The Bather, Oil on canvas

Finally finished this oil painting.  I've worked the canvas nearly to death.  But learned so much in the process doing it that I didn't care that when you inspect the canvas closely you'll see the heavily worked areas.  It was about learning to paint, so it was truly an exercise.  Though I've still got improvements I would make, I need to move on.  I'm least happy about the cut-off top of image, where the neck and shoulders meet.  If I had it to do again, I would alter the position of the body just enough to at least show the curvature of the neck.  Instead, I applied myself to the rendering of skin tones, working the surface again and again to achieve the tonalities I wanted.  I've used both brush and palette knife to arrive at this final composition.  Observe how dramatic the evolution; in the first image (below) the painting looks more impressionistic, not just in brush technique but in coloration.  Some will say that the former stage of the painting has more appeal, for it has an impressionist lighting and coloration and feels less substantial.  The completed painting, I believe, though less romantic in feeling then earlier stages, has an objectivity which I was striving to obtain.

On Skin tones...

(The Bather):  I've applied the oil paint over and over again until the layers of colors congeal to something I've been looking for...but I've had to do it many times to blend, shade and tone in order to arrive at the right tonality!  The red made all the difference! No more magenta/violet family, it was wrong for the pinks I was trying to derive, with that cast of orange light that hints a yellowish tonality with the undercurrent of blood flowing through the veins!  I'm seeing why from the Renaissance forward from Rubens to the moderns like F. Bacon and L. Freud, painters have labored so over the colors (plural) of flesh!  It is truly challenging, like trying to breathe life into the form!  Skin has this translucency achieved only through great effort at placement of shadows (blue, reddish or greenish, depending on the light conditions) and the many highlights where light dances on the surface of the skin.  I've made so many adjustments in tone on The Bather that I couldn't possibly remember them all.  But getting the right shade of blue for skin shadows, or when light curves around a soft edge, a rounded form, how it reddens because of refracted light bending around the form.  The color changes there-- where dark encounters the light!  This is difficult to analyze but when you've painted it correctly it becomes a non-issue.  It looks right and so the eye can see the form correctly and see it in context of the light and shadow (it's atmosphere) in the manner that the form occupies space.

Read recently that H. Matisse spent up to 6 months on paintings only to be described as a "spontaneous" painter, like he just sat down and knocked it out in half a day!  It riled him, and who could blame him.  It might look easy, but it's not!

More Notes on Painting...

Journal on "The Bather"  (work in progress)
Discovered RED today.  Why I avoided it before I don't know.  It is Cadmium Red Deep and works so much better than the magenta I was using and complaining about it's indelibility; once magenta is down, you cannot get rid of it!  But red, as a primary, blends with other colors to derive pinks, purples and other colors, complimentary or not.
On Shapes:
 I've noted recently how important the indication of direction is in defining shapes-in-space.  Even if the entire form cannot be represented on the canvas, due to its placement or juxtaposition with other forms, still in order for a shape to read correctly, a contour showing direction can be all that's necessary for the eye to complete the entirety of the form.  Without this directional indicator the shape remains ambiguous!
Ambiguity can sometimes be desirable; but in defining a form, a shape, and its size and relative location in space, directional marks are what is essential in shape-making.

Matisse speaks...

"Of course Cubism interested me, but it did not speak directly to my deeply sensuous nature, to such a great lover as I am of line and of the arabesque, those two life-givers."

On Drawing

"Drawing also counts a great deal.  It is the expression of the possession of objects.  When you know an object thoroughly, you are able to encompass it with a contour that defines it entirely.  Ingres said that the drawing is like a basket:  you cannot remove a cane without making a hole."  --Henri Matisse

Recent Figure Drawings

Untitled (Homage to Frida Kahlo); oil on canvas

"Viva la vida" her parting words, inscribed in painting, her last painting of cut watermelons; three years later, Diego honored her last image and did one of his own, his last painting before he died. Her immense love of life (I share it!). Her cremated body described by her friends and students as violet, silver, the colors of shadows. Carlos Fuentes says she "sacrilized" life (I do also!) "everything she touched, she wanted to sacrilize" so much did she love life, even while experiencing nearly constant pain. I honor her memory in this painting, the beauty of her soul that found so much joy in living through suffering, the bravest and most heroic of women painters!