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.