Work in Progress -- The Forgotten Madonna and Child

Developing Folie a' deux .......

WORK in Progress -- Day THREE

Photography with Phone Camera not so good -- but, 18 x 24, Oil on Canvas, applying glazes, and trying to bring out some details from the abstract composition.

Days One and Two for Madonna and Child ...

Back to "Painting a Day" :: That's about it!

Oil on Canvas, 16 x 20, What is it! Budget Bargain Waterfall... this is about all "I" can do in only a day. And this actually took a couple of days, allowing for drying. Woe is me.

Delayed Gratification

It Never Ends like it Starts ...
by Pat Darnell

Bryan\College Station, TX  |  As I conduct myself into a 72 month project to get my last two bairn through college... I propelled myself into a frenzy of contemptible war with my brushes.

I attempted to "get closer" to my paintings, only to find myself rebelling needlessly against my brushes. I wish someone would volunteer to pistol whip me when I start refusing to clean my brushes.

This is not a good thing. Oil painting is about delaying the result. Remember in ceramics classes where you learned to paint or glaze with a substance with anticipation of it coming out a different color after firing? Oil painting is similar basis for delayed gratification involving also slight color modification over time.

As the oils, thinners, and vehicles evaporate from the surface of the painting, they leave behind the pigments, right? So what you painted three weeks ago is not what necessarily you have now in front of you. As for Acrylics, *yuk*, you see what it is as soon as the water evaporates.

This is why I call oils more forgiving -- as allowing me mitigation up front for future mess ups, because of my lack of talent in certain areas. The desired result is to have the subject of the painting "jump out" at you for the life of the piece.

Older paintings start to dim, as the painting becomes drier and drier... so to speak. But with modern substances, and our liberation from having to crush deadly pigments and add linseed oil, we can proceed as we please. Just pop down to Hobby Lobby, or Dick Blick on line, and "buy" all the sale stuff. My rule of thumb in using modern oil painting paraphernalia is three days drying between major glazes and such. Detailing can be done anytime you can reach without smudging is my lot.

Note: My palette changes every time I happen onto a hand basket of leaking, expiring, or discontinued tubes of paint.

And that is how I attacked my 72 month goal.

Ideally I could put a year's worth of "Tuition" down for each kid  with a hundred paintings if each one pulls $100 per painting. That could offset $10,000 per year tuitions. Eh? That is ideally.

That means the formula depends on 100 paintings a year. Here is the trick: "a painting a day" in oils is "ambitious." And a "commercial value" for a painting a day -- well, is it worth a $Bill to someone?

Probably not. I have estimated that about "three" in thirteen paintings have that kind of commercial value. However, I also estimate that about "one" in thirteen usually "jumps off the canvas" and has a greater value. Eight remaining oils hover in there at "mas y minos" values -- depending on your sales force.

Luckily, I personally have a sales force in my Wife's abilities: She can [and does] sell shampoo to a bald man. And our daughter has been her apprentice for sixteen years. So as a trio we could invent a market that would average the needed tuition offsetting sums. NO?

Pat Pend OUT. Good Luck Wid' It.

Whales at War :: The Continuing Saga

Oil on Canvas, 16 x 20, Painting a Day, Whales at War

Work in Progress -- Back Forty #5

First Day Layout, 21 x 27, Oil on Canvas

First "days" layout and color trial and errrors, and this is a good start for Back Forty scene. This is the fifth in a series.

I keep doing back forty scenes I suppose to keep hope alive that everyone will have opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors. I see myself always passing time in a cabin in the woods of a bucolic surround.

Long story: will spare the details from here.

I am trying some new stuff this time, and revising the palette to include more red tones next to the green hues. Eh, you like so far? 

UPDATE :: Work in Progress -- Wrangler

Day THREE -- Almost there ...

WORK in Progress -- Day TWO

Day TWO -- Working Dark tones and making big Mess ... but is needed to make contrast for horse later! Photography with Phone Camera not so good.

First Day Lay Out, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inch,

Three Little Fishies -- Original Author Unknown

Down in the meadow in a little bitty pool
Swan two little fishies and a mama fishie too.
"Swim," said the mama fishie, "Swim if you can."
And they swam and they swam all over the dam.

(chorus)
Boop Boop Dittem Dattem What-tem Chu!
Boop Boop Dittem Dattem What-tem Chu!
Boop Boop Dittem Dattem What-tem Chu!
And they swam and they swam all over the dam.

"Stop," said the mama fishie, "Or you will get lost."
The 3 little fishies didn't want to be bossed.
The 3 little fishies went off on a spree.
They sway and they swam right out to the sea.

chorus

"Whee!" yelled the little fishies, "Here's a lot of fun,
We'll swim in the sea till the day is done."
They swam and they swam, it was a lark,
Till all of a sudden they saw a shark!

chorus

"Help!" cried the little fishies, "Gee, look at all the whales!"
And quick as they could, they turned on their tails.
And back to the pool in the meadow they swam,
And they swam and they swam back over the dam. [SOURCE]

Painting a Day -- LandScape

Phone Sketchpad Art :: Beginner

by Pat and Desiree

Sketches on a Cell Phone -- GEEEEEZ!

by Pat Darnell

Yes, this is the limit of functionality of my new Flight by SAMSUNG, ATandT, with built-in Sketchpad Application in Tools. I sketch on the touch screen, and save, then send image via Message to my E-mail... then post here.

What a trip... loads of fun. Primordial results. I feel strange all over ...

Back to "Painting a Day"

MooPig TV series Reviews :: FarScape

In a different space was this great Science Fiction series on television. It had movie quality every episode. It used puppeteering as a image bearer, to make the sense of evolving beings in the Universe seem too real. Thanks, FarScape, it was a wonderful time, with superb imagery.

"Celebrating it’s 10th anniversary, you can find yourself the proud owner of a boxed DVD set of all four seasons. I did not mistype. All four seasons of Claudia Black… I mean of Farscape." says Screen Rant in July 2009.

Back to "Painting a Day"

Back to "Painting a Day"

Back to "Painting a Day"

World's Greatest Next Door Neighbor's Puppy -- Mia Dog -- in Tree

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

Totes

Acrylic on antique canvas, Tropics Photo, jungle island harbor.

Cargo Cult, or just provisions...?

Guess Who dropped in for Dinner...

Subjects don't just Grow on Trees, You Know
by Pat Darnell

Some grow on vines. Tomatoes from the garden. Scanned and fixed in Picasa 3.

A funny thing happened while Whale Watching

This large canvas has a history. It is a failure of mine I painted in 1976. You may have seen it around. It is the tail of a whale cruising through the blood of his buddies. It is me trying to master "foreshortening" a method of posing a subject in augmented proportions... well, you get the picture.

As it became recycled it started to get a reputation, and you could not believe how many interpretations I have gotten: "It's a Goose" or It's a Fly" and "That doesn't look like underwater!!!"

"Hey, how do we know how a whale sees his underwater world?" I reply.. "maybe it is full of light for him... "

Huhnjh? Anyway, I am behind on photographing my works... so here once again is Whales at War.... 48" x 37" oil on canvas, 1976, failed attempt at foreshortening. by Pat Darnell

Today is my Birthday

by Pat Darnell

When I was just about on my last breath, and I had my last nerve rubbed the wrong way by "Northerners"... after eight years of running in place in sand;

I picked up a paint brush and an old canvas board I had lying around for ten years, and painted this scene.

Sorry to be your buzz kill on my special day, but that is the way I look at birthdays. Usually the day is fraught with too numerous memories.

This little "chicken scratch" painting has a great deal of symbolism... that probably I am the only soul who will ever really see the symbols...

I do have a birthday wish for all who are in the range of my voice: "Get enough sleep, and be happier."

Repeating Themes

by Pat Darnell

After many years I have become clinically aware that I repeat ocean going vessels scenes many times.

At one time I was doing a batik technique, that here in this study turned out sort of like a scratch board.

This is a study in how to put ink over water color, or gauche, and then rub it back. I really like doing this, and will make a mental note to get back to it.

It is done on paper, maybe butcher paper, and dry mounted to foam board.

Do you know what is totally crazy about these old sketches and things? When I did them I thought that they would eventually go away... disintegrate. Then they appear again, in a stack of stuff that someone has kept, forgotten and rediscovered... thus is the stuff of our art -- the state of our art.

I used to draft plans for prospective projects, mostly housing and stores. I easily did 200 or more a year on average. Every one of those "interpretations" has my initials or name on it. Now that is scary.

I am alive in the Universe

I am a planet
...
life happens very fast
life multiples
making a soup of
a Planet like me
...
I am alive in the universe...

Making a Soup of a Planet such as Me; I am alive in the Universe

I am a planet
One of texias kichas zillions smillions planets
in a solar system
in a galaxy
in a universe
in a super universe
...
life multiples
making a soup of
a Planet like me

I am alive in the universe...