"Pistachio", acrylic & oil on 24" x 30" canvas
Long time, no posts! I know, I know… but I promise I was actually painting the entire time. With the daily project over, I decided to scale up in size and bust out the oil paints to complete a new set of nightscapes. This tested my patience much more than last year’s project tested my endurance…which is probably because I picked one of the most detailed reference images for the first piece, but heck- thought I’d get it out of the way.
I am still babysitting the final yellow-green glaze, and hell if I know how I’m going to manage to photograph this without some kind of reflection in several weeks when it’s tacky, but here it is for now. 🙂
This painting features some shops from somewhere within Little Italy in San Francisco. I was really drawn to this image because of my reverence for the inherent beauty of a transient moment. I love the feeling of being a passing voyeur with my camera, disappearing off into the night with a captured second on my memory card, cradling it and petting it and telling it I’m going to make it into a big pretty painting so it can live forever. Now that I’ve described it that way, it’s really more of a Golum-my-precious/I’ll-hug-him-and-call-him-George sort of mental image than I’d intended.
At any rate, I’ve started blocking in the next one, but I also began several small mixed media pieces to help flush the tedious-crankies out of my system, so stay tuned for those! I swear I will not make you wait three more weeks for new work. Scout’s honor.
Marianne Bland's Art Blog 
wow. wow. – that’s a double wow. aloha and welcome to 2011 Marianne. i definitely take your word for your paint time – 24/7, eh? cool. yeah. definitely a double wow – understated. i hope you dont mind me (i’m clearly only taking a quick small look on the net) connecting you you/your work here in this way – you’ve clearly updated to the new century/decade Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks – yeah, i like his work. this is beautiful. well worth the wait. and i really like your title. it aint E.D’s night any more. i also really like your passing moment connection with the camera. yeah. i’ve been doing that and not understanding it – now you’ve made a lot of sense of it and i feel onrtrack rather than intrusive – thank you. i appreciate that immensely too. ha. small work flush – cool on that stage too. i’m so glad you’re continuing to post here under P2010. do you have a polarizing filter for your camera? that may help reduce the reflection considerable when you photograph the work. aloha and welcome to 2011 – with glee.
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Aloha! Thanks for your always uplifting comments, Rick! I’m absolutely honored to have my work compared to Hopper. Right now, I can’t see this piece with fair eyes because I’ve been staring at it consistently for weeks. Once I have set it aside for a few weeks I can come back to it and decide how I feel about it. The next one is already torturing me. 😉 I’m glad to hear my process description struck a chord with you! Though it sometimes feels awkward to take pictures of strangers, we image-makers need to collect reference material somehow. Thanks for the tip on the polarizer, i may have one hanging around. Happy 2011 to you too! I’m glad you’re still peeking in!
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Aloha Marianne – yeah, i understand about being too close to a work and needing time to be able to look at it with fresh and not-quite-so-knowing-about-the-struggles-and-little-things-of-it eyes. i’m often excited about a work when i’m working on it – then not so excited about the last work when i get on to the next work. the thing now tho, is that with the net and instant now-ness it’s hard not to blog what we’ve just done even when we are not yet sure how we feel about it. in a few weeks you might or might not be fine about this work, but the pull to blog it… that too might or might not be there then. i think we sometimes put up things when we may not be quite ready to do so. it’s okay tho. as i see it – until a work belongs to someone else it’s up to you what you do with your own work – including changing it all up if that’s what it needs. it’s still fun to see what an artist is doing as they do.. or just finish it. i think it helps us all to know we are all human. cool on that.
exactly. as image-makers recording what we see is part of our process and reference material gathering. cameras are one of our tools. so. click. zoom. click again. digital cameras make that easy too. it still takes an eye to see and understand what we’ve collected. imo – yeah – you have a great eye. cloudy days can sometimes be a great time to photograph shiny work too – unless you’re going to set up lighting conditions…
i hope that torture painting stuff works it’s way into fun too. aloha.
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