Triangle, 2008, oil on Gessobord, 5x7Hmm, surprisingly, I have very little to talk about today, however I didn't want to go another day without posting so here I am anyway.
I have just been puttering around lately. I have gotten a bunch of paper gessoed, there is a new batch of small paintings in progress, I have shipped out some new work to one of my galleries and have attended many, many, soccer and football events. Ach.
We did have some visitors which is always super exciting out here in the sticks. Even the dogs get really excited about visitors. A friend of mine, Amanda, who I met at the Vermont Studio Center last winter, stopped by on Monday along with her boyfriend. They are checking out grad programs and stopped to see us on the way to Syracuse. So that event necessitated some house cleaning which was a good thing, and then it was great to see Amanda again and to chat with both of them for the afternoon.
I have also gotten back to the figures and portraits. I did this underpainting last Saturday:
The underpainting makes me happy, it was fun to do and I like how it turned out, however I am not so sure that I will not muck it up at the next stage. Guess I won't know until I jump in. Doug has suggested to me that maybe the underpaintings should just be the paintings (with some modifications), and I am taking that under consideration.
Some of you may have noticed the list of my followers up at the top of the sidebar. I was unaware of this feature until I noticed on my blogger dashboard that I had two followers. This little glimmer of attention encouraged me to show off that I actually had two people following me so I figured out how to add it to the sidebar and now there are a bunch more! Most of you I know, but now there are a few that I am not familiar with and I am looking forward to checking in on those blogs. Anyway, thanks for following me. Heh.
Well, maybe something exciting will happen here between today and tomorrow so that the next post might be a bit more interesting. I make no guarantees though.
11 comments:
Oooh, I like Triangle a lot, Tracy. Beautifully rich and moody.
And excellent portrait. I'm with Doug on this one.
You were trying to colour co-ordinate with your photo - right? ;)
I'm liking followers. It's all very well having subscribers but I don't know who they all are. This new function is very helpful for seeing who's out there! :)
I think you could add more colour to the underpainting stage on the portrait... like maybe a darker brown for the background of it and then play around with two underpainting colours.
Then you could leave it at that stage. Too much beautiful detail to even think of over painting them.
Thanks Angela. I guess if I were to keep the underpaintings as is, I would approach them differently, probably with less detail and would definitely use a different color.
Katherine, haven't you noticed that somehow almost everything I put up here matches my hair:) I know I have a few more than 14 readers, but it sure is nice knowing who 14 of them are at least:)
Lauren, thanks for the suggestions, which aren't too far off from what I normally do, except that I do only use one color at the underpainting stage. The glazes that come after are actually pretty light and the underpainting is still visible. The goal is always to leave the underpainting showing, but I don't always get the colors right and the more glazes I have to do, the less visible the underpainting is.
I'll be making some gradual shifts in all this, soon, I think.
i don't use blogger, so i don't think i can officially follow you. :) i just found your site recently actually and am enjoying how you talk about your work/s. i'm stalling right now from mucking up a self-portrait. keep posting!
Tracy -- I follow your blog and I don't have my own. I didn't even know what those squares in the upper right hand corner were until now. I want to say that I appreciate your forthright way of letting us into your creative process. Funny -- when you wrote about gessoing 300lb hotpress paper I got stuck on going out to buy some for my next ptg. I bought a piece and started to work, having a great time when, a few days into it, I realised that I was not gessoing -- I was using watercolor, gouache, pencils, prismacolor -- everything but oil on gesso. Still, the paper is just wonderful. I don't know why I didn't try it before. I have friends who pooh pooh blogs -- what do they know? Have they ever read a good one? No, they wont even take a look and I think they are missing a lot. Thanks! I love your work too!
Nikole
I love this underpainting, and maybe Doug is right, because right now it pulls you right in.
the underpainting is wonderful, and your nonexciting week sounds familiar... the only ones excited around here are my daughters, as their halloween costumes are almost done...
Hi Jo anne, Thanks for delurking and I appreciate your kind words. I have trouble with self-portraits too:)
hi Nikole, glad you delurked too. And I am pleased that you are enjoying the 300lb paper, it is awesome isn't it! Maybe you'll start a blog too?
Thanks Deborah, glad to hear it pulls you in, but alas, I am feeling that I must add color. BUT, I am not ruling out leaving the underpaintings, it'll just have to be a different one:)
Thanks Natalya, I bet your costumes are awesome! I used to make costumes for the kids, but now they put together their own, or want store bought ones (horrors!).
Hi Tracy,
I love what you are doing...so happy to have just found you.
Jules Greer
Thanks, Jules, glad you stopped by!
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