Birdland

Count on me to exhaust every possible "bird" pun over the next few weeks. 


Or months.


Because I've taken on a spectacular and challenging commission: to create a series of 15 oil paintings, each 24" x 36," and each depicting a bird native to Jamaica. 


I've never even drawn a bird before, let alone made a 2 foot by 3 foot painting of a bird. Or, um, 15 birds.


And my fresh, stretched canvases arrived this week -- 

so I must get started. Pronto.

I was given a list of 15 birds and began to search online for references.  


I have to confess, I'm no birder. That is either a gene that skipped my generation OR is one that is simply lying dormant until I reach a Certain Age, whereupon I will suddenly find all things ornithological completely captivating. And that has not happened yet.


But I digress.


So my bird reference search continued. I won't be painting a copy of someone's photograph but I needed to know what all of these birds look like -- their size, coloring, posture. I've downloaded dozens of images and printed out those that would be helpful to catch a pose, or color samples or even an environment in which to place each bird.


Infinite possibilities.

The must frustrating thing I've learned along the way, albeit not the most surprising, is that the name Jamaicans have given to a local bird is not necessarily the same name that the rest of the planet has adopted. 


Surprise, surprise.


But to be fair, the Jamaican nomenclature typically outshines all other options. To wit:


In Jamaica:  Cling Cling       Elsewhere: Greater Antillean Grackle


In Jamaica:  John Chewit      Elsewhere: Black-whiskered vireo  


The local flayvah has more flayvah.


And who knew that an Aunty Katy and a BananaQuit are one in the same? But of course!


So I decided to jump in with a familiar friend, the Parrot. Just about everybody calls a parrot a parrot.  I grabbed a pose from one photo and incorporated the thatchy-palm leaves from another to work up a sketch on paper. I drew a grid on my pad so I could scale my sketch up to the canvas.

Here's the light grid, in the same scale, drawn on the blank canvas:

This made it so much easier to re-draw my sketch on the canvas:

Now, the hard part -- painting these birdies. Time to crank up the music in the studio and get them flying...................

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City Painting - final stages

I'm pleased with how this painting is coming along -- and am nearly finished.

I was skeptical about the color-combination requested -- but using the Payne's Gray as the base, a nice cool, bluish gray, has resulted in a really lush, rich painting. 

It's funny, but sometimes I can't see the problem areas clearly until I take a wide photo. The camera does cause some distortion, since the painting is so large and I'm taking the photo at a short distance. Also, the uneven lighting casts some glare on the surface.


Even allowing for some slight curving distortion, in the photo, I can still see some areas that I want to even out a bit. The big "C" in Tacoma is a little lopsided, the baseline text of "WEST" in the upper right is uneven, and the surface of the letters in "Las Vegas" need some work.

But otherwise, almost done!




Do you have an idea for your own places/names painting? Put your order in  here,
or email me for more information.

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A Custom City Painting in Progress - Part 2

So where did we leave off?

I blocked in the entire background field, varying the hue and the value, leaving nice thick swaths of brush strokes. This is a painting after all, not a bstore-bought poster. Let the hand-made quality shine through.

Now, on to the type.

And with typography, there's a fine line between aesthetically beautiful, hand -made  renderings ... and just plain sloppy. That is why I did take great care to transfer the type to the canvas: size, proportion and alignment are true and measured. Edges are strong if not precise. At a distance, the edges of this particular typeface appear strong, clean and clear. Close inspection may reveal soft variations and irregularities -- I don't paint with a ruler - but the general strength of the line is strong and solid.

I love lines.

My client wanted the type to be white, with a slight shadow or dark edge. Flat white fill would have been an easy solution. But instead, I began painting the type with a dark layer of Payne's Grey and then gradually built it up with lighter values of paint. 

See the edges of "Las Vegas"   and then the light gray filling inside the letters (below). Compare to the word beneath, where brighter layers of white have been added on top of the same treatment.

See what I mean? The type is no longer just flat. It's nice and chunky.

Up close and personal, it's not perfect. But it works.

"C" for super "CHUNK."

I'm very close to finishing and I'm pleased with the result so far. Check back over the weekend to see the final painting.

Please contact me if you have a painting of your own in mind -- cities, countries, places or names of your choosing. Your family members, perhaps?  Anything is possible; I can create a unique piece for you or a loved one.

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A Custom City Painting in Progress - Part 1

Shades of gray...........

I'm so pleased to be taking on another commissioned "cities" painting -- and I've been documenting the steps so you can see that it truly is a painting that is custom made-to-order.


My client has requested a personal array of cities to be displayed on canvas, as offered here, and also chosen a color palette: white lettering on charcoal gray. 


Here we go............


First, I created a layout of the type on my mac. The result is not very painterly, far from it -- but it does provide a plan for the painting.

I then scale up the image to 36"x48" and printed out black and white versions of the image in pieces, on regular 8.5" x 11" paper. I will use these printouts to transfer the design to the canvas surface.

To transfer the type, it's time to go old school - I cut the pieces to transfer, trimming them down to the edges, and then flip them over. I take a nice soft piece of charcoal and cover the back side of the paper with it, until it's thoroughly covered.

After marking the canvas with a t-square, creating the alignment lines for the type, I lay down the printed sheets of text, charcoal side down, and tape in place. Using a ball point pen (but any sort of stylus will do)  I trace over the edges of the type on the printed side of the paper strips. This effectively transfers the charcoal onto the canvas surface.

This is a very old technique -  using a "cartoon"  -  a variation of which would be to prick very tiny holes through the original printed paper (or drawing), to be transferred. After placing the pin-pricked paper on your canvas, you "pounce" it with charcoal dust which passes through the holes onto the canvas, effectively transferring the outlines of your design.

Since the charcoal is easily smudged, I  next used a soft pencil to roughly re-draw the lines and make them stronger. City by city, the canvas fills up with sketches.

Now it's time to mix some paint. 

I could use a simple mix of black and white, but that would be rather dull and flat.  Rather than using any black, I am using Payne's Gray (below, left), which is a dark, cool, bluish gray, made from mixtures of black, blue and occasionally crimson pigments. I also pulled out tubes of Prussian Blue, (second from left), Alizarin Crimson (3rd from left) and Titanium White (far right).

The Payne's Gray comes out of the tube looking as if it were black. As I mix in some Titanium White, it begins to take on a cool, rich and smokey gray color.

By adding small, sparing amounts of the Prussian Blue, the Alizarin Crimson and the Titanium White,  I can change the appearance of the gray ever so slightly. I don't mix large amounts of paint at one time, so each time I mix up a quantity of paint, it is never the same. And that's great!  I'm not painting a living room wall nor the side of a house -- variation in color and value is a good thing. 

I begin to lay in the background color around the edges of the lettering.

I mix and re-mix, varying the amounts of pigment and white and gradually fill in the background around the letters, letting the variations in value and hue remain.

Next up -- layers of paint on the letters.... stay tuned for part 2.......

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Greetings!

Time to go Old School -- send a handwritten card for a change.


Now offering 5-pack note card samplers, each card adorned with one of my watercolor paintings. Each card has a different image on the front and is blank inside.

Size: A2 (5.5" x 4.25")
Set contains: 5 Folded Cards and envelopes

I print these cards on Conqueror Diamond White 118# cover stock paper, using an Epson R3000 printer with archival inks. All cards are printed, cut and folded by hand.

Envelopes are 70# "Whip Cream" colored Pop Tone envelopes, with a deep flap, by French Paper Company.


Send a little bit of the caribbean to a friend!


See the two sample packs offered here and here, each pack of 5 is only $12.50!

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A Change of Face

A return to my watery pen and inks.  Loose like a goose.

Turban 11"x16.5" ink on watercolor paper.


.

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The chains are coming, the chains are coming.....

Our beleaguered East Village has seen the gradual creep of corporate homogeneity of late. Eccentric cafes are being squeezed out by Starbucks-by-the-dozen, hardscrabble bodegas yield to the bland conformity of 7/11s, and your favorite taqueria may morph into a Subway shop overnight.


The owner of Tompkins Square Bagels, Chris Pugliese,  enlisted my help to ask his customers to support local small businesses in our neighborhood across the board. His suggestion -- a large hand-painted sign imploring our neighbors to "just say no" to the invasion of the chains in the East Village.


Chris laid out the details of exactly what he wanted to see in the sign:  the words "just say no" and the logos of the 3 aforementioned chain shops drawn behind the universal "prohibited" icon, the red circle with a slash. I offered to execute the idea in a hand-drawn pen and ink style, with watercolor on a large sheet of paper, approx. 2' x 3'. 

I laid out the first plan with some newsprint and typeset words, printed of my computer. I sketched in a bagel and a muffin across the top and added some coffee cups along the bottom.

Chris like the plan and made some suggestions. In order to really shout out the message, we moved "just say no" to the very top modified the proposed visuals -- just two big bagel halves along the bottom. I was good to go!

I transferred the layout to a large sheet of Arches 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper, using a pencil and graphite transfer paper. Next, the pen and ink to draw the border lines for all of the text and images.

I used a sketchy touch......

Then I broke out the watercolors......

And then I began painting in the logos....

You recognize them, right? Sketchy or not....

Seven-eleven  and Subway next.... 

Then I began to form those big chunky bagels.

Got it all essentially filled in, and a light wash to establish the bagels. The background was next.......

I started with a light wash of blueish-lavender..... I wanted it to be a rich eye-catching color but couldn't let the type disappear, so I started with a very light touch and also fully rendered the bagles.

And then gradually built it up a bit deeper with more washes of blues and purples.....

More color.

And voila! 

It's got a sketchy hand-made appearance, nothing too slick and corporate about it - I hope it will be hanging in the shop soon -- look for it. 


And please support you own local small businesses............

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