If I wanted realistic...

Kung gusto ko ng realistic, then I'd take a photograph instead... sus!

But really, shoving all artistic angst aside, I'm an avid fan of Tyago Almario and CJ Tañedo. I'm such a fan, I have to fight the temptation to try to paint like them. But, nonetheless, I couldn't resist looking deeper into those two's works to see how they actually did their paintings.

I should have went and visited their exhibit at WestGallery last July... if only to appreciate their mastery as painters and delve deeper into the biblical themes of their works.

On the other side of the "style" spectrum, I go gaga over Gauguin and his use of colors - where does he find those pigments?!? And what do you all think of Fragonard? If there is anyone who can truly depict the whimsical facet of life, it would be that French Rococo painter.

Hoo-well... like the recent floods, all these angst are bound to go somewhere sometime.

'appiness

I've started to sketch onto the canvas the composition for my “Happiness” painting. I did this rough render just to see how the elements would interact.

I found that using the ever familiar Photoshop had made my life easier in planning for this painting. Though, I haven't actually escaped the task of actually drawing - in planning and scaling the drawing onto the canvas. Besides, I like scratching real paper.

What I like about Photoshop is the ability it gives me to re-scale, elongate, cut and rearrange my drawings as well as do some perspective correction without actually changing the paper drawing. It is really cheap and fast to rework a sketch this way. Like for Happiness, I did the original sketch of the woman with an eye level perspective. But I had to depict a wider scenic scene behind the woman so I had to change her proportions to suite the higher point of view.

I wanted to paint something happy for a change. I want it to depict a bright sunny day with a person basking in the sun right in the middle of it all, ecstatic to be alive and free. There will be no hint of a foreboding darkness, or the tiniest indication of anxiety in the whole picture. I'm excited about this painting. I can't wait to lay in the first layers of paint. It's not such a big canvas, so it should be over before christmas.

My Kubol painting however, might take a bit longer. I've reworked, remodeled, painted over and scraped at this painting a number of times already and I'm still not satisfied with the forms or perspective just yet. Apart from that, I started out thinking this would look absolutely cool if painted big. Well, now I feel it's a bit too big and its size is limiting what I can do with regards making my brushwork part of the composition. But then again, that was not really my original intention, so I'm not really fretting over it though it would be nice if the option was still available.

For now, I'm just establishing the hue of the large facets surrounding the figure. I'm also trying to figure out how the shadows might fall.

I've reminded myself time and time again to sometimes lay off the thinking and do more of the painting. I should. This is such a huge canvas, it's daunting just to look at it.

Afternoon Respite

AFTERNOON RESPITE

By: Ian V. Martinez

27 September 2009

Oil Pastels on Paper

12x18 Inches

What was I to do on a Saturday? My sister was sending me sms asking for help. The water outside of her Cainta home was rising and her husband left to try to park their car on higher ground. She was begging me to call her, but none of my calls could get through. I told her it can't be that bad and that she should secure for herself and her 1 year old child water and provisions, shut off the electrical mains and stay on the second floor of her home.

It can't be that bad. Could it? I tried to reassure her by saying that she doesn't live downstream a dam. Water can't possibly make it into the second floor. That would be a major disaster if it did.

Her last text was hysterical. She said cars were floating outside her house.

The next few hours were tense. One by one, services went dead. First, cell signals were intermittent on both my cellular lines. Then the power went out. It didn't take long for running water to cease, then my land line telephone went dead and cellular services followed immediately afterwards. I was on my own. I tried leaving the subdivision to check on my father and gather some news on what may be happening. The car radio blurted out a confused cacophony of cries for help, reports on blocked roads, calls for emergency services, panic, anger, raw emotions from various radio stations.

I was trapped. Two roads leading out of our subdivision were impassable. People running on the side of the road were signaling drivers that water was waist deep up ahead. This can't be happening! I live in Antipolo and we're about 200 feet above sea level. I use to joke that if Antipolo floods, then it would be the end of the world for everyone living below us in Metro Manila.

The rain pelted heavily for the next few hours. I took stock of what I got: candles, drinking water, some measly provisions, melting ice cubes...

I was tempted to take my bike down to the valley, but decided it would be wiser to just stay put, feed my dog, and wait for the water to subside... perhaps later on in the evening. So, since I have to wait things out, I decided to work on some drawings and paintings. I wanted to prime a newly sanded canvas but I was out of primer. I felt like working in watercolor, but I needed new brushes and buying supplies is out of the question.

I turned up the car's radio in the garage and monitored the events going on around me. As I listened, I did some underpainting on my "Kubol" piece, but then ran out of places to apply paint. I was still waiting for some materials for reference and I couldn't proceed until I know how a natural fiber “banig” curled on the corners... heck, I'm not really sure how the painting should look like in its entirety at the moment.

The next day, I was still incommunicado, cellular services were still down, phone lines were still dead, there were no electricity, water or news of my sister, nephew and father.

I again drove out and while traffic was tight, I learned that the roads at junction were still impassable, and that Sumulong Highway on the other side of the mountain was blocked by a landslide near Padi's. I tried making my way down through Cogeo but also learned that Marcos Highway was still waist-deep in water.

I had no recourse but to turn back. It was then that I noticed how the asphalt on the roads were peeled off in many places, and how houses situated near dips on the roads were apparently inundated by flood water. I passed a school with large mounds of earth on its yard – apparently the scene of a landslide; I hope no one was hurt.

People had began clearing the roads and sidewalks even while the rain still poured. There were places where tell-tale sign on walls of flood water levels showed water rising 5 feet deep, and this was in Antipolo! The creeks carrying water to Hinulugang Taktak Falls, devastated homes that lined its banks and damaged roads that passed above it.

I was imagining my sister holed up on the second floor of her home with her kid. I hope they have water.

I returned home, turned on and up the car's radio once again and worked on “Afternoon Respite”.

I was not in the frame of mind to want to work on something that I will have to think about. I wasn't in the frame of mind to follow strong lines, or be consistent with my strokes. I just wanted to rub the medium in, and the first thing I grabbed was a box of oil pastels.

I wanted an uncomplicated subject, and something that will remind me of a sunny uneventfully warm afternoon. I wanted something that will mask the feeling of helplessness, so I hid all that with my thoughtless strokes.

Runnaway Sketch

I was meaning to "see" how this composition would look like in color before I start thinking how to paint it in oil. I wanted to test the idea in watercolor, which has the added bonus of perhaps loosening the rigidity in my strokes and encourage spontaneity.

But, I then started fiddling with the image using Photoshop, applying "washes" here and there to get the feel of the image. I soon got carried away and ended up with the colored image above.

I still intend to paint in watercolor the drawing below, if only as an exercise.

I'm fighting the temptation in planning the oil version of this. I have so many pending works to do that putting this painting on my agenda would only make me lose my focus again.

But that Kimono is really getting the better of me.

Happiness, White Caps in the Horizon

I spent the long weekend in Masbate, staying in Bituon Beach Resort, located South East of Masbate Port, then at Palani Beach located at the Municipality of Balud, located at the South-Western tip of the island, then finally at Brgy. Nipa, Palanas Municipality, located East of the Island.

Each corner of the island I visited offered vast fine sand beaches, and an ocean so calm that I could feel my heartbeat as I floated on my back, as my face took in the sun, and my mind took in the rhythm of this quiet sanctuary.

I am a happier person now, and I have a need to paint it.

Sufficiently Destroyed

As I worked on this image, I became agitated by its progress. It just wasn't doing anything for me. It was reflecting what I thought would be acceptable to others, not what I thought how it should be.

Then I came to reflect on some fond memories by going through old photographs in my computer of pictures of Mt. Guiting-Guiting, Mt. Tapulao before it was opened up for mining (again) and development, Mt. Ugo, Cutad Cove, Anawangin Cove, much much older photos of other mountains, landscapes and seascapes to remind me of days long gone. I once again saw faces, smiles and eyes of people I have not seen for years, but once, twice or too many times have shared laughter with in the past. I was reminded of people I haven't thought of for a while. These reflections brought with it pangs of regret in my chest.

I am everything my memories had made me to be. When I begin to forget, wont I forget me? The drawing did not matter anymore. I did not care what form I was shading in. I just needed to bury the tip of my lead deep and hard enough and as permanently as I could onto this piece of paper. If I was to fade, I will try to make sure that this simple drawing wont.

Drawings naman...

Wala akong magawa dahil yung painting na ginagawa ko e basa pa, at yung tuyo e 'di ko pa feel gawin, kaya drawing muna ako.

It is disturbing to sometimes feel that I have such a full past to draw from, while feeling as if I'm living a hollow present. It does not do justice to the people who love me today.

I always try to remind myself that all these are just feelings - sometimes fully disjoint to realities I'm living. It's like feeling down on Christmas - it's just not reasonable.

(This image... it's too tame. It needs to be broken to match what I have in mind... Let me work on this a little bit more.)

Until then, this...

I've asked Ms. Bernz to repose for a painting I had in mind which I've also rendered before in watercolor titled In Retrospect. I've changed my mind on the gesture and I intend to expand the coverage of the frame, hence I will need to revisit the site and reshoot the landscape as the sun goes down... again. I'd like to paint on-the-spot but the place is infested with mosquitos. I'm not that keen in catching dengue, mind you.

I've also asked Jowein and Mark to pose for another painting I have in mind titled: The Mountaineers, and Inner Glow. I've got the concept down on paper, and I've started my exploratory sketches months ago. They are just perfect for it. Jowein has that distinct oriental face that is framed just the right way by her curly locks, while Mark has that angular face and body disposition that to me, goes hand in hand with the features of Jowein, and the scene I'm building up.

I need to capture that image soon. When people age, even by just a few months, certain features drastically change.

I'm not that good with painting just yet, but photography will preserve that idea and moment for me until such time that my skills can do justice to my concepts.

Well, until then, I have this pool scene painting to finish. It's becoming more complicated as I progress along.

My problem here is that when I planned it, I meant to put that large space where the woman will be "wanting" to swim out to. I've angled the woman to have viewers anticipate that she will most likely swim out towards the empty side of the pool. But, what I didn't anticipate is the effect of that empty space on overall aesthetics.

My mind tells me it's too empty, yet introducing elements there will defeat my intentions. I may have to think this through.

TAGOS SA YERO NG JEEP ANG TITIG MO HIJA

TAGOS SA YERO NG JEEP ANG TITIG MO HIJA
By: Ian V. Martinez

September 5, 2009

Oil on canvas
27.5 x 33.5 inches
Stretched canvas

There's just nothing more I can do with this. I just need to move on. I had the strangest feeling that unless I affix my signature on this piece, then I remain a prisoner of it.

Usually, completing a work comes with it a feeling of elation, but this time, what I felt was muted relief. After all those years with this face staring out at me from across the hallway, finally, I can begin ignoring it.

This piece is really a remnant of an unfinished past for me. I was just getting back to photography armed with a very low resolution vga camera from a Sony-Ericsson mobile phone, when a young girl sitting in front of me at the back of a commuter AUV (FX as what we would call it then) kept staring at me. I fidgeted, glared back, looked away, and the kid just wont break her stare, while her father who sat behind her seemed oblivious to it all.

After an uncomfortable while, I noticed the compositional quality with the sun lighting the girl from the side and her little body being framed by her father's rough casual attire.

It was an interesting sight because I saw the child squeezing into the protective embrace of her father and that seem to give her so much security as to stare at this large man in front of her, without any fear of reprisal.

I tool out my trusty white Sony-Ericsson, took a photo discretely, and went home feeling I got a wonderful shot of the scene.

But the image I got left much to be desired. As what can be expected from vga phone cameras, the picture taken is not worth putting to paper. I relegated the file somewhere in my computer with the intention of someday photographing something like that in the near future - when I have a better camera.

But some confounding idea crossed my mind and in no time at all, I had a stretched canvas in front of me, and an absolutely dreadful reference image to guide me.

It took a number of years before I finally found the confidence to complete this painting. It took so long that most of the tubes of paint I started with hardened inside their containers!

I've finally gotten this out of the way. I'm relieved.

Sloth

I couldn't believe a program I was watching on cable could be so poignant. It talked about the condition called sloth - which was historically known as a sin, but is now known as clinical depression.

If you've read my past posts, you would inevitably come to the conclusion that I am a procrastinator. And, if you knew me, you would come to know of my almost obsessive facination with chocolates. Chocolates are my way of getting through the deeper bouts of sadness I feel at times. I have much to thank that dark mass in getting me off my buttocks and getting things done.

There will be times that I feel alone yet wishing at the same time to be left alone. There will be times that looking back at my existence, I couldn't bring myself to appreciate where I've been, what I've done and where I was heading. In my mind's eye, there is nothing ahead but a grey horizon, and nothing behind but the same.

There was a time I folded into myself and retreated from everybody for more than a week. I managed then to push everyone away. I called everyone's bluff. I made decisions I would probably not have done if I was my normal self, and that changed the direction of my life. It was during this time that I came to wonder if I was clinically depressed. But I'm not like that all the time. If anything, I'd diagnose myself as having the mild kind.

At least now I have a name for it. At least now I don't have to romanticize the anomie and gloom I feel at times. I can call it by its name and invoke the power of chocolate against it.

Why did I come to discuss this? Because the biggest hurdle for me in creating art is apparently myself.

For the past 2 weeks, I've managed to steer clear of my waiting canvases. It's not like I'm terribly busy or preoccupied with more important concerns. Rather, I had been unwittingly the prisoner of cable television, mobile email, mobile facebook and mobile IMs.

If not for sloth, this long weekend, I could have done a training run, biked, swam, ran at a 10km event, climbed Mt. Maculot, went to the opening of a 4-man show in a gallery at Gateway Mall, finally completed two overdue paintings, finished a dark sketch and prepped and readied myself to a new week at the office... But no. I carry the burden of lost opportunities whilst being completely aware of it.

I've come to understand the dynamics of this whole thing. Now all I have to do is muster the strength to break free of it at will. Aye, now there's the rub, eh?

There are so many things in my life that tightens the clawed grip of sloth on me: my fascination with cable programs such as House, CSI, Star Trek the New Generation, CNN and FOX, distractions from the internet like this blog, emails and networking sites and oh yes... Youtube. I can burn through the whole weekend without nothing to show for.

This modern world is a trap to those predisposed to sloth. There are just too many mindless things to become preoccupied with which takes away a person's focus from more important matters which necessitates greater effort and dedication.

It's so easy to get mired into this world made of streams of disjointed information, and lose sight of the real world.

Almost... Almost there.

A bit more push... and this painting will be done.

I have this feeling that patience is a virtue of great import in oil painting. I've been fighting the temptation to rush off and finish this piece... finally. But it's just not done yet. I still have the shadows under the hair to attend to, as well as putting the finishing touches to tidy things up a bit. Not to mention some darkening I still have to do to put more volume to the image. I don't know how many times I've redone that left pant leg, but I think that's the best I can do with it without confusing it a whole lot more.

By the way, I've been shooting images for this blog using my new phone... an E75. It's got Wifi, GPS, 3G, a 3.1MP auto-focus camera, a slick sliding qwerty keyboard for emailing...it allows me to use my car stereo as speaker output when I go handsfree and talk to people as if they were in the car, it's got a nice sounding music player that really gave my in-ear noise cancelling headphones new life. It calls out the name of the caller when someone rings and it reads sms. It's everything I want a cell to be! Except that, the voice command doesn't seem to work - or it just can't understand Filipino accents. Damn. If I could go: "Please read my sms in the last hour..." and it understands me and reads out aloud correctly with a Filipino accent (not the British one)... well... damn I'd be very happy with it indeed!

Be More Adventurous - the canvas has only one life

I was just telling myself: Be adventurous - the canvas has only one life.

Again... waiting for paint to dry.

I must be doing something wrong or perhaps it's the weather, but my paintings are taking too long to dry – a week to be exact. So as I wait for their surfaces to harden a bit more for me to work on the next layers, I have no recourse but to comtemplate on starting on a third canvas – that is, after bringing my dog Franco to the vet after he somehow managed to get at the rodent poison I left under a sofa some months back.

Three ampoules of vitamin K and a large intravenous dose of liver "tonic" as they call it did the job and my dog is back after a night at the vet, with his four paws still planted firmly on the ground.

I kind of need my dog when I paint. The smell of turpentine can get a bit overpowering at times and I often have to open up doors for ventilation. But that makes me feel vulnerable. Having my ol' dog around me while I paint makes me feel secure and I don't have to worry about imagined threats sneaking up on me from behind.

The painting "Tagos sa Yero..." is still wet and I still can't go about painting in the highlights for the hair, the shadows it makes on the face as well as a warming layer for the face in general. I can't wait to finish that work since that will be the first oil painting I will get to complete after...ack! 14 years!

While waiting for "Tagos..." to dry, I started working on the pool scene painting. Originally, I intended a close crop composition as inspired by a photograph I took while I was on a shoot at Puerto Galera. The photograph depicts a woman in a pool, dimly lit by submerged night lights. The scene was flooded by an eerie green cast.

But as I spent time sketching a viable composition, I was clearly not satisfied in mimicking a photograph, since doing so will fail to express a more pressing sensation that the photograph reminds me of everytime I look at it.

The combination of darkness and a large body of water evokes a primeval fear in me. I find it easy for my imagination to run off and conjure a creature of sorts lurking submerged in the darkness. Though it may sound rediculous in telling as we are dry and surrounded by light now, we cannot always hope to be bathed by light or held high above the cold lapping tongues of the ocean for the rest of our lives. When the time comes when all that we fear individually coalesce into a dreaded moment, fear cannot always be reigned in by logic or sensibility.

I've dove the ocean in the dead of the night. I've witnessed the ghostly form of a sunken ship emerge from the absolute darkness of the deep. I know how it feels to feel absolutely vulnerable...to succumb to a soft death and allow the cold hands of the ocean to caress your heart, submitting yourself to her whims, fancy and follies, whilst dark waves make their way towards shore 60 feet above you. I've known this kind of fear...it's sister to the fear I still get when faced by the prospect of entering any body of water at night. I just couldn't innoculate myself against it.

I wanted to show that intense moment between hesitation and that point when a person submits himself or herself to fate.

I've been trying to build this pool scene painting to depict this incomplete idea of what I would like to call "soft death". It's the sensation you get when you enter the cold ocean at night. It is what I've felt when I wake up half way at night and am trap in an unresponsive body while a whirling fantasy world engulfs me and rather than trying to wake up, I give myself up to oblivion. It is the same when you will yourself to stop caring and lean back into a cliff – to rapel. If you've ever imagined yourself dying, or even dreamt it, then you probably have an inkling of what I'm saying.

I've also began work on what I think will be a very technically challenging piece for me. I've been playing with the idea of painting a lady lying inside a "Kubol" – which is prison speak (Philippine) for a small space which an inmate can enjoy some privacy.

I saw the pose sometime in 1999 and I was so much taken aback by it that I came up with this drawing: "Kubol".

That was a long time ago and though I didn't paint then, I had some long term intentions to do a painting like that sometime in the future...which so happens to be this year.

Why such an angle? I don't know, but when I was learning photography in high school, I was very much impressed by Max Dupain's "Sunbather". I was never really satisfied with my "Sunbather" inspired photos of yesteryears, but I am excited about this present composition.

Lastly, I've finally gotten back "Dappled Room" - framed and ready for hanging. I like looking at it on the wall like this... it reminds me that I have skills of sorts and that I should stop worrying about it and just paint whenever I can.

Nearing Completion

I am now nearing completion of the painting shown below. Though I still need to paint the girl's hair, add a few shadows here and there, and add more layers to the face to achieve the right warmth, shadow and glow, whatever else I might add can't really do much to change how the painting already looks now.

I did mention before that I wanted a detailed face. But working on the face as much as I did made me feel sorry for having covered up the earlier tonal guide as shown on the earlier stages of the work. For one, the strong contrast was pleasing and it gave the face a dynamic quality that was lost later on. I will need to find a way to bring back some of that quality without roughening up the face.

One impulse that has been annoying me lately as I finish up on this piece is that impulse to make drastic changes on the work. On my part, it is easy to get distracted and imagine the hand clutching some coins and rolled up bills between the fingers as what commuters and jeep conductors would normally do. But I've been trying to convince myself that adding that element would confuse the picture and shift the viewers attention away from the expression of the kid and redirect it into an interaction happening within the frame.

But then I remind myself that the composition I came up here was worked out during a time when I wasn't that comfortable working with too many elements – let alone paint in oil.

I've shown a picture of the unfinished painting to a few friends and it seems that the subject is not that apparent to most. Since I'm not comfortable adding another element into the picture to complete the story so to speak, I might as well insert that revelatory element into the title. Hence, “Tagos sa Yero ng Jeep and Titig mo Hija”.

On a different note, I had a couple of canvas frames constructed by Sunga Sash Factory of Antipolo. The craftmanship was above reproach. In fact, what I got was so much more than what I expected. I just wanted a simple wooden frame to stretch my canvas on, but instead I got a heavy, solid, interlocked wood frame with the inner edge of the frame skillfully sanded off.

I seem to have a number of blank and primed canvas hanging around. It's a good way for me to be reminded of the things I have to start working on, though I have to admit that it can get annoying at times.

One time I was walking in "National Bookstore" in my town, when I came across these acrylic paints. In that spate of impulsiveness, I ended up purchasing gold and copper with only a vague notion on how I will use them. As I walked out the store, I was thinking of using the gold as a base for some yellowish green transluscent area for a painting depicting a pool scene at night.

But once I've sketched out the scene and did some rough underpainting on a primed canvas, the gold acrylic doesn't seem to fit the painting anymore.

Since I've paid good money for those tubes, I feel that I'd better come up with a good application for them. It's just that, the way some things look like in your mind does not always translate well once you mix paints to achieve the same effects.

Annoying. But I would like to think that it is a limitation imposed by skills rather than an insurmountable physical limit imposed by the medium.

Dappled Room

DAPPLED ROOM

By: Ian V. Martinez

Oil pastel on paper

19.5 x 28.5 inches

Unmounted

Well, I've finally gotten this piece out of the way.

Interestingly, this would be the first artwork I've finished since I started this blog.

I don't know about you, but I think there's a marked improvement in this, as compared to "Painting Helena". By not obsessing too much on method, I was able to concentrate more on "getting that feel onto the paper".

Hell, I don't even know how I got to this point from the initial sketch. Painting is funny that way.

Dappled Bathroom

After working on some job related tasks, I had an intense compulsion not to leave home and work on this oil pastel work which I sketched out just yesterday.

It's not finished in that I still have to apply textures on the tiles and "rationalize" a lot of the figure's bulges. For one thing, that shoulder muscle is looking a bit too masculine. I also need to correct some misplaced highlights on the figure's... ahem... butt. I was working on that a few minutes ago but the oil pastel kept on lifting. I had to fix the work first before proceeding on smoothing out the details on the figure's back. For one, I may need to look closer at the anatomy of this work. The shoulders and back muscles are way off.

There's something appealing in watching simple everyday scenes playing out in front of you. For me, I find it even more delightful to see the same things from peculiar vantage points. Looking at this scene from eye level, you would have missed that organic pattern on the tiles above the frame, or the dappling of sunlight below. And more importantly, you would have missed the quaint compositional unity that the figure makes and how it relates to all the oblique angles surrounding her.

I wasn't thinking about it consciously when I was planning this work or even while I was painting it, but looking at this piece now reminds me of Edgar Degas' "The Star" and his other works such as those depicting women bathing in shallow tubs, as well as "Woman Combing her Hair".

I admire Degas' work and when I was young, had been profoundly influenced by him. I didn't paint then but I was thinking that if I painted, I'd want to paint like him. I do remember wanting to mimick his shallow tub scenes and I think I went as far as drawing those paintings on ruled pad paper.

Funny how our influences have a knack of revealing themselves later on in life with no warning whatsoever.

On a final note, I feel that my skills have really improved since painting "Seven Cats" and "Painting Helena". My actions are more purposeful and reduntant applications of the medium have been reduced.

I'd probably finish this piece over the weekend. I'll be quite busy for the rest of the week with work and reviewing for the advance diver course I'm taking up. Plus, I have a freakin' research that's not going anywhere. This art thing is making me neglectful of my other "stuff".

I better get my affairs into order.

...

Leaving the Rut

I've been paralyzed this past few weeks, in that I've ceased to work on this painting. I surmise that my avoidance is due to my apprehension on working on the critical stages of this work. As it stands, every dab of highlight has the potential to change the expression of the face.

I've tried to set the areas of highlight and will soon apply thin layers of glaze (if that is what you'd call it) to set the correct skin tone and achieve a more believable gradation on the face. I'm attempting to hide more of the details in the shadows and burn out a few highlights in an attempt to raise the contrast of the image and create a more compelling sense of depth.

Details... I'm still working on the economy of my strokes. The man's sleeves here is basically a patchwork of misplaced highlights and shadows. I need to work on that. It looks messy, compared with the more direct strokes of the man's pants. Come to think of it though, I found that painting fabrics will have to be the most challenging to make realistic or at least believable. That probably explains why I like painting nudes.

It's a pity you can't see the peculiar blue I picked for the pants due to the limitations on my phone camera. I really went out of my way to find that kind of blue.

I've just learnt that drying (well, the paint actually oxidizes rather than dry if you want to be more accurate about it) a painting lying on the floor prevents the oil from a very fat paint to run separate from the pigments. In some application, that looks cool and I've seen some works that allow the fat to run and trace rivulets down their canvas for effect.

Well, since oil paint "oxidizes" forever and hence I've run out of places to paint on this canvas, I've decided to start on a new work.

This will be done in oil pastel, somewhat like "Painting Helena", although the subject here will be shown inside a shower cubicle that is distorted - rather than a plain patterned background or something that will isolate the subject. At least here, you can appreciate the relationship of the human form with its environ.

You have to understand, I've been doing photography for so many years now that I can't help but see images in my mind's eye as if I was still looking through a viewfinder. So if you ask me, I'm distorting the lines here as if I'm looking through an 18mm lens (on a 1.6 crop factor camera mind you). I'd want more distortion but that would wreck havock on the woman's proportions.

I don't know about you, but I like my composition in this piece. The one big thing that I am now considering is the color scheme. Should I go for peach? What cool hue to use for the shadows?

Well, as I am painting wet on dry with the former painting, I guess I have a week before the layer on that painting "dries" well enough to receive the next layer. So I guess I have this week to work on this nudie pic.

...

Heavy Rains

It has been raining heavily for the most part of the week, even as I drove in and out of the Metro to attend to things and meet friends. Haven't done anything related to art - seem I'm more comfortable staring at ANC, CNN and Fox News alternatingly, than staring at my waiting art materials just across the hall.

Going to Sucat to attend to a small birthday celebration today - not after I get an oil change that is long overdue - and that after a number of panels partly came off from under my car after I belly flopped the vehicle on gutter deep water in Antipolo. Had those things screwed on again yesterday.

The rain doesn't inspire me. It makes me desire nothing but to get a book and sink deep into my bed. Funny how it does that.

Equilibrium

I believe I'm approaching an equilibrium in my current work... which is not good.  

For a while, there had been an imbalance in the way I mix my colors.  I'd be applying pure colors on the canvass or paper and mixing in other hues along the way before laying down another color on top of everything.  That served me well before, as resulting works turned out bright and quite interesting to look at.  Some turned out too red, or too orange and that helped in adding a sort of “drama” into the painting.

  

This morning, I noticed that I have been applying a graying mix of burnt umber and red, and large areas of my current painting was looking ever so muddy.  Though given I'm still applying the middle layers of the painting and I haven't painted the highlights in just yet, I can tell that this piece will look gray in the end.

I have to consciously break this equilibrium.  I have to force myself to drop in the yellows and reds even at this early on, just so as to get into a sort of mood or rhythm (call it what you may) which will dictate how I feel about the work and therefore affect how I go about the work later on.  Ok, that sounds a bit convoluted, but that's how I perceive it.

The thing is, I'm torn between two tendencies as I work on this piece.  One side is analyzing constantly the edges, and taking note of where gradients should be placed, and what color should be applied as an underpainting for the highlights.  The thinking can get quite tedious at times.  The other side just wants to apply whole blobs of paint with nary a care in the world.  It wants me to squeeze out my reds, blues and yellows out their tubes and with a small well filled with linseed oil, just go about mixing the colors in the canvas itself.

I'm aware I can't and shouldn't do the latter.  That can only be executed successfully after years of experience with oils.  Every step I'm taking now is calculated, else, I might end up wasting this canvas – and of course, the paints!  Oil paint is expensive.  One small tube cost Php 170 already – and that price is for the regular colors like burnt umber, ultramarine and such.  But even as I said that, I still try to “let loose” because doing so pleases me in a way.

If I stay over at the analytical side, I'd be bored.  If I go over the other side, I'll mess everything up.  If I stay in the middle, I'll end up with a "gray" piece of work.  What a trilema!

I've learnt a lot from this canvas.  I hope I don't ruin it.

Details and Impressions

I've been somewhat lethargic these past few days, but I've always made it a point to work on some drawings or my current painting even for a few minutes each day.  The painting above is going along well, albeit painfully slow.  I've just ran out of burnt sienna and I can't progress with the face or the arms wrapped around the little girl. Come to think of it, I'm running out of blues as well.  

I should have listened to an online article I read recently about starting on smaller canvases first.  This work doesn't have that much details to show to merit such a large area.  Perhaps half the present size of this canvas would have sufficed, making my life easier, and saving me a bit of paint as well.

I wanted to do an impressionist rendering of the man's shirt and pants, blurring the folds in the process, but I'm having difficulty diverging from painting wet on dry.  For one, I have no idea in controlling streaks of colors to produce shades and highlights.  When I think of wanting to warm the painting, I'm still thinking of applying a thin layer of yellow later on, rather than applying the yellow along with the other colors as I paint wet on wet.  

It's sort of scary, to work wet on wet.  I still keep memory of a very early attempt at painting in mind.  When I was a lot younger, and after a number of visits at the NSW Art Gallery, I was captivated by the Gallery's impressionism collection.  I remember even buying a publication that showed and commented in much detail Pierre-Auguste Renoir's works.  I wanted to do something like that, and in a fit of assiduousness, I went about stretching my first canvass, applying primer and finally  painting.

With nary a preparatory sketch and any form of reference in hand, I started drawing in shapes onto my canvas and without a trace of trepidation, started applying in large blobs the cheap acrylic paint I bought from a school supplies store.  It didn't take long before I finally manage to muddy a lone tree and grayed the dress of a young girl.  Also, it didn't take long for the muddy paint to dry either.  After a few more attempts at rectifying the mess I have done, I finally covered the whole canvass with primer once again, only to find that an outline of a girl and tree could be seen as a relief on the primed surface.  Disheartened as I was, I tore off the canvas and ended up sulking for a few days.

For this painting, I also wanted to render the face and arms with significantly more details to allow it to standout against the feathery background.  It's almost the same concept in photography when you'd focus on a subject and render everything else in front of and behind the subject blurry.  But rather than mimicking the effects of optics in a photograph, I wanted to feather the background here using impressionist strokes  and raise the subject by being more exact with facial details.

It's one thing to say it, and quite another to do it.

That's one of the reason why I'm blogging right now – I have a need to concretize my ideas which for the meantime I cannot transfer onto a canvas because of technical inadequacies. 

Even as I work on this painting, I have a few more that I am developing in my mind.  Whatever I learn from this present one, I will have to apply to my later projects which I think is far more technically complicated, and more symbolically rich.

The thing is, I developed this little girl painting when I couldn't satiate my interest in photography.  With only a camera phone in hand, I had to make do with VGA resolution pictures and very poor dynamic range.  Then, the only thing that mattered was composition, framing and an aesthetic subject.  Communicating anything deeper was not in my list of priorities.

But having worked with photography for so long now, I have come to realize how difficult it was to communicate symbols in a picture.  Such things get lost in the clutter of details, and even if you manage to isolate it, the way we have been trained to look at photographs make us dismiss these symbols and assume that their presence in the photo is accidental.

In painting, no element can be accidental.  For one, the painter had painstakingly painted that object and integrated it into his composition.  With so much work put on an element, the viewer must certainly ask:  why?

Hardened Tubes of Paint

A cursory look at the painting I'm working on will tell you that the piece is in danger of getting stripped from the frame and shoved into a bin. But I remind myself to be patient and if the work turns out “that” bad, then I should at least try to learn something from the debacle.

I've had this unfinished work for ages – maybe around half a decade. After painting in the washes as guide, I stopped to allow the paint to “dry” before proceding with the second layer. From that moment on, I began to harbor doubts if I had the ability to push through with the work. Before long, I was finding all the excuses in the world to stash the work and hide it from my sight. The consequence of all that self doubt is that I stopped painting altogether. I've even blogged about this same frame almost four years ago: 

http://flickofdaswitch.blogspot.com/2005/10/unfinished-painting.html

Talk about harboring some intense self-doubt! That's one heavy emotional baggage being dragged there.

Though it's childish to blame inanimate objects for errors in your ways, I can't help but feel that this frame had acted as a barrier that prevented me from painting all these years. It's really been that long that I had to throw some paint tubes away as the paint had hardened inside their tubes! The ones I can use, I have to cut with a bit of white spirit first just so that I can load the brush with it.

As I restarted work on this frame, I found it annoying that the lessons I learned in using watercolor and oil pastels were intruding at the work at hand. I was reminding myself to be liberal about squeezing paint out of their tubes, and stop scraping the leftover film of paint on the palette.

I really should be painting right now than writing. Really. But I thought it would be good if I just stand back for a moment and try to internalize what I have learned last night. Holding that brush with a daub of paint at the end felt awkward. As I made my strokes, I was reliving the lessons I learnt in art class from Mr. Cummerford, more than a decade ago.

Ahh... during the final weeks of my senior year in high school, we were given access to the art rooms after school hours. Whenever Mr. Cummerford would leave the rooms all to ourselves, we would make our way up the roof and light up cigarettes and engage in some deep and thought provoking conversations about our artworks drying in the rooms below us. Though I've quit smoking and really hate the habit, I am thankful for such memorable and fun memories I have of other smoker-student-artists. We'd sit there admiring the yellowing sky as it filters through the leaves of gum trees above.

When Mr. Cummerford ushers us back into the rooms, he'd crinkle his nose and ask if we had been smoking. We'd simply say we were all up in the roof trying to find something that will inspire us. He'd nod and go about looking at our progress with our works. Try doing that in economics! Smoking within school premises can actually get you suspended.

First Post

Hi!  My name is Ian.  I also go by my internet screen name "suntoksabwan" in various websites.  I reside comfortably in Antipolo City, Philippines, where the temperature is on average around 34C balmy and humid.  That should put things in perspective.

I decided to come up with this blog to talk about my art and the process by which I would arrive at finished works.  By all intent and purposes, this is a creative journal.

I intend to be as honest as I can in trying to justify the placement and choice of elements in the paintings I am working on, as well as talk frankly about the motives behind the work itself.

I am not a professional artist.  I can barely come up with a finished work - even a pencil drawing, every month.  I'm not masquerading as an expert or even at least someone who knows what he is doing.  I simply want to talk about how I ended up with my art - which I think is the most undeniable proof I can leave behind to show that I have seen, felt, wished, wondered, imagined, introspected - existed and walked this earth trying to find my place in it along the way.

I don't have a large body of work.  I've sold some pieces and squandered the money to buy more rolls of canvas and brushes.  Right now, I have two stretched canvas staring out at me from the dining room, and about 8 sketches and schematics of ideas for future works.  

I am not at all comfortable with my skills just yet, and I am hesitant to touch brush to canvass lest I end up ruining a perfectly primed surface.  But then again, those rough sketches (really rough sketches which I think I am the only one who can decipher an image from) are annoyingly calling out to me.  

Every now and then, I'd lumber towards the dining table, throw open a sketch book and imagine my sketches in color, smile, and then be reminded of the hands given me...  close the sketch book and walk away with a heavy heart.

Though art brings me joy, many a times it ushers in despair into this life of mine.