News — Process

Fire on the Water call for entries is just 2 weeks away. This week I’m turning the bulk of my attention to working through a few pieces. Why a few? Because working across a couple makes me feel less precious about any given one. Because my brain knows I hope one of them will be good enough for a show, the stress will come in. But hopefully I still have a good week left before the real debilitating panic starts.

It’s always fun to roll out some new stencils and give them a whirl. I worked on larger (12x11) drawing paper and my goal right now is to just familiarize myself with the subject matter. I have a face that feels perfect for this show. She’s looking steadily into the camera. At the end of my practice I wasn’t sure if anything was working but I figured out my title. Game Face. That’s exactly what drew me to her in the first place. She seems ready for something. Waiting. The calm before getting into the water. She’s ready.

Last night I emailed my family: I won't be answering non-emergency emails, texts,or phone calls until after 3pm. That was the first step in trying to create physical and mental space to work on art.

I'm working for the family company again, Creative Catalyst Productions. It's a bit strange to be stepping back into some of my old roles after being away from it for 4 years. I didn't forget though how much I enjoyed the work. I really do. It's methodical and involves systems. You do a series of steps and you can sort of assume you'll know what the outcome will be.

Mostly, it's really nice to have clear goals and clear definitions of success.

You know, everything painting doesn't have.

(Quick side note: Find me on Snapchat to see the thinking that goes into my daily paintings.  Snapchat name: Kelly Anne Powers)

I have felt an artist plateau the last couple of days. Some of it maybe be just the emotional landscape of a birthday. Whatever it is, it’s helping me realize that I need to shake some things up with my painting practice. So for the next few paintings, I’m going to try and focus on painting in blue. Such a simple task...or so I thought.The subject of this painting is much smaller than I normally paint and also much bluer than I normally painting. The smaller only became a problem because I have a set of stencils I use in particular ways. At this smaller size, all of my small stencils suddenly felt way too big. I like this size, but I’ll need to cut some new stencils for the projects.

The color thing. Oh boy. Let’s talk about how color was a great challenge.

Photography

It’s really hard for my camera to photograph one hue. It’s like the camera doesn’t have enough information to grab a true color. Also, working with blues meant that I was working with far more saturated color than I normally do. Cameras clearly have trouble with saturated colors. Tools

My tools for solving problems were not intuitive. When I hit a confusing point in a painting, normally I’ll turn toward a different color of paint. A new color helps shake things up. I was forced to think about what wasn’t working in the painting instead of distracting myself with a pretty new color.

I’m not sure when the painting is finished.

This is another way the one color thing has me super scrambled. I have a set of steps I generally go through to finish a painting. And weirdly, none of them work the same way when I’m down to one color. It’s helping me realize just how much I use color to avoid making other decisions.

Saturation! No wait. Value!

I thought the main thing I struggled with was the saturation differences between my blues. I used a primary cyan and it exploded. However, when I greyed my painting in Photoshop,  I realized that what I was really dealing with was value. Color is so tricky. You think you’re evaluating it on one thing (saturation) and really you’re evaluating it on something completely different (value.)

What I love:

I love the eyes in this one. I love the line along the right side of the face. I feel really good about how the features are laid out on the face.

What I don’t love:

I really have no idea what choices I need or want to make to finish the painting. I want to separate the background from the foreground enough so that it’s not all one pile but I want to keep those edges from becoming cut out and hard.  Time to use value? Pattern? But how, and how will using those affect the rest of the painting?

All and all, this was a really fun experiment. I can tell it’s forcing me to think about the properties of my colors other than their hues. I’ll keep working in blues for the next few days and see what I learn.

The (almost) daily portrait painting from today. To see behind the scenes look at most art days, find me on Snapchat under KellyAnnePowers.

What I like:

The lower lip has more volume than most days. Liked that the eyes look a little different than usual and that while it created trouble, I used pattern to push back a strong, strange line above the right eye.

What needs work:

There's an opportunity here to push farther I'm going to let it sit a few days, and then I'll go back in with a yellow glaze along the left side of the face. Once that is yellow, I'll work back in my whites. I think that would add depth. I *think.*