trails of guilt because I know they're false. I just have to prioritize my painting over my staring at a half finished painting, moaning about what isn't working, or worse, staring at my sketchbook thinking I should paint.

"Isn't that supposed to be fun?" is something my wife said to me a few months ago. Yes. Yes, it is. At least enjoyable. And it is, kinda. At this stage, painting is like a puzzle to me, trying to match a color or capture the right value relationship. It's also like learning a magic trick because when values click into place, there's suddenly an illusion of light, of depth, on the flat paper. And sometimes it's like a handful of puzzle pieces fall onto the tabletop and interlock by themselves. That's what happened to the clouds in the painting above. Specifically the red ones in the center.

I struggle with skies and clouds. You'd think they'd be easy, or at least forgiving. After all, they come in all shapes and textures. Who's to say what you saw and captured in paint? Well, they come in all shapes and textures and all of those reflect and absorb light in different ways. I had reached the, "Close enough. I'm done," stage of the painting. I even scanned it. I even posted it online. There are things about the cliffs that I like better but the distant mountains don't feel distant enough and the clouds don't feel like clouds.

Dave Block, an animator and director who worked on some of my TV shows and now an accomplished oil painter, pointed out the clouds fought the rest of the painting. The bright colors and business weren't needed. The sky should be simpler. That was excellent constructive criticism. Specific to the problem and suggesting a clear solution.

I hadn't applied wax over the painting, and knowing what was needed, I dove in once more. Besides the clouds, those damn distant mountains just had to be lighter! I always think I'm going to far when lightening or darkening, but after the paint dries it's never enough. But I do think I improved them.

As to the sky - understand that there are several layers of clouds there. As in, trying something, painting over it, softening edges, changing colors, wiping parts away, painting over it, over and over. I knew they weren't right but I hadn't been thinking about their relationship to the mountains. Dave' crit was one the money. I mostly just washed things down, adding bits of color here and there. Then some of those puzzle pieces joined up and they looked like ... well, they looked like clouds!

That was April 5. The first week of "Plein Airpril" when the internet challenge was issued to get outside and paint! A painting a day! I knew I wasn't going to do that, and I had a few character commissions to finish. But I thought I should try one a week. I knew I just need to paint more to improve. I have the theory in my head but not the practice with my hands! But five days later, I set an apple on a plate and painted!

I wish I had timed myself but I think I finished in two hours or under. I just started in freehand, no grids or tracing, that's why the plate is so wobbly. I don't clean my palette completely, I reactivate the dried gouache, using it like watercolor at first, then add fresh as needed. It sometimes muddies my colors. I was having trouble capturing the shadows on the plate when it hit me, "Duh. The sun is moving." But I finished up, added flowers from the hawthorne bushes, didn't fret that I wasn't perfectly capturing the leaves and learned plenty. That's what I was after.

Two days later, I went out again! I can do this! Looking for a subject, I zeroed in on the Monarch caterpillars who were busily denuding a milkweed plant. I had harvested seeds the year before, got them started in pots and and early butterfly obliged by planting a ton of eggs. Hoping to see clouds of Monarchs in the backyard this summer. Mindful of the lesson of changing light from the apple painting, and  considering my subjects were moving. I snapped a picture.

I guess the key for me to finish a painting without laboring over it is to avoid taking a picture for reference. A photo is an excuse to worry over details, second guess decisions, wipe away and start again, etc.. I fought this off and on over days, trying to get the values right. Tried darkening the wall behind them to make the contrast greater. Of course, using a black colored pencil for the caterpillar detail made that a fool's errand. The black shouldn't have been black. I decided I'd learned enough about what not to do and decided to move on. I even waxed it to keep me from fiddling with it anymore.

 

I actually did another painting in the middle of the caterpillar piece but it is a gift and I can't post for fear of spoiling the surprise. But at least I'm painting more and the lessons I'm learning show up in the next piece!

 

 

The Hermit's House and the Bridge to Nowhere

It's been more than a month since I've tried painting. Just lots of paperwork and organization going on, mundane stuff that just gets in the way. But you learn to paint by painting and I felt the stagnation setting in.

These are just small paintings in my sketchbook. The little shack is only three inches across, the bridge just four. Both were painted from images pulled off the internet.

It's not that the end results are striking, but both taught me lots about planning. The hut was an attempt to think through the composition of shadows. The dark colors of the greenery start at the lower left, snake across to the right then curve up to the cabin. They move up the wall, and under the eaves to encircle the window. At least that was the plan. There was an optical illusion to the stand of trees on the left that I failed to capture. They look like thick, dark trees, but actually, they are light trees with deep shadows between them.

Light hit the house right above the window. If I revisited this at a larger size, I could do a better job with the light patterns both on the cabin and the trees in the distance. It could actually be quite striking, especially if I added a shadowy figure in the window... or maybe just two glowing eyes!

The bridge went more smoothly. There is a mountain on the left that can't be seen because I got carried away with the trees in front of it. But the light on the bridge works fairly well. Again, if this was a thumbnail for a bigger painting, I'd be in great shape.

The bridge is limited palette of Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna and Titanium White gouache. The Hermit's House is the same with the addition of Sap Green and a bit of black.

 

Self Portrait

This was a challenge. I've never tried a serious portrait, but a face is just another object. You look at shapes and their relationship to the shapes around them and just put them down. But we all know what a human face should look like and I'm especially familiar with this one, albeit its mirror image. There are sections of my face that seem spot on, other areas not so much.

Still, I give myself kudos for trying and the overall lighting looks good, especially since it wasn't very dramatic. Instead of taking a photo with a strong shadow, I just leaned into my computer's camera. My wife wondered why I picked an evil looking expression. What can I say? Like Gahan Wilson, "I paint what I see."

This was done with a limited palette of Cadmium Red, Yellow Ochre, Ultramarine Blue, along with Ivory Black and Permanent White. I was wearing a bright purple hoodie which I thought I could get with blue and red, but I think Cad Red must have yellow in it which pushed it to grey. Also, started out very organized then every book and tutorial I've ever studied flew out of my head.  Roughly 3.5 x 8 inches in my Pentalic sketchbook. I haven't painted in several weeks outside of these approximately 2x3 inch valentine cards below.

It's silly, but I'm jazzed that I glued magnets on my Heritage palette so it snaps right onto my easel set up. Just gotta dive in!

And oh yeah, Happy Valentines.     --Tad