do it anyway december -- results

This page is for me to put in the mostly daily paintings (and a loaf of bread and a book) of the house, yard, garages, alleys for the month of December so they will all be one place and I can look at them in one glance. (I put this photo first so it shows up on the preview for the page). Details about the project are on the posting from 11/28/2020,

Day 1. A drawing and a drawing. To orient me to my subject; that I haven't drawn or painted much since early October.

The aquarelle paper (l.) has such a weird greenish tinge to it. I don't like it. I like the other qualities of the paper but not the color. The other paper (r.) is not so watercolor friendly. 

Day 3. I still hate the paper I'm using in the book. Halfway through my time today I switched to a different random notebook and switched from watercolor to gouache. I started liking what I was doing and then added paint and then started not liking it and then started settling in to my own thing almost. It will come. The cat wasn't helping and I was distracted by not having all my colors and had to keep running back and forth for a tube or a brush or to change the water. Lessons for today -- give it up on the paper in the lovely book I made and use the book for something else. Keep going, I know I'll relax into it and find my paint-voice. I ALMOST took the version on the right to the sink to wash off all the paint and restart. Not because I didn't like it; I have done that many times before. I think it's part of my process to start off and paint how I think I "should" paint (e.g. it should look like what it is; the colors should be realistic) THEN wash it off, and THEN do the next thing that comes when I've done and rinsed away all that small talk. I learned the washing away from watching a Lars Lerin movie about his watercolor process where he dumped buckets of water on his paintings (everyone in the small audience gasped in horror the first time they saw it), and from Carl Oltvedt, who said "use the best paper you can afford and if you don't like it wash it off and start over" because the good paper can take it. And there's still often a ghost painting left that can pull out other ideas. I think Carl said to fill up your bathtub and put the paper in the tub and when the paint is off as much as you want, take it out and let it dry and use it again. 

Day 4. This is okay. A quick late afternoon painting with a tiny bit of clear oil pastel as a mask. Judi was post-op from dentistry and was stumbling around the house and I painted out the front windows instead of the back windows. Like this. 

Day 5. 

Day 6/7. 

Day 8/9. Think about this. Then draw it. I decided to draw my house at night with the lights on inside. Think then draw. The drawing is good. Glad I took a photo in case I need to replicate due to wrecking the final!

Day 10/11. Start the painting. Using gouache. I think it's getting there? Many layers left. This is multi media 184 lb paper, hot press or flat. So curious to see how this will end up. 

Day 12. So sick of this house! I don't like doing the tiny details. This is bigger than what I usually paint. I need to work on doing this faster instead of fussing for FOUR days on this! I ended up using a bit of w.s. crayon on top to get in some of the details that were driving me crazy and that I wanted to just do and get it done. I think it turned out okay? It's supposed to be my house in the dark with the lights on inside. The porch light is on. The house is white in real life, with a blue roof, IRL. I'm calling it done for now. Gouache and water soluble crayon. 

*I took photos of the house from outside. Since Roz's challenge to not use photos for a year given to me May 2019, this is the first time I've painted from a photo since then. 

Day 12.  Sick of fussy painting(s) (noun and verb). I had a 1 hour break in bread class btwn 6pm and 7pm and looked out the window and decided I'd do a quick painting. Here it is. It's fine for a quick painting. Maybe I like quick painting. There seems to be more energy in the painting. I know where I am in this. Maybe I like watercolor more than I thought I did. I did use the hairdryer because I don't like waiting for paint to dry. I managed to leave some white space--amazing! What is my goal in painting? I think I want to paint quick like this for when I'm traveling (if that ever happens again) or fishing or being somewhere.  To remind myself of whatever. 

Day 13. I got to the end of the day and thought oh no, I didn't do my artwork today and Roz will not let us make excuses!!! Then I remembered I made a fab loaf of bread with the crazy heritage wheats and I made a book. I'm pretty sure Roz would be okay with the book because she was my first book binding teacher. The book is 7 signatures of 6 pages each of random paper 8.5 x 11 torn in half then folded so finished page size is 5.5 high x 4.25 wide, cover is some kind of dried up beeswaxed cloth, sewn in with a long stitch binding using green waxed thread, walnut buttons and part of an old shoelace for the closure. Turned out I did do art today! 

Day 15. (Hmmm, what happened to Day 14? I made another book) Quick 45 min painting of the house across the street again. I think I'm done with that house and will go back to the garages. The garages give me a challenge because they aren't straight on and I can work on what I wanted to work on in the first place -- depth and distance. 

I love the challenge of painting in  the dark. Besides the yellow in the windows, I only used three colors here -- pthalo blue, pthalo green, and anthraquinoid red. 

Day 16. End of the cone of silence although I sort of exist in a cone of silence anyway. For my recap of the last two weeks -- I'm still in the watercolor world (with hairdryer because it takes sooo long for paint to dry). I moved to a bigger size of paper and final painting space and that takes more than 30-60 min of daily work and work on them for multiple days. 

I have had a bit of fun the last few days using only 3 colors except for small highlights. I have been using big brushes and small brushes only at the very very end and only if necessary. I'm kind of not wanting to include details that require small brushwork. Maybe I lose patience at that point. I'm fascinated by the dark and the pools of light from streetlights and from inside buildings. I am excited for snow. How will I paint snow? 

Maybe painting is like weaving was -- I liked the set-up, the calculations, figuring out the threading and patterns, and then weaving the first few inches. After that it was boring boring boring. Over and over, back and forth. In the last few paintings I got excited about the range of neutral colors I get from the 3 colors I'm using. I can make sort of shapes with the big 1" brush. I like the big brush -- it makes me be less fussy (see Day 12; too much fussing). 

As always, I still keep thinking -- what is my thing? What do I want to do? Do I even want to paint? I don't have answers to the first two but I'm pretty sure I like to painting. I like the watercolors because they travel small and light, same with the paper, and I only need a couple of travel brushes. I've enjoyed painting on the spot using the water I find at that spot. I should be more consistent in size and paper in case I want to bind them in a book arranged in some order that I don't know about yet -- by date, by theme, by palette, by subject, by weather. . . 

The painting for today took some time and I wasn't perfectly careful about mixing the 3 colors exactly perfectly. I got to this point today and liked what I saw and then started thinking about the details I didn't have in there -- the lightbulb, the edges, the trees. . .  (then I had an idea about the trees in the Kawakami Sumio woodblock of Village Children Playing Baseball, which reminded me of Wanda Gag's style, and her lithograph Winter Twilight and moving trees ). . . and I'll let this iteration ferment a bit more to see what else bubbles out of my brain. No need to rush. (I also don't know what a lithograph is and I think I would really like the printing world and I'm avoiding that rabbit hole of fun). 

Day 17. More of the above garage but only a short time. 

Day 18. Hmmm. Smaller but still fussy. I spent too much time on this, maybe 3 hours? I like the houses, I like that I added the trees or tree shapes and suggestion of trees. The bit of white on the red roofed house is a surprise (I must of forgotten it?) and is the best white spot. Need more darkness in the back but I don't think I want to fuss on it anymore. Needs a a few mores houses in the background but only the suggestion of the houses in darker colors to keep the foreground brightest. Maybe I'll collage something into the back. . . 

Day. 19. Limited myself to 3 16 min paintings and outside. Same subject matter. Besides that I got the pine tree a bit wonky at the bottom in the lower painting, I that that one the best. I might try another few of that angle because I love love love that pine tree. 

Day 20. ??

Day 21/22. Finished what I started (see Day 16). I kept thinking and thinking and mixing the three colors and trying them out and then painted over. Still didn't quite have the depth I wanted and finally added one more layer of dark over the back houses to make them recede more. In an earlier version the back houses were were too prominent. 

Day 23. It snowed finally. It was cold. I painted this in the dark. Light from the streetlight (alley) outside the frame of the image. Gouache. This was done quickly and I was happy with it. Still happier to do quick less fussy painting and I still recognize what I am seeing. 

Day 24. I painted and crayon'd Judi the cat. Took a day off from garages. Made a book casing with marbled fabric and orange bookcloth. Baked 4 loaves of bread and a pie crust. Why do people think pie is easy? The filling might be but the crust takes so long -- make dough, chill dough, roll dough and put into pan, chill/freeze, partially bake with beans/rocks, THEN put in the filling, bake some more. Then eat. Hours just for the crust. 

Day 25. Read books. 

Day 26.
Did more Judi the cat painting. Finished sewing a book together (see blog from 12/26 if you want). Might paint tonight in the dark outside again. Love this darkness and snow and want to see if I can capture it. Used iridescent paint. Always a surprise to see what happens in the dark. That was fun! 

Day 27, 28, 29, 30.  I worked on this for days. Draw, think, paint, paint, and re-paint. Dark. Depth. Distance. December. Did I do it? Did I make some improvement/change/plateau jump?  Looking back to my alley paintings from March 2019, I don't see much difference (and maybe they're "better"? but I think better is the wrong word. Different). I still really love the dark one I did then. Is this one different? When I look at them side-by-side in my house I like them both. I will have to examine them together more deeply to see what has changed in almost 2 years. 

Why do I like to paint? I like to go away in my mind. My painting doesn't usually look like what it is, not a true representation, and I think I don't care because I remember the time and the place if not the exact number of siding boards/roof shingles/location of plants/color of whatever. 

When I'm in the nursing home someone might bring my paintings to stick on the wall and they'll all be of the alley and garbage cans behind my house. Will that be weird? 

This month of do it anyway December was a practice in depth and distance but also darkness. Many many years ago when I first saw Mike Lynch's dawn, dusk, and night paintings I thought they were the most beautiful grain elevators etc ever, even back then in my unformed uninformed brain, and his art made me go inside the space and wander around in the dimness and darkness. I like paintings in the dark and painting in the dark. 

This month I got better at distance and maybe depth; they sort of go together anyway. I know I got better at not matching color in real life! Painting in the dark is a good exercise in value matching. I used mostly 3 colors of paint and had to figure it out in the dark. It wasn't always "successful" in lifelike replication but it was fine by me (see para 2 on why I like to paint).