From the Flat Files 10

In light of Lauren Panepinto's post on artist selfies over on Muddy Colors and a coincidental encounter in my flat files, I bring you this old self-portrait of mine.

Painted in room 420 of Leo J. Pantas Hall in August of 1996, this was something I did for the heck of it before the fall semester of my junior year began at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute. I was nineteen years old and bored. I had just completed a ton of paperwork for my job as a resident adviser so I grabbed a banged-up piece of illustration board and went to work.

This is a rare piece for me. I remember exactly where I was when I did it, I remember what the weather was like and how the breeze blew in through my window, I remember the strong afternoon light bouncing around the courtyard outside, and I can even recall which t-shirt I was wearing as I got my acrylics out and started slapping paint down on top of an ink drawing. I used only one or two brushes and a painting knife. And I remember that this was a fast piece. Two and half hours — maybe three at the most.

When classes began again, I took the finished piece with me to show one of my professors, George Pratt. I approached George with the piece after class and asked for his thoughts as he began to set up his chess board for a quick game with a friend of his who'd tagged along for the day. As was his way, George gave me an honest critique — not brutal, mind you, but focused and concise. The piece was a decent exercise, but could have been composed better and perhaps been more carefully planned out. There was some fun stuff happening, but it could be better (an opinion I now have about much of my work).

For my part, I was on the fence about the piece. I knew it wasn't technically as good as it could be, but I felt that there was something there — some seed of quality. It felt important somehow. That being said, I took George's words to heart and the piece suddenly felt a whole lot less special. In the end, I verbally dismissed the piece as being "just a piece of crap anyway."

If the painting had been unimportant before then, what transpired next would cement its importance and is the reason I've kept it all these years.

George grabbed me before I could leave the room and looked me square in the eye. "Don't ever say that about your work," he said. "If you keep saying that about your work then eventually it'll be true."

I don't know why, but those words have stayed with me ever since. But it didn't end with those words. George and I talked for a little while (well, he talked and I listened). He reminded me that not every piece will be great and some will be downright failures, but that doesn't make them crap. Every piece painted has value — be it as a means to an end or the end itself.

Now, there's nothing revelatory in the words above, and some might even say it smacks of cliché. But it was exactly what I needed to hear at the precise moment I needed to hear it. Whether George understood that or not, I can't say. Either way, I cannot thank him enough for it because the way I view my work fundamentally and permanently shifted that day.

As down as I've ever been on my professional work, I have continued to value even my greatest failures. That doesn't mean I treat everything like priceless treasure and delude myself into believing I'm in any way brilliant (read any of the self-analysis I do on any given piece and you'll see). Sure, I've made some epic missteps, but those have been necessary to help make the paintings that work happen at all.

Despite the strength of that memory and what it's done for me, it surprisingly wasn't the thing that came to mind yesterday when I laid eyes on this self-portrait. My mind did not drift back to that classroom or George's words as I pulled the painting out of the drawer. Instead, I looked at the piece and began to wonder about the kid who painted it all those years ago.

The painting itself is definitely not a portfolio piece. It was done by a kid who didn't know what he was doing, but didn't care. And its value goes well beyond the memories attached to it. The paint handling is far looser than I can bring myself to do today, and there's a playfulness to it that somehow feels foreign. I look at the piece and I wonder if I'm even capable of letting go to such a degree anymore.

I suppose it's an interesting exercise to ponder where my life might have taken me if my work had been more in keeping with that aesthetic. More importantly, however, I have to wonder where the guy who painted this piece go? Is he still hanging around in my head somewhere? And if so, how do I get him to come out and play again — even just a little?

Over the course of the years that have gone by, my work has evolved and continues to do so. I have gotten better. But I wonder if I didn't lost something along the way.

Valentine: Day 2

As I've done in the past, I turned the sketch into a monochrome image (this one was blue), then printed it onto 90 lb. Arches watercolor paper using my trusty Epson Stylus Photo R1900.  I then paste this down onto a piece of Ampersand hardboard, which is a pretty hardy material that doesn't bow too much, if at all... unless you put your painting in the oven.  Then you find yourself in your father-in-law's basement gluing one by twos onto the back of the board to cradle the piece after the fact.  But I digress.

The board I chose is 16 x 20, which presents a slight problem given that the printer's capacity is only 13 inches wide.  How did I get around this?  Simple: I folded the paper back an inch and half on either side of the sheet to get it down to the correct width.  Believe it or not, the printer has no issues with this, and I've yet to have a paper jam.

Now, there are two drawbacks to folding the paper.  First, you don't get the entire sketch printed out, just the center 13 inches (or 12 and three quarters to be more precise).  This wasn't a problem for me as the meat of the sketch is straight down the center.  But, if that weren't the case, I could just fold the paper differently to print a different section of the sketch instead.  Additionally, if you've got a sketch that involves tonal regions, there will obviously be a pretty hard line where the tone cuts out.  I get around this by putting an acrylic wash down that matches the color as close as possible.  I'll do several layers if necessary, but there's usually no need to go too nuts as I paint pretty opaquely to begin with.

The second drawback is that the creases can become raised when the piece is pasted down.  How I deal with this is pretty straightforward.  After printing the sketch, I immediately unfold the sides.  I then take the sketch to a clean, flat surface and using a bone paper folder (or like substance), I try and force out as much of each crease as possible.  While it doesn't flatten the paper out perfectly, it does mitigate some of the issue.  After pasting the image down, the vertical lines will sometimes still be noticeable and the surface will be raised above the folds.  Given that I already coat the surface liberally with acrylic matte medium to begin with, I just do a couple more coats.  Then, after it's dry, I sand the surface down using increasingly fine grades of sandpaper, and ending with a Scotch-Brite pad to buff it out.  While sanding, I pay special attention to where the creases are, and have gotten to the point where I can usually make them relatively invisible.  Unfortunately, I'm never entirely sure just how visible they'll end up being until the final varnish is put on the painting.  All that shine brings serious attention to surface flaws.

Granted, what is listed above is not always how things go down.  Sometimes I go out and get my stuff printed large format without any creases.  It's just that this time I've got a lot going on, and because I've only lived here a month or so, I'm not quite sure yet where I'd go for that kind of thing.

Anyway, after I'm happy with the surface, I give it a final wipe with water and let it dry.  I don't touch the piece again until there isn't even so much as a hint of dampness.  Then I start painting.

I know what you're thinking: I hardly got anything done.  I blocked the figure in and that's it.  You're kind of right if that's what you're thinking — like I said before, I've got two other projects going on — but there actually is a fair bit of work done here.  The fact that the paint has dulled hides a lot of what I've been up to, but I assure you that the value structure has been hammered out.  Next time, I'll oil the piece up before shooting it.

Here's a larger shot of the figure:

So, why jump into the figure?  Do I always start that way?  No.  It's a weird answer, but I start on whatever interests me at the time.  Getting started on a piece is always the most difficult part for me, so I kind of need something fun to initiate things.  In this case, the figure is the most important element and I needed to make sure that I had his palette correct.  I also needed to start pushing him toward the photo reference, which I'll show tomorrow, as I'll have far less to talk about.

Anyway, that's where it stands.  Today I plan to focus primarily on the face and then work out from there.  So, I guess I should get to it...

From the Flat Files 2

So, another piece from the flat files.  This one was done during my sophomore year at Pratt which spanned 1995-'96.  One of the big stories of the time was the government shutdown.  I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that I did this piece for class with that story in mind.  It's 12"x16" and is mixed media (mostly acrylic and colored pencil).  I'm not saying it's brilliant, but I was pretty happy with it at the time.

After my sophomore year, this piece found itself in my parents' basement (along with all my other work), where it suffered from the damp air.  Consequently, it stuck to the back of another piece and was damaged beyond repair.  Physical repair, anyway.  Photoshop to the rescue!

While I'm at it, here's another one I did that's completely unlike what I do today:

The assignment was to do an advertising piece.  I chose Volkswagen.  This decision was made because I had the idea of incorporating a logo into a crop circle before I had decided on a product.  I needed a product with a graphic, circular logo, and Volkswagen came to mind.  This is obviously putting the cart before the horse and is not actually solving the problem.  In fact, it's kind of cheating.  But, I got away with it and decided to share the piece, anyway.  This one is also mixed media (mostly acrylic, ink and colored pencil) on illustration board, and is 14"x16".

The piece was painted during my junior year which spanned from 1996-'97 and was done for Dave Passalacqua, a legend at Pratt.  He and I didn't always get along very well, and he actually gave me a lot of antiquated advice that wasn't relevant to today's market, but I still have to say he taught me quite a bit and inspired many stories that my friends and I still tell to this day.  Sadly, he passed away in '04, but he's one of those guys that I'll never forget.  His voice, which I can still hear in my head, won't let me.

What A Downer

Another piece I did back in college.  I'm thinking it was either my sophomore or junior year, but I'm not sure.  So, that translates to sometime between 1995 and '97.  It's acrylic.  It's also loose.  Well, a lot looser than I paint nowadays.  I don't remember the assignment, so I'm afraid there's not much to go on.

I got nothing on this one.

One of the few things I can tell you about my college work overall, which is also true of this piece, is that it was large.  The vast majority of my professional work is somewhere between 9 inches by 12 inches and 16 inches by 20 inches.  My college work tended to be at least 18 x 24, often going as large as 2 x 3 feet.

So, what about this piece in particular?  Well, like a lot of my college work, it's got some real problems.  The value structure bothers me (it goes dark awful fast in shadows), and the dark creases between the fingers is distracting.  The lighting is inconsistent between the hand/head and the rest of the body.  There's no real flow, nor composition to speak of.  It's just a guy with a thumbs-down for a head.

Even so, there's something about the piece I like.  Perhaps it's the color.  Perhaps the mood.  Perhaps it's the confidence in the paint handling.  I honestly don't know.  One thing is for sure, though: it gives you a pretty good idea of what I was like in college!