High Contrast Grey.

 I begin the piece by defining the form and covering up the painting already on the canvas. Something found at Emmaüs. A painting of what looks like was a French town. I try my best to lay the new layer of paint as thinly as possible so textures won't later interfere with my painting. I know that everything is going to be covered at some point so getting perfect colors isn't really an issue. To get the form I use a gel pen to make an outline to see how things will be laid down. I try to error on the side of thin to allow for the paint to cover it up. I continue laying down the form. Getting a feel for where everything is going. How the figure interacts with the setting.  Turns out that the leg was a little too far out so I fix that and start adding shadow. I had a little bit of orange left over so I play with adding a halo.  Layering up. I start to add some of the finer details that I won't have to mess with too much later on, ie. hair. Playing with the su...

 Another scrap of watercolor paper resting in the pages of my sketchbook. This time not premeasured for an empty picture frame but this time the left over scrap from a previous project. With my time in France starting to come to an end I have taken to sitting at French cafés while I am still able to. Sitting. Observing. Filling up pages in the sketchbook with little observations. While sitting at the Tavarne watching art school students in their non symmetrical hair cuts and leopard print this older mad walks over and begins to hunch over while sitting at one of the small café outside tables. Rolling his own cigarettes as those french like to do. Flat cap and a red scarf like Jessye's. Collar flipped up. As with the girl drinking coffee in the wind I was having troubles thinking up a background. The original setting just didn't seem like it would work properly. I find a good collection of Victorian wallpapers on the internets. Millard. Something to fill up part of backgrou...

18x13cm Watercolor, ink, and tinfoil. Another small observation piece on some nice watercolor paper I have had in my sketchbook for about a year now. I recently learned about the Arte Povera movement from Italy in a modern art history class I took. From that I took a fascination with the idea of using reflective surfaces to bring the viewer into the piece. Being poor and about to move halfway across the world I have forgone purchasing anything that would work properly for this idea and have instead used some tin foil that was wrapped around a crêpe with nutella I got from university the other day. I thought that the scrapings of trying to get it smooth added an interesting texture. As usual I have mixed observations. The man I saw at a crêperie a few weekends back. He was sitting on the terrace and could therefore have a cigarette. I took some sneaky photos of the terrace. The lighting, as well as the contrasting elements of compacted buildings, were amazing. But I instead wanted ...

 The weather was too beautiful to stay indoors in front of a computer screen. Lightly overcast. Raining, but not in that sense that anyone from a rainy region would call it raining. And a wind that was neither cold, nor warm. Only something to direct the refreshing water onto one's face. Since I had heard that everything was going to be closed due to the Monday after Easter being a bank holiday I decided to wander the streets of Rennes in what I assumed would be empty. I wanted to find something new. I was looking for a section where the old and beautiful architecture had stretched out an arm like an amoeba and wasn't restricted to the small sections I had already wandered. In taking the train to Nantes I had remembered seeing sections of the city from the speeding train that looked interesting so I went to Gares to begin my wanderings. I headed West along the tracks. Soon I came across one of those many areas that I have been finding while wandering about Rennes. The edg...

The final class of painting was just this past week so I pulled together the paintings I have painted and have been working on this semester. I'm still not quite at the point where I feel finished with the three larger paintings, but hopefully now with some more time freed up I will get around to finishing them. Perhaps helping pay for the trips across France in about a month with selling them too? First things first..

 As I wandered the Saturday market I thought up the idea of getting different things in which I could make a picnic for one. I got my usual large madelines with the little bump on the bottom. Some cheese covered in herbs. It acts like a spreadable chèvre, but the lady reassured the ladies in line in front of me that it was actually cheese from cows milk. Then some avocados. Baked crisps with sea salt and seaweed. The quintessential bagette. And a small bottle of white wine. Everything for a perfect little picnic.  Except it was a picnic in which everything went wrong. One of the avocados had started to turn and had exploded. And the wine cork had been soaking for too long and just deteriorated every time I tried to get it out. The wrapping for the top of the bottle sliced the side of my middle finger. A cut that looked like a bloody version of the 'crack on Amy's wall.' In the end I was forced to push the cork down into the bottle and drink the wine through ...

I have finished the little painting. Now to just get it back to the frame back in the states, or perhaps sell it and get a better frame.. I like how the contrasting between inked and not inked worked out in this. She separates from the setting, but with her legs she still blurs in slightly. Perhaps since it will be a while still until I get this back to the frame I will continue to play with this. A nice 4" square to keep in my sketchbook for now.