Many artists ask themselves: "What should I do when I'm not painting?" The answer comes along and it's: "Read books and magazines about art." Or else it's find Robert Henri's must-read book-- The Art Spirit-- on your coffee table with your glasses on top, take a picture and think yourself a real cut-up. But honestly, it's a terrific book, one of those you can dip into here and there, and then have plenty to think about. Ben Shahn's "The Shape of Content" is another good one. Maybe I'll start doing book reviews here, or maybe I'll get back in my studio and start painting again. Hard to decide which.

I like The Artist's Magazine plenty well. Watercolor Artist is also good. I paint in Chroma Interactive Acrylics and in watercolors. When using watercolors, I paint as if I were using acrylics. When painting in Acrylics the reverse. What fun, or not such fun, depending on what happens.

Right now I'm working on "Red Calla Lillies" First came the watercolor version. Not so good. Now I'm getting them down better in the Chroma Acrylics. Keep going, Jeanne, don't lay down on the sofa and start watching videos! Don't try putting sunglasses on The Art Spirit!

It must have been two or three years ago that we visited this outdoor cafe in Waltham. Jim is clowning around with a glass of wine in his hand. Can you believe it? Anyway this was sort of a messed up watercolor so I added part of one of Jim's poems to it in India ink. then I pasted in the stop sign that I found around the studio. Someone must have cut it out for a collage. Now it belongs to Jim.

After finishing the official Portrait of Larry the Zebrafish, aka Larry T. Wallace, I learned of Larry's tragic death. I think I'll spare you the details. On top of this I made Larry the subject of Iced Coffee Season this year. There seemed to be some dark sychronicity at work between the Larry Art and the death of Larry himself. But he will be immortalized when Iced Coffee Season opens for 2009.

I wanted a companion piece to Socialist Surrealism which I painted this year from an old drawing. I had prepared a canvas a while back with the borders blocked out for it. Interesting. The paintings are done in the same style but with the first one being done in a slower, more controlled manner. Saturday night I went after the second one painting in a more furious way. I sort of just threw myself at it. I think the second one is a better painting, but not necessarily because of the intensity with which I tackled it. I think with art it's always a balance between working on skills and letting go completely. I lot of people said they like Somber Fruit but I don't think it's a terribly good painting. I was too scared when I painted it and I think it's too controlled. You can see that in it. But on the other hand you can't be just letting go all the time.

I've lost a lot of my watercolor skills while I've been working in acrylics. For this reason I'll go back to watercolor class this spring.

After the first week or so of January I disappeared into the sinkhole of graphic design. Check me out...I like graphic design a lot. Maybe not 10-12 hours a day, 7 days a week. But things are slowing down a bit in that department. So..MY GOD DO I HAVE TO PAINT AGAIN???? This is what it's saying inside me. The one answer, of course, is 'no'. You don't ever have to paint again. Wrong answer. Walking back into my studio it seemed like a good idea to stare at my materials for a long time. A really long time. Okay, not working exactly. ( can't these things just paint themselves? I go to all the trouble and expense of buying the supplies and now I have to paint the damned things?  Do I have to do everything?!!) Then I remember that I'm an inventor of tricks.

So my trick is to do warm up exercises in paint. I'm drawing a bit too. See, I do the warm ups and then I don't even know when they end and the 'real' painting begins. I may never know. Above is one of the warm ups that I liked. Pretty colorful, eh? This is in watercolor too, a medium I all but abandoned late last year in favor of Chroma Interactive Acrylics. Oh, and I signed up for watercolor class with my wonderful teacher, Janet Hobbs.

Joel rides the Greyhound bus from California to Boston. He arrives and tells us something important. Somewhere into the Midwest, a passenger opens an orange. What would otherwise be a pleasant smell becomes part of the misery of the four-day ride. The bus is filled with the smell of orange, a smell deeply carved into the experience, which by now has become close to torture. We understand immediately.

This is such a simple painting. I'm trying to keep it that way. I'm working in thirds, Joels huge Dutchboy haircut, his T-shirt and his jeans. For the background I had a color in mind, but the color had no name. A design book, "White Asparagus and Burnt Olive" gave me the idea of how to name the color and how to make it. Burnt Olive it is.

What's left to do. Some very interesting greys to make the chunks in Joel's hair. The burnt olive background. I did the T-shirt in forest green with a lot of dry brush in the shirt. After looking at it for a while I decided to leave it that way.
I'm thinking a lot about how to simplify paintings. We'll see how this turns out. the finished work should be duller, toned down.

Apologies. I took the picture of Somber Fruit with the wrong camera setting. The photo depicted the fruit as not somber, but downright cheerful. Ha! Anyway I redid it. Here's the better photo.

I'm working on something I think is a companion piece to Strangely Dark Vegetables. It's called Night Peaches. I should be done with this bizarre piece tonight. You have been warned.

The Red Tablecloth posted here earlier is a jumbly mess. I plan to 'finish' the painting and then do it over in an entirely different manner.

What can I say about this? It's called Red Tablecloth and who knows where it's going? I've got to dim out the way background and lay down some kind of opposing color as flooring under the table. And lot's of detail work, but not too much. Like in the Talking Heads song where it goes, "Tell me a little bit, but not too much." I may have already 'told' too much here. But there is a Plan B for this thing. Don't ask.

post script: If you think that bottle looks too big, it does. But the actual bottle is even way bigger in real life than I painted it.

Pay no attention to the terrible rendition of the hand. That will all come out great in the end, or else I'll pitch myself off the back porch.

By the way, I finished the Somber Fruit. You can see this under the Still Life category. I must say it was quite still the whole time.
So I'm still working on Malcolm at the Buddha Board, but I have a feeling that it will end up being one of those drawings in paint that I like to do.

post script: I struggled like a navvy last night over Malcolm's hand. No, really, I got the basic outline okay  on the cavas but the fingers started to move all around and confuse the hell out of me? I couldn't tell which finger was which. And I'll tell you I was sober the whole time. So I did this: I traced the hand outline from the painting and drew the hand. Now, I can draw a hand. Yes, the drawing was good. Really it was. Then I went back to the canvas paper and I still couldn't make those fingers go where they should. I cut lines in between the fingers on the drawing and tried to hold it over the painting and make it right. No, and they (the fingers) were all misshapen and stuff like that. So this morning I got up, roared like a bear and threw myself at the hand. It appears to be shaping up okay now. Stay tuned.

I've been working in Chroma Interactive (hate that word) Acrylics. I bought a few tubes a while ago and messed up pretty badly with them. Things just slid around long after they would have been completely dry in regular acrylics. Now I'm trying again and liking these paints very much. Working wet in wet is a snap. Well, a longish kind of a snap. So I've got this very still life going here and I'm afraid of the grapes which belong on the white ceramic plate. The grapes could be the most interesting part of the painting because I think you could work in that dullish gray tone that purple grapes have. Because there are so many individual grapes, I think with regular acrylics the gray stuff would end up sitting on top of the dried purple color. Anyway, I'm scared. Not that this is such a beautiful piece. God knows there are plenty of wacky areas to fix up, or not. The cast shadow under the bowl leans to the left while the deeper shadow under the plate is right under the plate. That's how the still life appears as there are two sources of light. I can't tell if it looks crazy. I just had to tell someone about this before I march in and tackle the grapes.

post script: The grapes are on the plate. See Main Page or Still Life