This was my first Norwegian fjord painting, done three summers ago on a terribly rainy day at the kitchen table in a little cottage about 100 yards from this view. It was really coming down and wasn’t going to stop, so I trotted down to the fjord’s edge, clicked quick photos then dashed back and used them as my reference.
I think I’ve come quite a ways since. It helps to realize that by looking back now and then – especially so this morning when I’m thinking about how far I have yet to go!
No post tomorrow – gonna be an art hermit! I hope you find a way to be creative too –
Your Buddy Bill
This one’s pretty goofy alright – but I’ve done others that are even further into the wild. Ink slinging doesn’t get much better than this! Or at least mine doesn’t – yet.
Have a fine Sunday – I may not post tomorrow but will be back on Tuesday for sure.
I’ve always had a hard time with grays! I can pound out strong, daaaaark pictures, but delicacy is something I must continually reach for. I think this bloom is one of the nicest I’ve managed in the quiet department – it’s loose, surprising and almost fossil-like. I don’t know how I managed such a killer middle but okay, wow, that makes me especially happy!
CLICK IT TO GET A CLOSER LOOK – SO WORTH IT!
These go so well with yesterday’s salvaged pictures – bold, black centers, spirited mark making and some surprising skinny moves. I’m pretty much at my best when I can manage all of that!
No post tomorrow – see you on Friday!
Never, ever throw away good effort!
Both of these pictures are the lovely, salvaged halves of failed two-sheet pictures. It’s also interesting to note that they’re related – dark circle/flower centers keep cropping up. The simplicity and power of that graphic notion just won’t let me go.
I’ll show you two more orphans tomorrow – – –
If you’re a regular visitor, you know I save my failed pictures and scraps, for use as collage material in future pictures. I also save all my prep work, stencils, working drawings, mark and texture making experiments – in short I save almost EVERYTHING in case I might find another use for it.
The picture above is a great example of how well this works out. Look carefully and you’ll see the flower stem on the left is a raised, black on black shape – which is actually a separate piece of cut paper that had become super saturated with layers of ink before I ever glued it in. In fact it was so impregnated with ink that it had become crusty! Here’s a close up so you can see it better:
Now, let’s have a bit of fun and back track the history of this piece of scrap! I originally cut it out as a sort of sanding guide/stencil while I was putting the big trees in the next picture (below). If you want to read a bit more about that, you can do it HERE.
About two years after I finished this landscape, I began making flower pictures, and that same scrap was used both as a sort of crude reverse stencil – and also to actually print plant stems, which I did by quickly inking and pressing it face down on the pictures I was making. Here are examples of how that turned out:
As you can see, there were a lot more branches on my tree scrap back then, but the more I used it, the more it fell apart. In my last picture (below), all you can see is a vague mess of suggested twigs/stems across the bottom. If I remember correctly, this was the picture where the scrap lost most of the rest of it’s branches, when it got stuck to the surface and I had to peel it off. Boy, it’s all coming back to me now – I actually left some stray parts stuck to the surface (they’re the random black bits). I had to glue some of them down later to make sure they stayed put.
One of the nicest things about a simple flower is that it’s just a middle with petals sticking out – who can’t draw that? Since it’s that easy, all that’s left is how to do it, and THAT’S the funnest part!
What a great romp of mark making this turned out to be, and I did a few others of the same sort too. I’ll show them to you by and by!
Maybe this is one you should click to really get a good look at!
Hey, the angle of the sunshine this morning at least looks like it belongs to Spring, even if there’s fresh snow on the ground.
At least for a little while longer, I hafta supply my own blooms – – – and they so often turn out whacky! S’okay, I like ’em that way. Hope you do to.
Just ran across this silly fellow – I can’t believe I did him decades ago!
He’s a parody of a sweet little engraving done by Thomas Bewick in the late 18th century. I remember having so much fun with all the different pen strokes. When did I even last use a pen?
Should I maybe make a few more pig pictures, just for the heck of it?
I WON’T POST AGAIN UNTIL THURSDAY – MUST PAINT HARD FOR A BIT!
I thought it might be fun for you to see ganged snapshots of the pictures I’m working on of Nicolai Astrup’s mountain. Of course, I still have a lot to do on some of these. I should probably do a sunny day view or two as well, right?
Astrup is a beloved Norwegian artist, who almost no one outside of Norway has ever heard of. That’s a real shame, because he’s also one of few who ever managed to truly capture the mountain and fjord country. He painted this peak (which is near where he lived) a number of times, so it’s kind of famous over there. Don’t know why I’m doing it now too, but there you go. I’d like to end up with twelve that sequence well, so that I can make a bound or cased portfolio of them.
CLICK ON EACH GROUP TO SEE THEM JUST A BIT BETTER.
Good Morning!
I know I’ve mentioned my big pile of scraped pictures, probably when I’ve told you about how it’s a great source for collage material. It’s at least 2 FEET tall now, and maybe the best thing about that stack is that I often rediscover nice pictures that shouldn’t be in there! Looking at them now, I don’t know what I was thinking when I tossed them aside as losers!
All three of these cats are rescues and each has some nice, particularly spontaeous moves in it. The last two were drawn mostly with my eyes closed – I wanna do more of that!
Hope your week is getting off to a good start – have a fine one –
Your Buddy Bill
Okay, do you know that terrible mountain picture I drew the big “X” through yesterday (see my previous post)?
Well, look what happens when it’s turned upside down – SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING! Could that be a reflection of the mountain top below, and is the mountain itself rising up into a cloud bank and out of sight?
Yep, I had to chase this, so I decided to try making the lower half look more like water. How? By saturating, wrinkling, distorting and ripping into it of course! I’m not subtle, but sometimes I get lucky. Things began to look interesting, especially once everything was dry again and I sanded the wrinkles to lighten them a bit.
Hey, click the picture below to get a really good look!
Oh and for the photo above, I also slipped a scrap of another picture behind this one. You can see it peeking through the gaping holes I ripped in my poor, poor paper at lower left.
Am I beginning to like this picture now? Maaaaaybe so.
Much to do still: that water needs a lot of tinkering yet. Shouldn’t there also be some hint of a shoreline back in there somewhere, and what about all of the white at the bottom? Yep, I doubt I’ll do a post tomorrow – gonna be wrestling with all of this!
Your Buddy Bill
Here’s a whacky ol’ blooming something or other, just to remind us that art can be fun and even unconcerned. Good to remember right now. when quite a few of my newer pictures are teetering on the brink, or tipping over into no good. Time in the trenches I guess – and to get out of ’em you take no prisoners. So, the picture I showed you yesterday has been nixed. There’s not enough going right in it – I’m cutting my loses!
I’m not at all sure where this picture is going, but man-oh-man did it take me for a ride today. I don’t know how to proceed – but I suspect that band of cloud across the middle needs serious work. This had better rest for a couple days days before I try to do more.
Am finally assembling this painting/collage! Done by end of day? Maybe!
I know, I said no post today, but here’s the picture I just about finished yesterday, and it’s pretty wonderful – I had to show you.
YOU MUST CLICK IT TO REALLY SEE HOW NICE MY TEXTURES ARE!
I wish I could have photographed the process that resulted in all of that wonderful texture, but things were moving too fast and out of control. I’m not even sure I can explain what happened – suffice it to say that I had two pictures going at once. When one went south, I slapped the other face down right on top of it and rubbed it’s back like crazy. I was hoping some portion of the picture underneath might transfer to the second one, but instead, when I tried to peel them apart, great sections of the bottom picture tore off and stuck to the other.
That should have been an OH SHIT moment, but not this time! It looked surprisingly good, or at least full of unexpected possibility. So, I just let them stay stuck, and kept painting and printing right over the mess! In the end, when everything was dry, I had a lot of re-peeling, gluing and repairing to do, but now I’m wondering if I may have stumbled upon something very, very promising – what if I intentionally deteriorate, rip and stick pictures together?
This new wrinkle, in addition to all of the ripping, scraping, pecking and sanding I already do as a matter of course, has me feeling very geologic, as if I’m making pictures in a way that is very similar to what weather, time and erosion does to to the actual mountain!
Just for fun, here is my picture again, but this time with the areas that stuck to it outlined in turquoise – the piece outlined in violet was collaged in later to add a little texture to that big, dark area.
And HERE is what the back of the sheet looks like! All of that patching is pretty typical of one of my pictures these days. My method is so hard on paper! Clearly, these pictures of mine must be mounted on a backing sheet – without which, they wouldn’t hold together over the long run! Oh, and that the green tape is just temporarily holding the two sheets this picture is done on together.
An example of how things look when all the marks just slam down quick and right. Love the speed and simplicity of this picture.
I won’t be posting tomorrow – wanna hide in my studio for a day or two. Stay snug – and I’ll be back Thursday.
This ruffled owl is from several years ago – actually I did several hundred owls back then, but you know me. I’m always making a lot of pictures of something!
CLICK THAT BIRD TO REALLY GET IN A GOOD STARE!
Had to show it to you – because I like it. Nuff said!
Are these blooms past their prime or just sad because they’ve been neglected and are a bit thirsty? Dunno. It’s a sort of weedy drawing though, right?
I hope you’re beginning what will become a well used week!