"The Pause That Refreshes"

In my City College Acrylic/Oil painting class last Friday, I handed out to my students bottles of Coke and plastic cups. The assignment was to paint them...an exercise in composition, color mixing, and paint application style. I believe that "The Pause That Refreshes" was a Coca Cola slogan from the i940's. I have always liked this slogan, and it definitely makes me want to down a coke! "Coke Is It" from the 1990's is lame. This is my demo painting on stretched 8"X10" canvas. About 45 minutes painting time. The bottles of Coke were for export to Mexico where they like their Cola sweetened by pure sugar cane...smart people.

Woof, Woof, Woof.

A fellow prof. (he teaches psychology) at Sacramento City College commissioned me to paint his two dogs which I did in about 3 hours. I first covered my canvas in a blazing hot blue. When dry, I did a relatively tight contour drawing on it with white pencil. Normally I just start painting in large, rough shapes and then refine but sometimes, and with acrylics, I'll take the somewhat paint by numbers approach. It always seems to work. Enjoy.

My Bad X 3

The latest assignment for my college acrylic and oil painting students was to paint from your own reference photograph. The photo had to be a still life of a cup of take-out coffee, a classic donut, and a cheap paper napkin. This was a demo I did using the Zorn palette. Zorn was a well respected 19th century european artist who worked with a limited color palette of white, yellow ochre, cadmium red, vermillion and ivory black. He painted a wide range of beautiful and subtle hues from this simple palette. So my demo was painted in the "same" color palette in acrylic with titanium white, yellow ochre, cadmium red, ivory black, and phthalo blue...oops!!...my bad! There was no phthalo blue back then. Why did I add it? I dunno. It seemed to work, though. Maybe this is the same dump luck process whereby cottage cheese was invented! Cottage cheese is great with fresh cut chives thrown in! Nixon liked his cottage cheese with strawberry jam. Under no circumstances should you mix phthalo blue with your cottage cheese. NEXT DAY....added more color and steam coming off the hot coffee (top painting).Then played with more color again! (very top painting)

It's A Small World

A visitor to my blog from India by the name of Arti posted on her blog last week some children in India celebrating Holi, an Indian holiday celebrating the arrival of Spring. I had never heard of it before, but it sure looked like a rollicking good time! During Holi, people throw brightly colored chalky powders over each other... kinda like they threw pies in those old silent film comedies. Talk about pure and silly fun!! So last Sunday, I pick up our local newspaper (yes, I'm old and still read the newspaper. I'm so old that I use to be a newspaper delivery boy!) and there were photos in one of the sections showing Hindu-American kids celebrating Holi in my hometown of Sacramento! The USA is made up of so many immigrants from all over our planet, and I love it. We are truly a melting pot... e pluribus unum.

The Turban Mans Are In!

Yours truly, Milind Mulick in India, David Burge down under, and Mryna Wacknov in Calif. have all completed with their "Turban Man" paintings. This so-called "paint off" was not a competition... just an excuse to see different artist's interpretations. Nuff said...here they are. The very first image is the reference photo that we all worked from. The top watercolor is a Burge, the second watercolor, with other mediums thrown in, is a Lobenberg (messin around!), the third watercolor is a Mulick, the fourth watercolor is a Wacknov, and the fifth watercolor another Lobenberg. What fun, and thank you to my artist friends who participated despite busy schedules! Yes, we all saw the copyright on the photo, but these are artist's interpretations, and none of us are going to print thousands and thousands of posters to run the risk of copyright infringement. So there!

Crush Work!!!

A week ago I posted three paintings of a road and cantilever bridge out on the Sacramento Delta under the title of "Brush Work". Well...check out this story emailed to me this morning from a collector and graphic designer friend of mine: David, This is an interesting view of the bridge you featured in your blog last week. My friend Shannon was driving through the area one day a couple of years ago and had the misfortune to cross the bridge on the first day a new bridge tender was working. She stopped her car where she was suppose to, but he waved her to MOVE IT UP FURTHER. Shannon made it out of the car by pulling herself through the broken window just before the whole top was smashed in. She had some spinal compression problems, but she's still alive. This is not really relevant to anything, just that when I saw your painting, the massiveness of that big concrete block reminded me how much damage it can do. How much damage it can do?...no shit Sherlock! By the way, the front and rear tires look a little deflated. Here is another acrylic that I painted of the same bridge two years ago on un-stetched canvas (about 36"X48")

Some bike rider called Lance

This guy called Lance Armstrong signed a Lobenberg gyclee print a few weeks ago at the Amgen Tour of California.

Brush Work

Here is a scene in acrylic of a country road, farm truck, and bridge out on the Sacramento Delta. Last night, I completed the road with some long, sweeping brush strokes. Now long sweeping brush strokes are not a bad thing except in my painting they came across as cheesy like a cheap street harlot. I painted over with short overlapping strokes pressing down hard on my flat brush. I also put down a darker value and just a few criss crossing short sweeping strokes. Also glazed back the background foliage on the right, put a little more color and razzamatazz paint strokes on the right side of the black top, and toned down the truck a bit more. Much better! IT'S THE NEXT DAY AND I HAVE ADDED MORE COLOR INTO THE ROAD...it's the top photo...I'm done...not to fuss any longer!

Some Stuff in Progress

I lied...the acrylic sunflowers are completed. They were painted on a stretched canvass that had long ago been covered with a rough textured, thick acrylic moulding paste. The paint could not be applied in anything coming close to smooth buttery strokes. And that's a good thang (spelling here on purpose to be cute)! I got a beautiful sun lighted, sparkly feeling here. As for the two long acrylic landscapes on stretched canvass...they have been languishing in my studio for over 8 months now, and I am FINALLY bringing them to completion and off to one of my local galleries...feels good! One is of the Port of Sacramento with an early morning rowing crew going by and the other is sundown on a Sacramento Delta ranch.