Painting a Day: Ten Paintings Behind

You May be an Artist

by Pat Darnell

There is a test
that helps determine
one's propensity
to seek art

and do art
and seek hidden facets
and find great hiding places

this is the test:
first you notice
that you feel an emptiness
in your heart
while growing up, and,

you have pains in your wrists
you count things all the time
you find patterns in the strangest places
you understand comic books
you memorize all the wrong things for school
you ask questions no one else cares about

you know how to mix all the colors

using only primaries red, yellow and blue
you then graduate,

adding white and black to your palette

you think the greatest silent movie made is Eraserhead
you spend much of your youth crawling around on floors
you secretly explore vacant buildings

such as churches on Mondays
roam behind buildings, and up ramps,
stumble through junkyards,
and walk dry ditches before rain

you get nervous, irritable in bookstores

you hide under things,
you seek cover in bushes, under bridges
you think long after you had a conversation
what you said, what he said
what she said, you repeat yourself,

saying everything twice, saying everything twice
you blush when others notice you

you flush when made fun of

you like to go up in attics

you lay down on the sidewalk and watch ants
you use a Ball jar to catch bees
... and poke holes in the top
so the bees might breathe

you cut country bouquets for your mom

you cannot get enough of cedar tree's scents

you love how coconuts feel

you love wool and felt and Egyptian cotton

you have ability to feel oils of different weights

you find treasure leaps into your sensitive fingers

you have lovers before you have lovers

your eyes are always changing colors

you are scatter brained to some

you, to others their cornerstone

you love the odors of outdoor zoo's

... and barnyards

... and plastics

... and trains, and warm wood

... and rusty metal, and things fried

your taste buds must be firstly satisfied
you listen carefully to others' claims
you trust others for what they say
you love your feet bare on pavement after it rains
you stand close to the stream when it overflows

you watch and stalk animals, birds and crocs
you do not want to disturb them
... but they are too clever for that
you admire animals as they scamper

you love to hold a torch at night
Now if you say yes to twenty or so of thirty-six
questions that pertain to your artistic
evaluation -- though you may not know
how it really is you are this...

be accepting of your story
count your blessings so
in self evaluations
you do not waste time any more

Once you are sure
the hard part is past
it is hardest to deny
for your nature is pure
and your method is shaping
you passed the tests

up from deep well-spring sources
flowing as foundling art in you
and you may spend hours and days,
confidently, even months and centuries
with the new, unspoiled thought

leveling your groundwork
surveying the possibilities
developing your technique
simpering about odds and ends

so that eventually you conquer means

to find materials to embody
to find tillable pasture
and favorable schemes
for your artistic manufacture
so when it is done
when it is finished

when it reaches its best end
you will feel empty again
only this time both
in your heart and in your gut
as if you drank liquid mercury

and the pain will last a night
or a fortnight, until you find comfort
and gaze upon your artwork
on a different day in new light

Talking about Painting, by Pat Darnell

If you are a good draftsman, then always work toward your strengths. Lay it out, and work with perspective and proportion. Here is a Lighthouse scene. I usually put reference page and photo credit on any 8 x 10 studies. "Eagle Bluff Light, Ephraim, Wisconsin: marks the entrance into East Channel into Green Bay. It was built on Lake Michigan in 1868, standing 75 feet above the lake, with originally a third-order Fresnel lens. It is a brick tower still aiding in navigation today" (Crompton, S W. UB of L, 2005).
It doesn't hurt to under paint a scene with complementary color scheme. Using acrylics for this; remember if you are oil painting, you have to put water based colors under the final oil base paints; lean under fat as the saying goes, or fat over lean. This roof for instance is going to be Terra cotta, so I under painted with blue slate color.
The bush is in shadow, so I started with dark coloring moving toward lighter later. This is the best way to to produce details in shadows.
And the foreground wall will be yellow limestone, so I under painted with blue shades, Payne's gray, with more dark blue in the clouds. Again it all moves from dark to light, background to foreground. The subject lighthouse

will hopefully end up detailed and sculptural, framed in rich, subdued colors.
Add color. In this case I am doing a study of the various aspects of lighthouses, and not too concerned with palette. However, as I become familiar with lighthouses as a subject then I would choose a group of harmonic colors right now, and stick with them. Here I am using primary colors, mixing pastels from those, as I add features. It turns out the painting starts to fall apart, as complementary colors are set in juxtaposition. Soon the adding of shadow starts to mess up the perspective, and details begin
to get lost, straight lines become
bowed lines... either optical illusions, or just lazy brushing.
Here is an inverted color negative showing true color complements. This could help in coloring the problem areas of the piece.

How to keep the painting together is to make decisions as the rendering continues. Decisions are based on observable data. For instance, lighthouses are generally not a romantic get-away. Rather, they are situated on crags and wind-swept reefs that were once noted as demons
on nautical maps. So, I am experimenting with colors to try to capture forebodings; a bleak place where existence is difficult; structures that must stand up to sheer brutal punishment by natural weathering winds. Thus, buttressing walls, stone and brick construction, copper storm shutters and scuppers, and heavy roofing.

The most difficult part of doing a study is in trying to balance the mess. Some of the intermediate stages have features that look really good. But as another area of the canvas is worked it somehow cancels the parts that I just finished. Highlights fade, and shadows take over, or become ambiguous...
I see as I go that the underpainted version looks real good. I like the bold red lighthouse tower, and the blue mortar in the house. But alas the total structure is made from local yellow sandstone. So for believable finish everything stone becomes yellow's cousin.

I think before I call this quits and spray it with varnish, I might try to do some "glazes" in red-blue, purple, hues to make some shadow on the house and tone down the yellow. Most of the structure is trimmed in copper, so tarnished copper and green are good for other color trials. If this were a 144 inches by 96 inches, first trial, I would at this point be pulling my eyebrows out. No lie!

Fortunately, it is only 8 x 10 inches and manageable for trial and error. Also, I want to point out after all the groundwork has been laid out as it has been now, I as artist can anticipate some fun with the project in final stages. More on that aspect later...

A study like this is without parallel for learning a subject. If I decide to do another, and larger painting of this, it will take less time, and less mess to accomplish. Most of the time I skip this study stage, leaping rather right in with large brushes, and lots of oil. I end up making brown of my colors, and grey skies... so you decide how to go about your own dabbling in rendering.