Light as Clouds

I shouldn't take these paintings too seriously.  I should just learn to enjoy the moment and not bother about consequences.

The lighter I feel about working on these canvasses, the more likely I would be returning to them.

Yes, I should just make my strokes and smudges, oblivious of nighttime noises, listening to Mraz and whatever song shuffling will lead me to.

Gone Stupid with the Details

I usually paint at night.  I often lose touch of time when I start dabbing in the paint.  I'd blow past three hours and 4 cups of coffee and think I've only been working on a canvas for 30 minutes.  It's a great way to pass the time, and a darn efficient way to escape everything else in life.  Which reminds me, I have other important things to attend to outside of art!

In any case, I was contemplating last night how to resolve two conflicting aims I was having with regards this rooftop painting.  I needed to satisfy this impulse to paint in details.  Usually, if you want to focus on something, you paint in details.  If you want the eyes to flow across briefly but not focus on an area, you just make suggestive strokes, or lighten the tone, or as they say in Photography, just bring it out of focus.  These usually are not friendly to the eyes and a viewer will instinctively move his eyes away from these areas where the brain cannot satiate it's need for hard edged details.  But as what I have said, I was going crazy over the details.

I was wondering whether cluttering everything will force the eyes to move to the foreground where things are not as cluttered as the background because of perspective - where things are of course larger and therefore may seem not as cluttered as the back.

Or then again, I can always use heavy lines and frame a small section where the eyes and mind should focus on.  

Ah yes...and there goes the plan once again.

Humans or No Humans

This painting is coming along well.  It's not quite done yet.  The intended fluffiness and ephemeral quality of the 3 kinds of clouds depicted  has not been applied yet.  Frankly, I only have an inkling on how to execute it and i suspect it will take a number of layers to get the translucent effect I'm aiming for.  Good luck with that.

Because almost everything  is suggested given the freedom I allowed myself on the brush strokes, the viewer's eyes will wander aimlessly across the frame.  I needed an anchor of sorts where the eyes can begin and launch off towards the horizon, then follow a path back to a comfortable point of focus.  I'm torn between putting in a person, or just rendering with more details the light green grassy foreground on the lower left of the frame.  Either one, it will serve a good anchor.  But, choosing either one will alter the philosophy underpinning the painting.

I always maintain that nature cares not for man or our fate.  In fact, nature is not conscious of how she looks like, of how barren or verdant she might be.  Nature just exist and we are a complication in this grand scheme of just being.

I just want us to be out of the frame.  To be able to see and comprehend, but never covet, infect or destroy.

But without the manifestation of man within the frame, it is conceptually a lightweight anchor.  Humans are exasperatingly self-conscious and egomaniacal.  We are obsessed with our own kind and naturally gravitate towards another biped.  A human figure 1/10th the size of the frame is as heavy as the mountain - if not heavier.  We explore the figure not only with our eyes, but also with our minds.

So what will it be?