I am a Planet, by Samantha and Pat Darnell

gauche on 9 x 12 canvas, originals scanned

Studio: Artist's Winsome Dreaming

Wickedly Sublime
by Pat Darnell

Response to: Carol Marine's Painting a Day: Yellow Splash


"...Someone else asked when my studio will be done. I honestly don't know, but we hope..."

In response to studios: I often tell myself that when I finally have my "dream" studio, I will be sleight of vision and hand, and possibly have only weeks left to live.

After a lifetime of crawling on floors, hiding in attics, freezing in garages, stumbling around in backrooms, fighting dust balls, tumble weeds, bad light, and birds, insects, mice and snakes...

...I have to tell others that a studio is a dream notion I may never realize in my lifetime, and as it is to most of us... it is always in "the works."

The last real studio I ever worked in was at Trinity U, in the early 70's... Yikes!

Life has taken many turns and a studio has never been a "family priority.." for my bunch. Why do I say this? Almost every artist I have pleasure to talk with says "my studio is almost finished..."

Thanks for sharing that studio note there, CM. I sense, and appreciate, the irony of the statement.

Nihilism is a poison

Retrieved by PD
(event) by stripe Wed Mar 25 2009

Throw it. Watch it spin in a perfect arc until it smashes against the wall. Watch the water fan out in a crystal spray. Watch the drops fall and shatter into tiny spheres. The broken glass mingling with the wetness will reflect light in a beautiful pattern. It will sparkle like you've never seen - rather, like you've seen but never felt. So easy. So perfect. Create the breathtaking sequence of seconds that will - for a flash of delight - redefine your aesthetic. Just throw it.

...But the moment's passed. You hesitated, and lost the will. Or did you stop yourself? You aren't ready to give in to destruction. The chaotic impulse has, once again, been overridden. In your mind, the cup breaks, the water sprays, the light shines, over and over, a false memory of wishful thinking. Your desire will be stuck on repeat until you cave... but the moment's passed.

Is this the ninth time? Tenth time? Have you been counting? Next time it won't just be a glass of water. All those glasses of water add up to a project, or a relationship, or your car plus another. Oh, sure - take martial arts, paint like Pollock, go to one of those junkyard therapy places that let you smash old TVs with a sledgehammer. Compromise. Accept substitues. Imitate the real thing so many times that the shadow takes on substance. Hope that the substance weighs so heavy on your heart that those dark leaping urges are stilled.

It won't work. Just throw it.

1969 Red, Yellow, Blue and White

Never said I was a prodigy...

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.

Renoir -- yes we opened our Umbrellas in the House Yesterday, Friday the 13th

Cobalt Blue 4oz bag $215 USD

Brief description of Cobalt blue:
Very costly and extraordinary stable pigment of pure blue colour discovered by Thénard in 1802. It is now the most important of the cobalt pigments.

Names for Cobalt blue: Pronounciation: ko • bawlt bloo Alternative names: Thénards blue, Dresden blue
Word origin: The name "Cobalt blue" comes from Middle High German kobolt = an underground goblin (cobalt was thought to be detrimental to silver ores).
Non-English names: Italian Kobaltblau
Chemical name: Cobalt(II) oxide-aluminum oxide

The Umbrellas (1883)

by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
[Source]
The Umbrellas (Les Parapluies)
Renoir, Pierre-Auguste
c. 1881-85

This painting was painted during the restless period in Renoir's work. It is immediately apparent that the picture exhibits two distinct styles. The group of figures on the right is painted in a soft feathery style reminiscent of his work of the later 1870s, while the umbrellas and the couple on the left are painted in a harder manner with more distinct outlines and subdued steely colors. The exact date of the painting is not known, but it is generally accepted that it was worked on over a period of several years.

Notice how the fashions illustrated in the Umbrellas differs. The women in Renoir's paintings are usually dressed in the latest styles. The dresses and hats worn by the figures at the right conform to a fashion that appeared in 1881 and which became popular in 1882. The vogue was superseded the following year by a more sever style of dress with simple straight lines. THe woman with the band-box is dressed in this latter style which was the height of fashion in 1885-6, but which had fallen out of favor by 1887.

Renoir appears to have changed his palette significantly between the two stages. Examination of the cross-sections has shown that in the earlier phase he used exclusively cobalt blue, his habitual choice during the 1870's and early 1880's, but in finishing and revising the composition he used only French ultramarine.

We were looking for..

In the name of NASA Spinoff we were looking for a new paint medium.. with space age qualities. We found this one:
[SOURCE]
This safe, easy to use insulating, powdered additive will add heat reflecting properties to the paint dramatically reducing heat transfer into or out of your home. You stay warmer in winter and cooler in summer.

The thermal and acoustical comfort within your home is improved AND you Save Money on your heating and cooling bills each and every month, year in and year out!

Hy-Tech insulating additive for paint will add insulation properties to any type or brand of Interior or exterior house paint, roof paint, wall paint, ceiling paint, industrial paint, ANY paint, oil base or latex.
rolling upon each other, thus allowing the coatings to flow more easily.

	Conventional paint pigments are sharp edged and pack down loose as the paint film dries leaving paths for heat to pass through. The jagged edges also make for a rough surface which grabs dirt and soils easily.
	The ThermaCels ceramic microsphere blend creates a tightly packed dried film with minimal paths for heat transfer resulting in very efficient thermal barrier. The hard ceramic shell resists dirt.

HY-TECH Insulating Paint Additive
Makes Paint Insulate
Lower Your Utility Bills...
Improve Your Comfort...
"Home Insulation with the Stroke of a Brush "

One single ceramic microsphere is so small that it looks to the naked eye as if it is a single grain of flour, (slightly thicker than a human hair). This tiny "bead" has a wall thickness about 1/10 of its diameter, a compressive strength range of 6500 - 60,000 psi, a softening point of about 1800° C. Insulating ceramics are fairly chemical resistant with a thermal conductivity of 0.1 W / m / Deg.C and they are non combustible.
The hollow interior is a vacuum and physics law states that nothing can move by conduction through a vacuum, since it represents an absence of matter.
In effect it is a miniature thermos bottle... a microscopic hollow vacuum sphere that resists thermal conductivity and suppresses sound.

Sacred Art

Subject: Line Drawings

BlogNod-Roots Music and Fret Logic | [HERE]

Very recently, Pribek.net started a new category called “BlogNod”.

Leap Year | Pribek says: "A while ago, I had a conversation with Pat Darnell about a theory that I have. Over the years, I have noticed a clear connection between musicians (guitar players in particular) and a thought process that goes far beyond music talk and enters the realm of real, accessible philosophy. Pat came up with this original artwork as a result of that conversation.

So, when I feel the urge to point out evidence of that guitar/life philosophy/logic connection, I will use this image as a sort of mile marker.

And, if any of you find yourselves calling attention to examples of “Fret Logic”, feel free to use this artwork to signify. I’m sure Pat would be delighted if you did."

YEP ! Sure enough... you'se!

Childhood Sketches Hermetically Sealed in Mayonnaise Jars for 40 Years

It would appear I have been stuck on the subject of the "Back Forty" for a very long time.

Little quaint cabin on a grassy hill, under a shady 100 year old oak tree....

Tag: Mayonnaise Morality

Transcendant Subject: Anatomy

Freddie the Freeloader

Where did the Fugitives go? Were they incarcerated? Did they survive their last gig? Do they sleep with Hoffa?

Stay tuned, and we will explore the urban legends together.

Concurrent Themes

"It is not always an easy matter to extricate one's self from a situation in which one is involved, or perhaps entangled. It is easy to think that you can, or that others should....to think that life's predicaments exist in sharply-delineated colors and not mottled shades and blurred edges. The wheat and the tares grow up together, and you can't uproot one without pulling up some of the other (Matthew 13: 24-30). Which isn't usually what the plan was... [SOURCE]"

"Wisdom dictates forethought and planning to provide for eventualities. Time was needed. The passage of time allowed for the institution of slavery to develop and grow, so time's passage also was required for its demise. [ibid]"

"Jefferson wrote, "We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other." (Miller, John Chester, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery). [ibid]"

Three Faces?

Transcendant Object

Subject: Perfect [TollHouse] Cookie

See my eyes
behind my eyes
bottled there
a thousand questions
that expressed
give birth to
thousands more
questions

Italian Shores

Italia

Report from the Middle

Taking into consideration expenses like rent, phone bills and commutes, New Yorkers need to pull down $123,000 in annual salaries to have the same standard of living as someone making $50,000 in Houston. The Big Apple may be the worst -- but the price of middle class living in other cities might surprise you.

What Does It Take to Be Middle Class?
AOL
posted: 10 HOURS 11 MINUTES AGO

(Feb. 7) - Enjoying a comfortable life in New York City comes with a much higher price tag than it does in any other American city -- In fact, Big Apple residents need to have salaries well into the six figures to even be considered "middle class," a new study finds.
The study released by the Center for an Urban Future compares the cost of living in Manhattan to other major cities -- and the results are staggering.

Portraiture Lost: Twenty-nine Paintings Behind

W.I.P. ~Work in Progress
by Pat Darnell
When younger, I started sanding off the back of my guitars, and drawing on them... and I don't know why. Here is the oldest of them that I have saved over 34 years. The date says 1974, but I remember this as my first guitar I bought for eight dollars way back in 1964, at an open air shop in Acapulco. I had to retire the guitar because the action got to be 1/2 inch from string to neck, as the top panel began to warp from tension of strings and natural warpages... The wood this drawing is on is of the "I don't know" type, and the rest is the same category. It really is India ink put down with a stylus...

The scene is pretty much self-explanatory as a sort of Garden of Eden work in progress.

I remember now that I planned to go back and add the residents, Adam and Eve later. But my mom found my sketches of nudes, and really slammed me with it... and got Dad involved. So I shied away from those subjects... well... to this day.

Moms can be our first moral compass; no lie. She still looks for the "nudies" that I might collect or study, and dabble with. I have to put them behind stuff before she arrives, to this day.