Mixed Media Distressed Painting In Process

This year’s Christmas card - yes, it is the end of March 2016. So, why am I working on a Christmas card now? Because I’m doing a mixed media distressed painting that involves perhaps as many as 50 or 60 layers before it is finished, and I can sandwich these layered steps between working on other art works including other mixed media distressed paintings. The process involves two different kinds of paint, glue, polyurethane, digital photography, Adobe Photoshop, oil crayon, and collage and dechirage, all mixed up together in a concoction that is sort of like a complicated soup. It is a process that I enjoy doing tremendously.*

At this stage I have 10 layers in the painting, and I like the dominant color, and the images that peak through the distressed layers of paint. However, it looks nothing like the final painting because this stage will be hidden beneath 40 to 50 more layers. That is part of what makes the process so much fun. Images appear, disappear and reappear entirely or in bits and pieces creating a sense of mystery and history, at least for me, the artist. I am depending on the acuity of viewers to pick up on that sense of mystery and/or history, and I know that may not always happen.

Never the less, the process is what makes mixed media distressed painting so enjoyable. I will continue to post photos of the painting at various stages of development up to the final image for the card, which will be posted as a Christmas greeting at the end of the year.

Notes

*Déchirage -I include here a link to Wikipedia entry on decollage which includes a definition of déchirage.

Harrison Ford for Characters Pub

It’s over a month since I’ve added a post to my Art Blog!!!

Finally I have an image of Harrison ford (manqué) ready to enlarge for a 3 by 4 foot painting, the last in the series for our Goddaughter’s restaurant in Lancaster, PA.* However, this is one of two images. The other is of Will Smith. Our Goddaughter will decide which she wants for her restaurant.

I will send the two images among others I have worked on. But I’m happiest with this Harrison Ford image because I think it is a departure from what I’ve been doing with the images for Windows on Queen, the banquet facility at Characters.

This will be the last of the over-sized portraits for Characters.

* manqué - Artist's model. Sculptors have used the term traditionally when making a small model before creating a larger work. I've appropriated the word for my small sketches and Photoshop experiments made in preparation for larger 2-dimensional paintings.

Pastel Wave Painting #3

In January I decided to make a new 32" by 40" pastel wave painting. So this week I searched through my photo morgue to find candidates for the painting. *

New Wave Photo #1

I searched through several hundred photographs taken over the past 10 years. I have at least two thousand more, though I won't search through them all. I can use them for future wave paintings, and I will also shoot more photos of waves during the next several months.

New Wave Photo #2

I’m showing two of my choices here including one set of photos that zoom in closer and closer to isolate a small portion of the breaking wave. Now I just have to make a decision as to which photo I will use.

Wave #2, close up #1

The viewer could help by voting here or on Facebook for the photo of his/her choice.

Wave #2, close up #2

I will provide a hint as to my thoughts on the matter - the closer, the better!

Note

* A "morgue" is an artists file of photographs to be used as aids in drawing and painting. My morgue is made up of all photographs I have taken myself.

Pastel Paintings of Waves

Wave #1

I conceived the wave paintings as an experiment in photo realism with one caveat. I wanted my process (the way I use the pastels) to be visible.

Wave #2

The first two wave paintings were done in 2012 and 13. It’s time I got back to that series. I have taken hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand photos of breaking waves over the years. I will begin the search through my morgue for new photos to work from this weekend. * The two paintings shown here are 30 by 40 inches and 32 by 40 inches respectively. I cropped the original photos, looking for a small section that was in perfect focus in order to freeze the water’s motion completely. These were then copied meticulously, but still using my direct application technique with the pastels rather than rubbing, blending and smearing as most pastel artists do. *1 Because of that technique, the paintings appear to be photographic upon first examination, but break down into individual chunks and strokes of color upon the viewer’s closer approach. I use the pastels themselves to blend one color into another. That makes the color lie on the paper surface allowing the white paper to show through rather than turning the white paper itself into a darker color.


Notes

* Morgue – a visual artist’s file of photographs used as an aid to drawing, painting and/or sculpting.

*1 Experts have told me that I use a contrary and actually improper technique. Too bad! I achieve a depth and intensity of color that it is impossible to achieve by rubbing, smearing and blending, the traditional pastel technique. That is why I call my large pastels, paintings!

A Blast From the Past

Isaac At Rehoboth Beach (circa 1957)

The journal entry is for November 22nd 2005. The entry is one of several written by “the professor,” in Isaac’s Family Photo Album, and was part of several alternate realities I created to illustrate psychological, sociological, and philosophical aspects of my doctoral dissertation (Isaac Stozfuts: Images About Male Sexuality and Culture). After completing the doctoral degree in 2000, I extended and elaborated these aspects in the virtual reality that is the Internet. I have since removed most though an abbreviated version of the photo album and a good portion of Isaac’s journal still exist out there in the “cybervoid.”* If anyone is interested the title page of my own journal, “The Art of John Bittinger Klomp” includes the links to “Isaac Stolzfuts’ Journal” and “Isaac’s Family Photo Album.”

* cybervoid – a term I invented in 1998 to describe the vast space - seemingly infinite and often vacuous though filled with information - that is the Internet.

Beach Walk

This is an updated version of an older pastel painting (2010). The newer work (February 2015) has additions that contribute to my (the artist’s) and hopefully to the viewer’s awareness of the natural theater present at water’s edge. I made it for the Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida art auction to be held this month.

The young man walks by the light foamy aqua to deepest dark blue ocean waves that gently flow onto the brown sand with shells scattered on a low tide beach. Above his head pelicans fly, a full moon floats low and hazy in the daytime sky, and a sailboat cruises slowly in the sea breeze near the horizon. It is one of those perfect days, the wet sea sand glazed and reflecting a blue-mirror at waters edge, lambent zephyrs tugging at his hair and gently wafting cross sun warmed skin. He pushes grains of sand into small aqueous dents that disappear as he drifts through the picture plain, the sand grains scouring flakes of skin from the soles of his feet.

Never the less, he is unaware, cloaked in his virtual aural iPod reality. How easily he accepts the temple of sea and sky, not aware of God’s presence within or in the actual world that surrounds him.

Super Shadow Selfie

I have never taken a cell phone selfie and will not. However, the shadow selfie is an interesting variation on the usual (Ho-hum) selfie, and the slightly less common selfie in the mirror I see posted on Websites everywhere. On Christmas day I stood at the edge of the surf in south Florida and shot a series of photos of my shadow as the water rushed in, over and out. I then assembled 5 of these in a horizontal progression in Adobe Photoshop. The result is the Super Shadow Selfie. Interestingly, I was not aware of changing the position of arms as I shot the photos. The photos demonstrate that I did. I like the way the actual slight green tint of the water changes the overall color of the brown sand in the frames as one views the series from end to end. Also, though not very revealing as to my exact looks, the Super Shadow Selfie demonstrates a great deal about the way my thought processes work when making art, and probably the way I relate to the world around me on a daily basis.