Hungry Artist Games

Heads up, today is the last day to enter the ARC salon!  Dave and I have said so before, and I'll say it again: it's a good thing to have a big, central competition for everyone from all the different walks of representational art to compete and mingle in.  One cool thing is how the ARC has been developing equal opportunity for illustrators to compete by adding a category for imaginary realism.  It's nice to have those creative and ambitious jerks drive home for us realist fine artists just how lame our mug shot portraits and overly precious little "life studies" are.

Dopplegangers

Titian's Venus of Urbino has a lot in common with this provocative mastiff.

Merry Christmas

Hope everyone has a great holiday and are thankful the Mayans were wrong about the world ending in a fiery blaze of death.....stupid Mayans. 

ART CATZ

Dave and I don't make it to representational art galleries very often, what with living on an island where the main artistic output is totem poles.  Luckily for us, we make it out to NYC once a year to visit my in-laws, and that's when we nerd it up.  We compile a list of galleries, plot them on a map, and go.  We alternately praise and talk smack about our peers ("Wall-eyed ellipses? Oh no you di'n't!"), and if I'm really lucky, swipe a price list at Eleanor Ettinger Gallery and figure out how much money the featured artist made at their show that month, and what I would buy for myself if I had that much money.  It's easy because Tiffany's is right across the street and I'd only have to purchase one thing.

ARC Salon

 The Art Renewal Center Salon deadline is fast approaching.  I know a lot of people out there like to find excuses why not to enter, but the whole point of the Salon is to bring together the best artists in the fields of fine art, illustration, and concept art.  There is nothing else like it out there. 

I will say the ARC has helped me tremendously in my career and opened up a lot up a lot of opportunities.  If it wasn't for things like the ARC Student scholarship, I would have found myself hard pressed to have attended things like the Hudson River Fellowship.  In addition, Fred and Sherry Ross have purchased many works from both Kate and I.  We have both placed in the Salon with large cash prize awards which always seemed to come right when we really needed it. 

It is my hope that this year more concept artists and illustrators will enter, as they are also truly pushing the boundaries of realism and often go unnoticed.  For more information on entering, click here.

Here's one of the pieces I entered.  The "Happy Huntsman" finished.

Narrative work

For years I have heard people whining about the contemporary art scene with the phrase "but where's all the multi-figure narrative work like they used to do in the 19th century....waaaaaaaah?"  Well, it's time for them to shut their cake holes because I have taken my first steps towards such a thing (not like I'm the first).  A lot of people may wonder why I have not attempted anything similar before.  Quite frankly, because it's hard to pull one off well and it takes a lot of planning.  That's probably why you don't see a lot of people doing them.   I always wished I was like Rouge from  X-Men who could touch someone and adsorb all their powers;  in this case art powers.  I would walk up to some of my favorite artist's like Yuqi Wang, Scott Waddell, and Mian Situ and shake their hand, only to turn around and run off laughing with their skills of narrative painting.

(Sidenote, painting "random naked chick in bed reading book" does not count as narrative painting unless the story is about a woman whose cloths exploded and she decided to do some book research to figure out the enigma of why).

In this piece, there are two fisherman on the hunt for some aquatic creatures to destroy; I don't know, maybe some baby seals or something.  It took quite a bit of time to dig up the correct articles of clothing I needed, a boat, and a model who had a mustache so manly that Burt Reynolds would blush.
 
I did quite a few thumbnails to work out the composition.  One trick for this is not to simply sit down with a sketchbook and try to do fifty in a row.  Some are done in a sketchbook, a scrap peice of paper and even on napkins at a restaurant.  When I get an idea, I jot it down.  By the time I am ready, I have no idea what happened to the first 49 I did, but the winners are kept. 

I also try to do at least 5-10 color studies.  Ironically I always end up going with the one of the ones I did first, but I do a bunch more to make sure to kill time until the show "Shark Tank" comes on.  I was thinking of going on "Shark Tank" and offering them the investment of 50.00 dollars and a ham sandwich for 51 % of the equity in my business.

After that, time for the full-on drawing that will be transferred for the final painting.  In addition to these stages I still have to do ocean studies, boat studies, sky studies, and some portrait studies....man, narrative work sucks.

Start of cartoon

Some of the color studies.

The David Gluck Show with Matthew Innis

Matthew Innis is the artist responsible for the highly successful "Underpaintings" blog, but in all likelihood you probably already knew this, seeing as how half our traffic comes directly from his site. We thought if we interviewed him we might learn something about running a successful blog.

1) If you were stranded on an island with five other people with no food for weeks, how would you bring up the idea of resorting to cannibalism? Would you kinda joke about it to gauge people reactions then go from there, or take one or two people aside and go after the tubby guy before they knew what was going on?

I am a vegetarian, so if I said in passing, “Gee, Bob looks delicious,” I think it would ring everyone else’s alarm bells. Cannibalism would hopefully be the option of last resort, and aside from the moral issues which might get in the way of my eating my fellow islanders, as a vegetarian, I’m not overly fond of the taste of meat. So my focus on the island would not be, “which person do I eat first,” but “how do I make sure I’m the guy who gets eaten last.” To make the others seem more tasty to each other, I would give them all nicknames that would make them sound like food; names like “T-Bone,” “Chicken Leg,” or “Entrée.” I would also start exercising like crazy, not just so I would be harder to take down, but because the exercise B.O. would make less appetizing.

2) How many hobbits could you beat in a street fight before being overwhelmed by their sheer numbers? What would the number be if you had a lightsaber?

This is similar to a question I have pondered for years. Since reading The Fellowship of the Ring in fifth grade, I’ve often imagined getting into a bar fight with a bunch of hobbits while inside the Inn of the Prancing Pony. I think I know how that would play out. But a street fight, that would be totally different.

There are many variables that could affect my answer. For example, what kind of hobbits are these? Are they Harfoots, Stoors, or Fallohides? What is the environment like? Is it a paved street or cobblestone? Is it clean, or is there debris? How close are we to one of the seven daily meals hobbits eat? Are any of them smoking pipeweed? Have they been eating mushrooms? Is any one of them wearing The One Ring?

Hobbits are generally peaceful, but pretty tough. If I could get my back to a wall so no hobbits could sneak up on me (they move rather stealthily), if there wasn’t anything on the ground that could be used as a projectile against me (they have good aim), if none of them were invisible, and it was almost one of their seven mealtimes (they must be hypoglycemic), I think I could take down eight. (I have three kids, so from the experience I have beating them up, I think that I could take down the first three hobbits without breaking a sweat).

With a light saber, I could take them all. ALL. I mean, what chance would they have against someone wielding the Force? It would be like Anakin Skywalker at a Jedi nursery school.

3) If you had a time machine, would you go back and kill Hitler, knowing full well that the most awesome mini-series "Band of Brothers" would never be made as a result? This also goes for pretty much every awesome video game AND the Indiana Jones series.

“Yes, I would go back and kill Hitler,” or at least, that would be my first reaction to this question. I would do this so I could save the many victims of World War II who suffered and/or died as a direct result of the events that that man set in motion. However, this might create a time-space paradox by which not only “Band of Brothers” would no longer exist, but I might not either.

My mother was born in 1932 in Eindhoven, a town near the Belgian border in the Netherlands. If you ever saw the movie or read the book “A Bridge Too Far,” you may have heard of it. She grew up during WWII, and I remember the stories she told my sisters and me about the bullet hole in the ceiling from when a Nazi soldier shot at my grandfather when he was seen standing too close to the window after “lights out;” how her best friend across the street was killed when parts of a British plane that had been shot down landed on the girl’s house; the day her half-naked grandmother embarrassed and delayed a group of Nazi soldiers, allowing the Jewish family hiding in the attic to escape across the rooftops; the day her family ate their pet cat because food was so scarce; how the fear and stress of the War caused a large portion of her hair to fall out at age 8, and how it never grew back; and the day she met her first American, a soldier who heroically saved her by grabbing her and diving into a well during a bombing raid. There were many stories, more than she ever shared with me, but it is without doubt those events shaped her life, and thereby mine.

Of course, quantum theory would provide for time travel without paradoxes, so going back to kill Hitler would more likely result in a parallel universe. In my original universe, Hollywood would still have “Band of Brothers,” Indiana Jones, and the History Channel.

4) If you were immortal, where would you see your art career 400 years from now? 

In 400 years, I will be the last living painter - There can be only one. This is the very reason why I have a mirror next to my easel, instead of behind me, and why I use a katana as a mahl stick. I’m also a slow painter, so in 400 years, I’m hoping the painting currently on my easel would finally be finished.

In many ways, this question makes me think of the lottery question, “If you won the jackpot, what would you do differently?” Nothing would change for me, I’d just be doing more of what I love to do. I imagine by then I would be challenging myself to larger canvases, with complex subjects and compositions, and that I would still be trying, without success, to be more painterly.

5) We all know you have an impressive collection of feral cats, have you ever considered giving them away as prizes for your contests on Underpaintings?

Yes. Unfortunately, the farthest any package has it made it is only one neighborhood away before the mewling alerted the mail-lady to my scheme, and she returned the cat to me. I am currently working on feline hypnosis in order to put the cats into a deep sleep before placing them inside the boxes. So far, all that happens, though, is that I fall asleep, and I wake up to find the pantry depleted of marshmallows.

BTW - If anyone wants to try painting using cat whiskers, I have a huge supply.

6) Why did you decide to start what is one of the most successful art blogs on the internet? How has this affected your artwork?

In the words of Trey Parker, “Blame Canada.”

Allow me to make a short story, long . . .

I consider myself largely a self-taught artist . . . and I have the college degree to prove it. When I was in school, there was not an emphasis on technique and execution; the main goal, it seems, was to teach “concept.” And other than a few tempera paintings when I was in elementary school, I had not even picked up a brush until college, and I had not tried painting in oils until I was a senior. I was really behind the eight ball - I was getting a late start, and I had no one teaching me the basics of the activity I ostensibly wanted to do. To make up for the lack of training, I read a lot. I have a huge collection of art books, and it all started in college.

After graduating, I was able to get some illustration jobs, and basically started to teach myself to paint while on-the-job. I ended up doing a variety of commercial art jobs, from creating game art and book covers, to making prototype costumes for toys, sculpting action figures, and working in an animation studio. After several years, living on debt got old, and I quit art cold turkey, and went out looking for one of those J-O-Bs that offers health coverage, a retirement plan, and a steady paycheck.

I found one. It was awful. But I ended up with a savings account (my wife and I did not have kids back then), and I just couldn’t seem to forget about art, so maybe I could make that awful job slightly better if I knew it was paying for me to pursue art as a hobby.

Being self-taught, I was never really confident in what I could do, or in what I knew. So I made a short list of artists with whom I wished to study, and started taking classes and workshops with those people. My top five at the time were Marvin Mattelson, whom I had wanted to study with since I saw the work his students had been doing back in my college days, Jeremy Lipking, whose inspiring work I had just seen in American Artist Magazine, Tony Ryder, whose portraits blew me away, Juan Martinez, whose beautiful drawings I had seen in a show in New York City, and Michael John Angel, whose students were creating some of the most brilliant, drama-filled still lifes I had ever seen. I have been able to study directly with four of them - Angel is the only one of those five with whom I have yet to study - and I appreciate all that I learned from each of them.

For class with Juan, I traveled up to Canada. It was a great workshop, and I met some extremely talented people while I was visiting. Among them were Will Nathans, an American who had also studied with Mattelson, Kate Stone (I wonder whatever became of her), and Canadian Kristy Gordon, a Ren & Stimpy alumnus turned fine artist. Kristy was doing an awesome portrait of Kate, and I stopped by her easel to make a comment, and she started asking me questions, and like a typical out-and-about American with poor etiquette, I started giving her suggestions, and talking about art history. Kristy seemed interested in what I had to say, which I found shocking, because, after all, I was just a guy who read a lot of art books, and didn’t every artist do that?

Kristy and I kept up communications, and a while later, she wrote to tell me she had started a blog. I commented on some of her posts, and she asked me some more questions, and then she suggested I do a blog too. Up until Kristy’s blog, the only other art blog I had seen was James Gurney’s, and he’s brilliant, and I didn’t see what I could contribute to the blogosphere after seeing what he was doing. But Kristy insisted I knew a lot about art, so I figured, what the heck, I’d give it a try.

To my surprise, other people found what I had to say interesting too.

I didn’t know at first if anyone was going to read my posts, but I decided to keep plugging away at it. I decided I wouldn’t be someone who could help another artist finish a great painting the way Gurney might, but instead I could be someone who provided some knowledge and ideas that could help someone start a painting - an under-painting, you might say. I wanted to provide the kind of knowledge I wished I had been taught back when I was in college; I think every student deserves at least that much.

The blog has helped me a lot. For one thing, I’ve found out I’m a pretty good researcher (I think that is more accurate than saying I’m knowledgeable). And I’ve also learned that the adage, “To teach is to learn twice,” is very true. What I write about reinforces within me the techniques and lessons I’ve gathered over the years, and that helps me during the juggling act of painting, when there are so many different things to remember simultaneously.

The biggest impact on my art from all of this - the teachers, the blog, the research, and the support of the readers - has been a greater confidence in my own work. I feel that I was given permission to do the things in art that I had wanted to do but was discouraged from doing when I was younger (e.g. using the color black, working representationally, using my tongue to lick the lead white off my brushes, etc.). With that confidence, art has stopped being a hobby again, and because of the people with whom I’ve studied, and the notes I’ve made through the blog, when I mess up a painting (and I invariably do), I have some tried and true lessons to fall back on to see where I went wrong.

7) How would you define art using only 2 letters as your answer (you can have one number too if needed)? 

That’s tough. If I could use two numbers, it would be easy, but just two letters? Hmmmm... I think I will go with “q” and “i.” “Qi” is the Chinese word which refers to life force. It is vital, and encompasses the soul. And the inverse of “q-i” is “i-q,” which is fitting, because the majority of artists I know are possessed of high intellect. (I could have gone with the Japanese counterpart to Qi, which is “Ki,” but the inverse of of that would be “ik,” which just didn’t seem as fancy).

(I can't believe he came up with an answer for that last question that didn't involve "fu")

 

Pond's Edge in Progress

A while ago on this blog I posted a pic of my hot off the press last ever painting of Lucie, my favourite model from Toronto.  Since then I've decided that the title "Last Lucie" will make sense to approximately zero collectors, so I've started calling it "Pond's Edge," which will hopefully suppress people from asking me what is going on in the background.  I think that the title of a painting should either answer a question or cause a viewer to ask a question.  Otherwise you end up with stupid titles, like "Solitude III" or "Serendipity in Blue."

Drybrush.  Yawn.  This stuff must get so boring for you readers.

This painting was a little improptu.  Instead of starting with a concept and moving onto a photo shoot, I used some existing references that were just captivating.  The result is that I was freed up to focus on visual effects.  No fussing about anything else.

So I started this painting with the attitude that I was going to focus not so much on a complicated design or concept, but rather on doing something different with my materials.  I had this realization that I don't paint anything like the artists that I really admire, so my goal was to try to get closer to painting the way I really want to.  I've sort of been painting the way that I naturally paint up until now, without trying to push myself out of my comfort zone.

I definitely struggled with Lucie's face for a bit (as usual).  My mum pointed out once that truly beautiful people tend to have something really unusual about their faces.  Like Julia Roberts's cavernous grand canyon mouth or Brooke Shields's caterpillar eyebrows.  Lucie has these soulful eyes that look enormous, but are actually normal sized.  Throws me off every time.  The eyes are the first and last thing I paint and I can never get them right.  I recently painted a couple of girls who are not Lucie, and holy crap was it easy to get their faces looking right.

I decided I really wanted to experiment with a tight face and a loose background.  I hate backgrounds.  Trying to tuck a landscape in behind someone is lame.  I was trying to come up with a way of doing it that I really loved.

Painting with warms and cools, transparency and opacity to get the hair just right.

Right around now I took a break for lunch and read this while I wrapped myself around some bacon and eggs:

"In particular, another 'ism', Symbolism...has turned out to be more and more useful as an umbrella term to describe those strange new currents that began to emerge in the 1880s and that would reach their peak, on both sides of the Atlantic, by the turn of the century.  The drift was inward, a rejection of the external world that could be verified by touch our sight in favor of experiences that could be felt or dreamed in a terrain hovering between twilight and the deepest mysteries of sleep or myth...Whether in Moscow or Prague, London or Milan, Brussels or Barcelona, artists would shut their eyes in order to open the floodgates of feeling and imagination."

(Italics my own)

Wow.  If a blurb like that doesn't make you want to luxuriate in smokey, moody painting effects, I don't know what would.  There are very few things that get me excited about painting, apart from painting itself.  Usually anything an art historian or critic has to say about art pisses me off.  But just reading that made me think, "Wow, I want to be an artist when I grow up.  Wait, I am an artist!!"

"Mystery, as in a spiritualist seance, could best be conjured up by an ambience of haze, a milieu closer to reverie and sleep, where smoky phantoms appear and vanish as in a hallucination."

Damn!  I gobbled down my lunch and went back to the easel.

That background is my version of shutting my eyes in order to better see.

I've oiled in the whole shawl area, plus a margin of hair so that I can work into the shadowy areas between ringlets just enough to integrate the two areas.

Shawl in place

 Finished.  The last touch was to anchor her hovering head with a neck.

And here is a close up of the flesh tones.  They are much more broken than usual.  Drifting closer to how I want to paint.



Bibiography:

We're not all fancy like at Underpaintings, which is real art journalism, so I don't know how to do the sophisticated little number trick.  The passage I quoted was an introduction by Robert Rosenblum for Eugene Carriere by Robert Bantens.

Show at M Gallery

Dave and I are in a show with M Gallery (Charleston, SC) that opens tomorrow.  We've been so focused on it and so busy chasing our tails and screaming at FedEx minions that we forgot to share it with the world.  Oh well.  You probably already heard about it.  We know that we were among the last to know about it, when one day a magazine editor got in touch with us and said, "As you know, we are doing an editorial for your upcoming two man show..." and I was like, "Yeah, of cooooouuurse, just give me a sec, I want to get my gallery on the phone..."

Dave and I will have an assortment of oldies but goodies and fresh out of the oven pieces.  I would especially love it if someone bought "The Pair."  I'm just putting that suggestion out there for the universe to mull over.

Winner

Needless to say, I have gained victory over Kate once again.  The end was rather lackluster, as Kate's open studio became too cold for her to paint.  As we all know, she lacks the necessary back hair we all have to keep us warm, so she will have to finish her piece in the spring.  My piece was finished just in time for our show in December.

Anyway, here is a final shot of my piece.

Next posting, "how to keep your stray back hairs from getting into your varnish layer."

Motivation

We have decided to do a series of motivational poster for fun.   Here is first of many.

Why I love being married to an artist

Today Dave and I celebrate our five year anniversary.  Sometimes I wonder where the time went, but then I remember that we spent it having fun.  In honor of the special day I would like to present my Ten Reasons why it is Awesome Being Married to Another Artist.

1.  They share your artist flakiness.  "You forgot to make dinner reservations?  Perfect!  I forgot it was our anniversary."

2.  They understand that it's more important to have a studio than a dining room, and are happy to eat off their laps so long as you have a place to paint.

3.  They think it's a BRILLIANT idea to buy that viking helmet off of ebay, and by the way, they saw a whale harpoon at the flea market and they bought it for you.

4.  You get to split the work.  Dave hates varnishing.  I hate making panels.  Looks like a match made in heaven to me.

5.  They're not jealous when you spend your evenings painting.

6.  You can do gallery shows with them!  I know it takes me about two years to produce enough work to fill a one man show.  As a matter of fact we're splitting a show at M Gallery next month.

7.  Your most ruthless critic is on hand at all times to push you in your art.  Please see Ten Reasons Why It Sucks to be Married to an Artist.

8.  They're schedule is as flexible as yours.  You end up spending a ton of time with each other.  Probably about three times as much as everyone else spends with their spouse.

9.  Their idea of a vacation also involves museums and art galleries.

10.  Anniversary presents are unusually suited to artist couples.  Paper?  Linen?  Boo-yah. 


Happy Anniversary, honey.  I was able make dinner reservations after all.

Donkey Kong's got nothing to do with it

Dave is mistaken.  It is not the speed of completion that counts when determining the victor in a creepy doll painting contest.  It's whether or not, late at night, as you wander downstairs to get yourself a glass of water, you can hear the pitiful crying of the lost children whose souls were devoured by said creepy doll.

Yeah, yeah.  Not much more done.  Been busy preparing my new studio.  And it's freaking cold outside, and raining constantly, so standing next to an open garage door makes painting an extreme sport.  Two layers of gloves and a constant drip of hot coffee doesn't balance it out.  Not sure I'll finish this before winter clenches her frigid fist around us.

It's On Like Donkey Kong

And Dave takes the lead in the still life battle royale.    Kate should know by now, I never back down from a fight, (unless the guy/girl is bigger than me in which case I kick them  in the groin and run away.)  Although she had an overwhelming head start, I have not only caught up, but I am only days away from finishing my still life.  Now remember, this is a competition about speed, not quality of work, so Kate still can't brag when her still life looks better in the end.

I still have to render the remainder of the wood and the doll's legs and arm, but other than that this baby is finished (I hope by now I don't have to remind my readers when something works on two levels.)  This piece, along with several others by Kate and me, are going to be featured in a "Petite Salon" at M Gallery.  For those who don't know, "Petite Salon" means small exhibit in French and I am sure everyone is going to "mucho gusta" our show very much.

Natural Pigments Visit: Alternate Version of Events

Dave and I have respectfully agreed to each write our separate version of events from our days at Natural Pigments, since we are prone to zeroing in on entirely different things.  For example, after 28 Weeks Later, all Dave remembered was the helicopter using it's blades to decapitate hundreds of the undead, whereas all I could remember was the stupid eye thingy being the sign of a recessive allele that granted partial immunity, I mean please.

Last week Dave and I found ourselves in Willits, CA, home of Natural Pigments headquarters.  In case our random driveling about our favourite mediums and paints hasn't already led you to their website to figure out what we're talking about, Natural Pigments is an artists' materials manufacturer that specializes in rare, natural pigments and authentic, old school paint making practices, with a dash of modern innovations (epoxide oil...say what?).  If you have a crush on Rembrandt or Velazquez or any of these other dudes and have been obsessively researching to figure out what mediums will give you that classic look, you might want to step back and rethink the paint you're using.  Those bland and homogenous tubes of paint in the art store down the street are a different breed from the paints that our predecessors used.  Since switching to lead white I have come to realize why rounds were the most popular brush for like ever.  I've also figured out how they used to effortlessly get that lovely, scratchy, ripply paint texture...time to wipe the drool off my chin and get on with this.

I beg you to check out the website and give the forum a gander.  Nothing beats talking to George in person, though.  We've had a few opportunities over the years, mostly at the PSoA conference, but the four days we stayed with George and Tania were intense.  Think morning to midnight conversations.  And George knows the stuff inside and out.  As far as I can tell he's read everything about historical painting practices that he can get his hands on, even if it means getting a friend to translate it.  He is well respected by today's leading restoration experts and his pursuit of raw materials takes him around the world.  Like a secret agent.  Except for paints.  In short, I have finally found someone in whose hands to put the fate of my paintings entirely.  I can finally stop reading the books myself, I can finally stop worrying about the wax fillers in my paints, the primer on my canvas, I can finally just kneel before my new religious leader and obediently take the wafer on my tongue.  I can finally just paint.  Between making panels, doing photoshoots, varnishing, crating, emailing, blogging, and digging the pretzels out of Dave's trail mix when he's not looking, I have enough to do, without hand-milling paint and stuffing it in a pig's bladder.

While in Willits we were able to tour the new factory.  The whole company is extremely small--only a handful of people.  George and Tania showed us their paint mills, their aisles of raw pigments sourced from all over the globe, their drums of oils, and their unique safety hoods and quarantine zones to ensure safe handling of the more dangerous substances.  George milled some paint while we watched and I was struck by how much skill was involved in carefully, continuously adjusting the spacing of the milling cylinders and assessing the consistency of the product as it went through.  George makes his paints with a very minimalist recipe: pigment, oil, and hard-earned experience.  There are many concerns about the longevity of paintings made these days with modern paints that contain all sorts of additives.  Rublev oil paints are as close as you can get to the paints that have been used for the majority of the history of oil painting.  I know there are artists out there who feel that if you are going to go traditional you may as well make the paint yourself, but I feel that with Rublev paints you are paying for batch consistency and a real, rock solid expertise that was solidified by gallons of experimental batches.

Oh, and I've always avoided mediums because I knew that adding oil or resin to my paints would upset the ideal ratio of pigment to binder/vehicle and weaken the paint film.  In fact, although I had a whole set of tubed mediums by Natural Pigments at home, I'd only ever dabbled sparingly with them.  But then George told me that the way he makes his mediums is by combining a colourless pigment with whatever recipe of oil, wax, etc is necessary for the effect he is trying to achieve.  The result?  The medium is actually a paint, and you can add as much as you want to your other paints without upsetting the ideal pigment to binder ratio.  Oh snap.  Here is a sponge mop to wipe up your exploded brain.

From left to right, Dave, me, Julio, George's floating head, Candice, Tania, who is always better dressed than you, and the neigbour's diabetic dog that we're not supposed to feed

In fact, I was always worried about not only mediums, but also supports, paints, varnishes, resins, light bulbs...In short, my work time was divided thus:

 
I can happily say it started to look more like this after we first started to implement some suggestions from George and other erudite sources:

After four days staying with George and Tania, who have a bar stocked for the end of times in their basement, it began to look a bit like this:

After four excellent days with George and Tania, we took off with Julio and Candice Bohannon Reyes, artist couple extraordinaire that we met at the PSoA this year (some serious bonding happens on banquet night at 2am after the seventh beer).  We hitched a ride with them to their place, where we snooped around their studios, excited their dog into peeing all over the sofa, and wore Julio's high heels.  Dave and I were simultaneously intimidated and inspired by the paintings they are working on right now.  The best compliment I can make is that someone's artwork makes me want to race home and start painting, and that was the case.  After seeing their studios I unleashed a hurricane of Martha Stewart on one of my guest bedrooms once we got back and started redecorating it into an amazing little studio.  This will have to be a separate blog post.

We wrapped up our trip with a night in San Francisco.  We crashed in on Sadie Valerie's beautiful atelier, oggled her artwork, which has a wonderful sensitivity of color that you just can't appreciate in photos, and were introduced to the mysterious black aluminum foil:

It blocks light like aluminum foil, but doesn't reflect it?  Witchcraft!

We wrapped up our last day in San Francisco by visiting the Legion of Honor Art Museum and nerding out on paintings with Julio and Candice.

Like all good museum-goers, we started with the cafeteria.  Apparently, translating "Hot Dog" into French makes it classy enough to charge $7.75.  They do realize that in France it's called "le hotdog," don't they?  For realz.

Coco Chanel used to say, to avoid being overdressed, always take off the last thing you put on before leaving the house.  It seems Coco was born about three centuries too late to prevent this.

We wondered aloud whether this artist had ever seen a human foot.

Baby Gee copping a feel.

Three reps of fifty lashes really work the glutes.

And then, before we knew it, the trip was over and we found ourselves on an evening flight back to rainy Vancouver Island.  We're a bit depressed, but we have ice cream and wine and are self-medicating accordingly.

Natural Pigments visit

Kate and I decided to do separate postings as apparently I have a selective memory.  For example, she remembers all the in's and out's of our business and I remember how to fold a formal dinner napkin into an origami bra from when I was 10.  I think we all know who remembers whats really important.

So we just returned from our visit to the Natural Pigments factory in California and it was truly an incredible experience.  I hadn't had this much fun since my visit to the free puppy and firework factory in Detroit. While in California, we also got to visit with our friends and fellow artists Julio Reyes and Candice Bohannon who taught us the teen slang phrase "shit just got real", which I will be using from now on to describe realist art. 

I would like to take some time to talk about Rublev paints from Natural Pigments.  One of the main differences with Rublev paints is that they do not add fillers and stabilizers.  Simply oil and natural pigments.  They are entirely organic so all the hippie artists of the world can enjoy them as well.  In addition, the pigments are not machine ground like other manufacturers, which results in a variety of pigment particles, resulting in a better refractive index.

I have noticed a tremedous change in my work since switching to their pigments.  In addition to an easier color harmony, each paint offers a unique paint quality.  I have mentioned the thixotropic properties of lead before, but other paints have a similar effect as well. When using other brands, one will notice that every single pile of paint comes out of the tube exactly the same.  A lot of people felt the old masters had some secret recipes and mediums, but I honestly think pigment properties dictated how they painted more than anything.
  
In addition, only natural pigments are used and none are synthetic.  Many of these pigments are mined from all over the world, including Siberia, France, and even Afganistan.  Most pigments by other brands of paint are synthesized, and can be falsely labeled.  For example bone black should be made with burnt bones. Ivory black is made with actual ivory.  And hooker green is made with dead...nevermind.   I am also extremely excited that George will be making an authentic ivory black.  Since harvesting ivory from living species is illegal, George will be using small shards of mastodon tusks.  Did you hear me?  That shit just got real.

Now I know these paints aren't for everyone.  There are plenty of artists like Adolf Hitler and Thomas Kinkade who used alternative paint brands.  It's ok not to use Rublev paints if those are the sort of artists you look up to..... nazi.

 

Here we are with George and Tatiana, the brains behind Natural Pigments.

Kate looking enthusiastic.  Either she just saved a bunch of money on her car insurance by switching to GEICO or she really loves this paint.

Pics from our demo of Natural Pigments Paints at Riley Street Art Supply in San Raphael.  Your skills are always put to the test when painting in a public arena.  One has to think, shit just got real.

Our visit to Sadie Valeri's Atelier. We talked about one of the greatest teaching tools ever, the "compliment sandwich."  You start off with a compliment of the student's work, then give some constructive criticism, then end with another compliment.  For example, "Nice color choices over here, did a brain damaged 2 year old paint that other area...nice shoes."  Works every time.

Sadie's Atelier

One really cool trick Julio taught us was how to use Velazquez medium to create transparent impasto without sacrificing chroma.