Retro 05: Old Studio

Help! It's 2003 and my studio is a wreck!

Time Travel

With any luck, I am now in Stonington, far away from any sort of internet connectivity. It's a perfect opportunity for me to try out Blogger's feature of being able to schedule posts, allowing me to write this on Sunday morning and publish it tomorrow. While not exactly being time travel, I do find the ability to play with the perception of time fun. In the spirt of this, I will future-post some some retro images each day at various times until I return on Thursday to amuse my faithful readership, which I like to call "The Eleven." When I return, I will then re-edit their time stamps, burying the images under their correct dates in the past, allowing them to be only found by following the "retro" tag under the post, assuming you can find a retro entry with said tag to begin with, or by happening along the post randomly by selecting from the archive menu. Confused yet? Good. Meanwhile, send good thoughts as I experiment with painting outdoors, something I have yet to attempt.

Prep for Stonington

Leaving in the morning for a few days to paint in Stonington, Maine. A house was donated by Stephen Pace to the college a few years back, and I was finally offered the opportunity to go. He is a painter, so there's a studio I should be able to use. As you can see, I've been priming surfaces all week in preparation.

Nesting Jays

A pair of blue jays started nesting last week outside my bedroom window. They were scarce for a few days so I thought they moved on to greener pastures or higher boughs. Very excited they seem to be digging in for the long haul. I wonder if they will terrorize the neighborhood with swooping. Ah the suspense.

View of the paint drying on the sky panel. After banishing the figure, I'm seriously considering Eric's wishes to leave it just as a skyscape to serve as punctuation in the show I'm envisioning. I won't let it go without a couple more layers.

Red Insoles

Another nocturne. I'm excited about the images but let's face it; the daily text and titles are especially----unmemorable. In blog tradition of describing the painful minutia of daily happenstance, I may start titling my repetitive entries by trivial, but still genuinely autobiographic, details.

The story: Today I bought some red insoles. I change shoes when I enter the studio like Mister Rodgers so that I don't accidentally track lead white across the living room at night. Upon leaving the studio, I was struck by my glowing insoles, nearly as mysterious and deep as the velvet curtains in Twin Peaks' Black Lodge. Regardless of they feel, I'm sure the inner fashion of it will keep me floating. With a teaser like that, I knew I'd have to provide an image. Sadly, the ambient tungsten light is taking away from the effect.

More Snow

As you can see, it's taking me a little longer to resolve the figure than the dog. Added some core dark values tonight then started inventing snow that had settled on the coat, legs, and shoes. More snow on the hills and ground was added as well but that's a pretty subtle difference to tell from the little image.

plus Figure

I'd always imagined a figure in this one; she still may be changed/removed- part of the process.