A Painter Painting

I'm generally a talentless hack with a paint brush.  I started dabbling in oils in grad school when I thought I was bored.  I should have been studying.  When I settled in G-Burg and started working at "The Mary", I heard about Bev Johnson over in Cameron and took some classes with her.  Along the way I did some OK stuff.  I won Best of Show at the Mercer County Fair for a portrait of my Uncle Ed, and one of our home that turned out OK, too.   But then I moved into a phase where I painted homes for  folks.  In fact, I'll still paint your home for you if you give me a good photograph.   I am by no means prolific.  Nor good.  Except for a few classes with Bev, I'm pretty much self-taught.  Another nail in the coffin for home schooling. For every decent one I have 10 that need the canvases ripped from the frames and sewn together for sails.  

It doesn't bother me, though.  If I had to rely on my talent to feed the family and pay the mortgage we would have all starved and been homeless decades ago.  It's too late for greatness so I'll settle for good every once in a while. I try now to paint for pleasure, but it still brings a certain angst.   

The latest one, however came out fairly well.  The idea for this one sprang from my old sky watching days.  Back in G-Burg whenever something close to remarkable would blaze across the shy, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, climb into the truck and head over to a secluded spot near Alexis.   I can vividly recall stopping the truck in the middle of blackness, a few lights from Alexis visible, and not a thing close by.  It was a back-and-forth between looking at the sky and turning around to watch my flank.   

I tried, then, to capture a little of that bleakness, and darkness, while amazed at the spectacle in the sky.  I didn't prime the canvas with anything, just got some Indigo and ultramarine blue and painted the sky.  I lightened up the mixture a bit with some white  to make the lighter shading.   

The Milky Way is a mixture of all kinds of shading, so I dabbled some black and indigo in places to create even darker shadings.  Some of the stars were actual pinpoints but some ended up a sprinkling with a stiff brush.  I put in a little medium to make it more liquid, then put the end of the stiff brush in the mixture, then ran my finger along the bristles to shoot minuscule dots of white onto the canvas.   Something else, not everything done is done with a brush.  One of my favorite items to use on some stuff is cosmetic swabs.  They are a lot like Q-tips but are shaped differently.  They are an excellent way to work shading.   

The ground area was some of the dark mixture along with some van dyke brown.  I needed to delineate the dark earth against the dark sky and imagine this the best way.  One could have made the entire background the same shade but I wanted the dividing line.  A better artist probably wouldn't have.   

My original idea was to have the truck in the middle of nowhere and have him stopped and in the road in front of the truck.  My idea was to have him, like I did, looking up into the heavens amazed at the wondrous panorama of space.   That was my original idea, but it changed once afternoon when Brendan came over. 

I had the truck done and the road 80% done and he said don't do anything more.  He said in all his travels he missed so much sitting in Humvees or carriers and missed so much looking around and up.  He said that added more diminution for him, so you will not see a guy in the road looking up.  

Also, another change.  The road was always going to go straight into darkness but once I put the little town in, I decided it would be more interesting to have the road go to the left, away from town.  Somehow, I thought the idea of the driver heading away from the safe and secure was better.  In a philosophical way.  

The road was a combination Torrit gray, a little cobalt and white.  Just for your information, Torrit gray is leftover paint companies mix together then give away at retail shops.  The truck was a lightened shade of Ultramarine blue, and the taillights and signal towers is a Pyrrole red.  I read somewhere once that every paining should have something that is red in it.  Don't remember why, but it must be like salt on a pretzel.  

The green on the side of the road was primarily sap green and Cad yellow light.  The field area is mainly Cobalt and Ultramarine blue.  

When I was up in August I was in a country road and stopped.  When I got out I was amazed at the number of signal towers and the lights from Alexis.  So, I added some towers and I wanted a town somewhere in the painting.   I recall as a kid coming home from wherever either with the folks or on my own and it was always kind of nice to see the lights of Seaton glistening in the distance.  It was comforting, I guess. 

Doing something like this doesn't always follow a straight line from point A to point B.  There was a tree on the right side of the road, but I'm not sure it added anything so it came out.  Originally the lighted area in front of the truck was wider and farther out into the fields.  Again, it took away from the secluded aspect I wanted so it came out, too.   Originally there were bolder stripes in the highway, but that didn't work because it made the road too civilized.  The road needed more mystery, more seclusion.  

And like the twinkling stars above, I decided to add some fireflies to mirror the stars on the ground.  So, we have a few things that point to life's dichotomies:  A vast lit heaven above and a stark blackness below.  A town beckons to the right, but our driver follows the road to the left.  A shooting star and the vastness of the heavens overhead, while our driver is alone and navigating a dark road in the country.   And, yes, the truck is my blue '96 Ford Ranger that keeps on going. 

Taking pictures of a painting is rather tough.  After several attempts at getting all the dark blues and vividness of this one I finally gave up.  

This is the basically finished product.  When the paint is dry I'll put on a protective coat of varnish.  There is no title as yet.  Perhaps something will come to me, but I suppose "The Country Road" is as good as anything.  I don't know what I'll do with it.  If someone wanted to buy it, it would be for sale.  Pricing is difficult because I have no name nor appreciable talent.  Uptown are several galleries with works from renowned artists to students.  Students price their stuff anywhere in the $500 to $1200 area while the more renowned artists sell their stuff in the $5000 to $9000 area.  I'm not sure how artists come up with a price, but anything I do is cheap.   

Well, there you have it.  From start to finish.  A lot of the time is just staring, or mixing or thinking, or wondering, or pacing.  It is never good enough.  And after each one you get "painter's block".  What do I do next?  Sometimes weeks could go by until something latches on.  But it didn't happen this time.  I have two canvasses primed and ready:  one is going to be a cloudy landscape with a farm house, and the other is going to be a little red-headed girl playing in a rain-puddle.   

Painting isn't easy.  You have to outline, get a clear vision in your head what you want to accomplish, mix colors correctly, apply the paint well, remember the lean over fat rule, and then make sure it comes together in an efficient way.  Always mindful, too, that there is a symmetry to a good painting:  everything has a place in that rectangular canvas - you have to decide where that place is.  It's not easy.  Come to think of it, I would have been better off golfing as a hobby.