Me. Painting.

The Process: Waning Sun

People are asking more and more about the process I use to create my paintings. Because the process is 100% intuitive and spontaneous (and therefore different every time), it's really impossible to explain. So yesterday, I shot a few pics while I was working. Enjoy.

 
For more info on Waning Sun, click here. 

A method to my madness

http://www.drawright.com/

So this is my bible. I love this book. I must have bought it back in the early 90's when I was doing the pastel portraits but am pretty sure I never had the patience or the discipline to work through much of the book. It's filled with what I'd call a psychological discussion of how our brains typically see versus how an artist must see, two very different things. The book is full of exercises which train you to turn off the rational left hemisphere of your brain & turn on the creative right side. Probably the most famous exercise is the one in which you turn your subject (assuming it's a photo and not a person ) upside-down in order to stop seeing the subject as a whole but rather as various components that fit together.

Having looked through bits and pieces of the book a few weeks ago, I decided to jump to Chapter 7 yesterday, "The Positive Aspects of Negative Space." One of the exercises was to draw the space around a complex object, so I took this photo of Jeff on the bike and did this sketch. I managed to hack off a bit of his leg , but I found the exercise very educational.

Finally, I did this sketch of Jeff yesterday after he crashed, totally wiped out from a day teaching 70 French students. It doesn't totally look like Jeff's but it's a huge improvement over the sketch I did a few days ago & it took 20 minutes instead of 3 hours. Today, I get some perspective. We can only hope.

Shifting gears...for the moment

I love doing abstracts. I can't think of anything much more liberating than throwing a bunch of brightly-colored paints on a canvas, blending them, and seeing what happens. I really can't describe how it feels.

But I've had this nagging feeling, and have literally been nagged (Ok, so gently nudged) by my husband and a fellow artist, to do portraits in addition to the abstracts. I am guessing that many people wonder if abstract artists can, in fact, draw. This is not to discount abstract work (I personally like my own work as well as abstracts of other artists), but there is something about being able to draw realistically that validates one as a "real artist." So I suppose part of my need to draw realistically is to help assuage my insecurities. 

 

I did a few portraits in pastels when I took a few art classes just for fun, back in the early 90's. And now, suddenly, I desperately want to paint portraits. I'm talking like the Masters. Ok, so it's a slightly lofty goal, but hey, why not shoot for the moon?

So here was my first attempt at a pastel portrait in something like 15 years (I'd kept some of the pastels in a Tupperware container). Obviously, I didn't finish. The pastels just didn't feel right. I missed the feeling of how paints move across canvas.


So I sat down a few days ago & did a sketch. It took 3 hours.


The painting took 7 hours. It's not bad for never having painted a portrait and having no clue what I was doing.. There are a lot of problems with it. For one, it doesn't look like the subject. The skin color is totally wrong, I couldn't do the shadows, she has a mop on her head instead of hair, and the poor woman has no chin! I may go back and correct and finish it, or I may re-do the whole portrait at some point. It practically killed me. I threw a few temper tantrums (but managed not to break anything) and cried. It was an immense struggle. Exhausing. Not the experience I was going for. So I've  decided to go back to the drawing board. Literally...

Mood Wall

This is my first series. The whole thing just popped into my head one day.  That's never happened before. Until this series, I'd just throw a blank canvas on the floor, and get some paint spread around, having no idea what the outcome will be. But with this, I knew I'd be doing 6 canvases in these specific colors. 

I was surprised at how long it took. Normally, I can finish a canvas in a few hours, so I expected the whole project would take a week.  But it took me two weeks. Painting the canvases was easy, but it took a surprising amount of energy. And then there were the sides of the canvases to deal with. 

I finished the paintings and then lined the paintings up in my hall. The unpainted sides of the canvases distracted my eye from the intense paint colors. I knew if I was bothered by the white, it would be the same for other people. So I painted the sides of each canvas, painstakingly wiping wet paint off the fronts of the canvases. What can I say? Live and learn. But at least I got the look I was going for. Color and nothing but.

So what's the point of this series? Color affects all of us, but how aware are we of this? The more I paint, the more color affects me. I love laying paint down on a canvas and then watching as the colors merge. It's fascinating and beautiful. I'll find myself staring at an ugly color on a wall or a piece of someone's clothing or car and subconsciously change it into something more pleasing in my mind. 

The mood wall takes your eye thought almost the entire spectrum (minus indigo). Let your eye settle on a color or colors. Maybe that color reflects you current mood (think mood ring), or maybe you need to look at a color that will calm or energize you. 

For more about the Mood Wall, click here.

Warm Embrace

Here is the the brown paint I was so dreading working with, which was very easy to mix by the way (blue + yellow + red). The paint looked so much like chocolate pudding that now I'm thinking I need to try some of the Belgian chocolate pudding I noticed in the refrigerated section of Trader Joe's. I have to admit that I didn't really mind working with the brown because it was such a warm brown, not dark and depressing.


 

And here is the painting. I did, in fact, use the brown as an undercoat but only on the bottom of the painting. It's actually on top of some others layers at the top of the painting. I tend to like to "anchor"  the bottom of my paintings that I do with a straight brush stroke (as opposed to the textured ones which I do with a brush & then my fingers) with a darker color so your eyes tend to wander up to the lighter colors, giving the painting a sense of upward moving energy. I love the warmth of this painting. I call it Warm Embrace because the brown shadows stretching upwards look like 2 people hugging and the colors in the painting feel so warm & nurturing. I'll be looking at this one tomorrow morning when it's -1F outside!

More information on Warm Embrace.

Brown? Blech!

Unless it's in the form of chocolate, that is.

I've changed the way I approach painting. Back at the end of August when I first began painting, I couldn't stop. It was an obsession. I'd go to sleep and wake up with colors floating through my mind. It's typical for me when I begin anything new to take off running out of the gate. Whole hog.

But now I've slowed down, thankfully. I don't have to stress over tearing through canvases so quickly (to the dismay of the lovely ladies at Dick Blick). Now I wait for an inspiration. The inspirations seem to come in the form of a color popping into my head. I let it sit there for a few days, just to make sure it's going to stick. This is how Dune came to be. That flourescent pink got stuck in my brain until I put it down on the canvas. This time it's brown.

Why am I surprised & a bit repelled by the idea of using brown? Because I really don't want to end up doing depressing, emo paintings. There's plenty of that out in the world & I don't want to contribute. I love the fact that even my darker paintings have a feeling of light in them.

But I have learned to trust my intuition to the extent that I can & go with it. I'm thinking tomorrow will probably be the day to paint. We'll see what happens.

NaomiSilverArt.com

Spirit

This is the painting I did about 2 weeks ago when I was under the influence of a nasty cold. As do most of my paintings, the result was a surprise. What's new about this one is that there is some transparency in the paint (you can't actually see the canvas but can see an undercoat of paint). I find this effect gives the painting an airy feeling.

I was reluctant to call this one "spirit" for fear of being seen as a new-age freak but I figure what the heck. It looks like a spirit to me (in front of a tree), so that's what I'm calling it. Feel free to interpret the painting to mean whatever you think it means.

For more information on "Spirit," click here.

Traits of a successful artist

I know, I should be painting, but I am just now getting my normal energy level back after this tenacious bug I seem to have finally killed off. But even when I can't create art, I think about it. Not all of the time, mind you. I went through a brief obsessive phase with the art (as I tend to do when I start anything new) but I think I'm over that now. None the less, I have been thinking about what leads to success in this crazy and whacky world of art into which I've recently entered as an artist.

I don't have the tiniest modicum of understanding as to why some artists become successful and some don't. Of course I'd love to land in the former category but don't have much of a clue how. I see so little logic to who gets shows, who becomes part of the buzz, or on the other hand who ends up with a house chock full of phenomenally good yet unsold work. What I have figured out is that among some of the more successful artists I know, I do find a few commonalities. And yes, I am generalizing here, so please forgive me on that account.

There always seems to be a bit of an ego, mandatory, I think, to not crumble under the weight of constantly having your work judged. Maybe part of that ego is a vision of oneself as destined to be something big. And when an artist sees him or herself in this light, everyone around the artist seems to pretty much buy into it. Which brings me to the next personality trait I see among sucessful artists-charisma.

Charisma-the ability to attract a following. Art affecionados seem to fall in love with not only the art but also the artist. If you buy a piece of art, you really do buy a piece of the artist. Yet charisma in the art world isn't like charisma among politicians or among sports or entertainment celebrities. You don't have to be powerful or beautiful or have superhuman powers in the art world to be one of the popular kids.

In fact, if you are any of those things, you might not be taken seriously as an artist no matter how great your art is. Think of the stereotype of an artist and you've nailed what art fans seem to connect with. Think intense. Misunderstood. Tortured. Self-obsessed. Alone. And throw in some general angst thrown for good measure.

So how wild is it that those kids who were the freaks and geeks and rejects in high school have ended up being the winners in the art world? And I suppose that's a good thing.

http://NaomiSilverArt.com

Intimate Distance

I just created this video of the exhibit where my art is on display with the work of several other artists until January 12th.

Hoping to hit the studio today

Ok, I'm now on day 8 of this nasty cold. I won't even attempt to describe what's being produced in my sinuses but suffice it to say the substance could be used to create an unusual piece of art that would be classified as a bio hazard. Nevertheless, I very much hope to get back to the studio today. I miss my paints. Hoping the feeling is mutual.

My 2 most recent paintings

Sea of Fire and Sea of Light
Both paintings are on view in the "Intimate Distance" show until January 12th at the 5th floor gallery at The Syndicate Building, 915 Olive St. 5th Floor, St. Louis, Mo. 63101
Gallery open by appointment only: Contact Connie or Paul LaFlam at: artthngs@hotmail.com or 314.436.9374

NaomiSilverArt.com

Since when are you an artist?

This is the question I keep hearing from people who've known me for a few years. You want the honest answer? The art thing kind of crept up and bit me, well, you know where. This past August, feeling a bit burned out from 2 years of running my website CultureSurfer.com, I decided to take a stab at doing some painting. I'd been around a good deal of art and artists over the past two years & the thought hit me that maybe I could create some decent art, at least decent enough to show and maybe even sell.

Off I went to the Ben Franklin and picked up about 4 bottles of cheap finger paint along with a few super cheap brushes and a few canvas boards. I went home and hit an old piece of poster board with the paints. Ick. I didn't like it. Neither did my husband. The whole thing just looked like mush. Not good. But I kept at it.



Time to hit one of the canvases. Suddenly, I found myself doing what I now refer to as "grown up finger painting," a process I now use in many of my works. What can I tell you? There is something very child-like in my personality that just relates to squirting paint out of a bottle and getting down and dirty with paint all over my hands. It's such a direct way to connect with the creative process. No brush as intermediary.


A few weeks later, BAM! Art show #1. I answered a post on Craigslist & within 2 days had 6 pieces of my art hanging at a wine bar out in St. Charles, Missouri. Cool. The show was up for a month and nothing sold but hey, it was a start.

NaomiSilverArt.com