Running Late, Naturally

Yeah, yeah,  I know

     So I am officially an entire painting behind schedule!!!  I'm not going to let it make me crazy.  I knew there was going to be some adjustment needed. I haven't tried to fit this much art time into my life since college and I wasn't working around a full time job then. This was always going to take some getting used to. Also, I have always sucked at forcasting how long it will take to do things. That's part of the reason I am always late to everything everywhere I go!

Let's see, I hung these up five minutes ago and I have to be wearing one at work in 15 minutes...I'm probably good.

     I will do my best to catch up this weekend and get back on track.  Maybe on amendment day I can give myself more time for the first few projects and dial back the time allowed as I get more used to working faster...No, I committed to 26 paintings in 79 days and I at least have to stick to that much. I'll figure it out.  Incidentally, if  anybody has a suggestion for a solution to this, I am all ears!
     Ok, onto painting number 2.  For this work I chose to take a small item and paint it huge. I work in a truck parts factory and we have all sorts of interesting doodads that fit the bill.  This will also give me something appropriate to hang in my office too! It is my secret hope that one of the upper managers will stop by and really like it and commission me to do one for them, but that might be a pipe dream.  The object I chose is a suspension valve that our company assembles.  This is what it looks like:

I think the actual part number for this thing is DOODAD

     So I cropped this thing out in as cool-looking a way as I could (4 years of art school and my principles of composition are still: "do stuff till it looks cool".)

Got a little premature with filling in the background before layout, that's where the blue streaks came from. Oops!

     Since I was going to cover up my pencil lines with paint, I decided to get a little more detailed and put some shading in so I could more easily tell what was going to need to be dark and what needs to be highlights.

     The first night I stayed on task really well, 2 hours and I kept it nice and loose.

    I finished out what I thought would be the most difficult part in preparation for the standard mid-painting lethargy that always sets in when the thrill of starting a new project wears off and I'm too far away from being done to be excited about that.  I set it up this way so that when I think about going in and working I can trick myself by saying "C'mon Smith, the hard part's all dine, just get in there and finish out." It seemed to work pretty well this time.  Because I was able to put in another 2 and a half hours on monday night to bring me here:

     For those readers who are students of higher math, you might have noticed that 2 plus 2.5 equals 4.5 hrs (a half hour over plan) and the painting still isn't done. Here lies the problem.  The watercolor went over by about 3 hours too.  I just haven't gotten in the right mind set to finish these in the four hours allotted. On this painting especially, the second night I lost focus and started getting tighter and more meticulous.  It looks good, but this wasn't supposed to be a rendering. I am striving for a looser, more painterly approach and I'm slipping into old habits. As I've said,I'm not going to beat myself up over this.  These are the first 2 paintings I've done in a long time and I'm still greasing the joints of my art skills.  I'm not going to wig out unless this continues to be a major problem in the future.
     I wanted to take a second and mention, the awesome thing about oils is that you can leave your palette sitting for a day and come back to it and it will still be mostly moist enough to reuse so you don't have to try and remix and match your colors.

     I set out to learn to mix colors really well so I could save money on paint.  I figured if I could just buy 3 primary pigments, I could mix everything from those.  I have since seen the error of my ways, if you can get a rainbow out of 3 colors than you can get a dozen rainbows worth of color from a full palette of paint tubes.  Something that I still carry with me from Illustration 201 class is always mixing blacks.  I bought a tube of lamp black for quick black and white work but I have never used black paint from a tube in a color illustration. Yet another lesson beaten into my head by painting prof. Jon McDonald is that dark shadows don't have to be these endless mud puddles, if you take the time see what colors are making up the shadow and mix the shadow, it will always look about a hundred times more rich and beautiful. Also, don't trust Whitey. (Just kidding Jon) On a more generic note, if you need black paint that is awesome and you're an inexperienced mixer: an equal mixture of Ultramarine, Alizerin Crimson, and Burnt Umber will kill it every time. 
     Well, I finished up tonight and I've gotta say, even for 6.5 hours, this looks pretty good to me:

Likes: Well, I know from experience that this valve is kind of a dull, black plastic but I really tried to pay close attention to what colors were really reflecting off this thing and how it is a lot more reflective than I would have thought. Any time I can set aside my preconceived notions about a subject and just paint what's there is a win in my book. The screw is my favorite part.  It's the perfect combination of painterly and precise that I'm looking for.  When you're right on top of that big screw head, the shapes don't make any sense but then when you step back you get that "ah-ha!" moment. perfect

Dislikes: The two deifferent styles this ended up in bugs me.  Lucky for me the loose and precise part are made of different materials respectively, so I think I get away with it this time, but I need to pay better attention in the future

NEXT UP: UFO LANDING!

So stay tuned!