Chris Rogers's Blog, page 2

When Is a Painting Finished?

When I’m painting a realistic subject, there’s a level of “finish” I aim for – not photo-realism, because I want a painterly quality, and with portrait work, I also want it to look like the person I’m painting. When I reach that stage, it’s done.

Abstract paintings have an energy all their own. At various stages in the work I often feel that if I add another stroke I’ll ruin it. And sometimes I do.

A friend recently asked me how a painting I posted in steps got from A to C looking as if it had not progressed sequentially but had completely changed in places. That happens when I don’t like what I’ve done. I white it out in those areas and start again but forget to take the “whited-out” photo – probably because I’m a little miffed at having messed up.

The 3-on-a-palette theme I’ve been working with has turned out to be great fun, and for this painting I took quite a few in-progress photos. After the first pass, it looked like a fried egg on a ledge.

I knew it needed some vertical shapes, and I also realized that my color palette needed adjusting. I started with Liquitex Soft Body Muted Violet plus Liquitex Naples Yellow, Twilight, and Raspberry. I love the colors but felt I also needed a brighter blue and a warmer red, so I added Liquitex Swedish Blue and Burgundy.

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Is it finished? I think so. It’s signed and not yet titled, but even after signing a painting, I sometimes add a few more strokes. Of the other two paintings on this palette, one is finished, and I forgot to take the in-progress photos. Here are the start and finish of “All Squared Up”…

[image error]  [image error]  [image error] The only thing left of the original is a square on the far left, bottom, where you can vaguely see 3 0vals. The other painting is, I think, in its final stage. At this point, I worried about making another stroke…

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“Even a Foggy Day Can Be Fun” needs some touch up before I call it final. All in all, my Muted Violet palette has been challenging as well as liberating, as I worked with colors I’ve never before used. My next challenge is a black-white-gray palette, devoting a full canvas to each color. I’m already calling them, “Basically Black,” “Warmly White” and “Graphically Gray.”

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Fresh Paint – Trying On Yellow

When I approach the finish of a painting, I often vacillate between adding a spot of new color or not, or maybe adding a different color. One of my signatures on abstract paintings is a small square or a thin line of a bright new color at the sweet spot.

This week I’ve been working with a new palette. The colors are Liquitex Muted Violet, Liquitex Twilight, Liquitex Raspberry, and Liquitex Naples Yellow, and I’ve reached the place on “All Squared Up” where I need to decide. So far, I haven’t used yellow at all, except possibly a tad mixed with the Raspberry. So I’ve painted small pieces of paper with Naples Yellow and attached them with tape.

Usually, I leave the paper in place for a while and move on to other canvases, but today I decided to photograph it both ways. Seeing it on the screen offers a new perspective. Here’s how they look with and without:

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I’m still vacillating. What do you think?

Meanwhile, here are the other two canvases from this palette, still in progress:

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In the past, I’ve worked primarily with either warm or cool versions of the classics, red, blue and yellow. Technically, that’s still true, but switching to muted premixed colors has opened my range. While most muted versions can be obtained by adding gray to the primary, and I’ve done that in the past, I never would have considered an entire palette based on muted green or muted violet if I hadn’t seen the colors on the shelf and found them yummy.

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3 On a Palette – Yellow

I enjoyed painting 3 different types of abstract with my Liquitex Muted Green palette so much that I decided to do it again, this time with a more familiar color quad. I used 3 American Journey acrylics – Primary Yellow, Thalo Blue and Quinacridone Gold, plus Pyrole Red by M. Graham.

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Using a limited palette encourages me to seek variations in style as I work out the composition.  I love the way this process is stretching my creative limits. Here’s how Yellow Palette 1 and 3 began (I forgot to snap a photo of 2 when I started)…

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Here’s how they finished…

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Again, Fresh Paint – Here’s the Third

This practice of 3 paintings, same palette, different style, is challenging – and I’m loving it.

 

The second painting was screaming at me, so I tweaked by painting blue over part of the red, top center, added a few subtle touches to the white, then finished it off with a horizontal black line at the bottom. So many curved and unpredictable lines, I felt it needed that bit of stability.

The third one might get a few final touches, but for now I’m calling it good.

 

This is how they line up, finished.

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Fresh Paint – New Color Palette

Working with muted green, gold ocher, scarlet, cobalt turquoise, cobalt blue and naples yellow, I created the abstract landscape. I want to do three in the same palette but in different abstract styles. So here’s the second – which is still in progress…

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While that’s settling on my brain and I decide where to go next, I started this canvas…

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So with the wonder of acrylics, I wiped it out, leaving me here…

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I’ll let you know where it finally ends up, but playing with a single palette and different styles is fun.

 

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Switching Streams – Strategies for Adopting a New Life Goal

Here’s the gist of what I’ll share at Houston Focus on Concerns for Women:

Goals are not always hard-line. Often it’s difficult to recognize that a goal has been met or has outlived its usefulness. At some point we may need to evaluate and switch streams. Although with no ironclad answers, as one who has been through it more than once, I will share my discoveries.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017 at 

Location: Sorrento Italian Restaurant, 415 Westheimer Road, Suite 106, Houston, TX 77006 713-527-0609

RSVP: Mary Abshier at marketing@hfcw.org or 713-861-3371

Please join us!

Speaker Chris Rogers started early as a mother, became a graphic designer, then branched off into her own business. When illness and new technologies demanded a change, she studied the craft of novel writing and became one of Houston’s only hardcover breakout novelists of the decade, and when a tipping point crisis hit publishing, she became a ghostwriter of nonfiction as she regrouped for what comes next – full circle to her early artistic roots.

Some Call It Horror…

Some call it fantasy or dark fantasy or supernatural or paranormal. Some who call it s#%t.

Arriving at the place where I felt confident enough to attempt writing the sort of fiction I grew up loving took far too long, and I’ll call it what it is: speculative fiction.

The King James version of the Bible tells us, “And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.” Yet the oldest person living today turned 117 on May 13, 2016. Doesn’t that make you wonder why human life expectancy took such a dive? Considering the marvels of modern medicine…

Okay, enough said about medicine. My point is that single word: wonder. The human brain is amazingly good at wondering.

Yes, we have enormous capacity for memory and calculation and rational thought. So do chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, apparently. But can they wonder?

It is our capacity to wonder that brought us Tarzan and Superman, Xena, Catwoman and Alice in Wonderland. It is also our capacity to wonder that brings about the scientific discoveries which most change our world. Or as Albert Einstein said so eloquently, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

But back to long life and Emma Morano, who might celebrate her 118th birthday next month. She was born in 1899. What would it be like to experience all the changes that take place from one century to the next – and the next? It was that question, along with a much earlier question, that enticed me to begin writing the Paradise Cursed series, about a 300-year-old pirate.

The earlier question was this: what would it be like to travel the sea on a ship powered entirely by a dozen sails? Happily, that question was answered when I and my son sailed the Caribbean on the Polynesia, a 204-ft schooner. I confess to not being much of a sailor – I don’t swim, can you believe? Yet many years later the week spent on that ship remained one of my most memorable experiences, and it became the pirate ship Sarah Jane which Captain Cord McKinsey converted so many times over three centuries until he now operates it as a cruise ship among the Caribbean Islands.

The strange happenings aboard the Sarah Jane would be called horrific by some or fantastic or paranormal. I still call it speculative fiction, which I love to read and love even more to write.

Thus the series Paradise Cursed and Paradise Cursed Book 2 Tortured Spirit:

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The Workshop Was a Blast, and We ALL Learned Something…

Over the past 2 days I led a workshop in Abstract Painting, twelve excellent painters and me. We explored 3 different ways to approach a blank canvas, with no representative subject or imagery in sight, and begin a painting with confidence. Several of our artists were familiar with watercolor but not acrylics. Others were well acquainted with painting realistic subjects but not abstract. All went home with at least one finished non-representation abstract acrylic painting and others, if not finished, well in progress.

Meanwhile, I came away with the knowledge that teaching abstract painting can be fun, and I have a complete 2-to 3-day program plan for future workshops. I also discovered a new color palette that I plan to use in future works.

Some of our paintings began with line dominance, others with shape dominance.

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A line-dominant beginning can finish in many ways, including an abstract forest scene such as “In the Deep Woods,” 18″x24″ acrylic on canvas or “Earthlight,” 36″x36″ acrylic on canvas.

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A shape-dominant beginning also can finish in many ways, including “Crossroads,” 11″x14″ acrylic on canvas or “The Space Between,” 20″x20″ acrylic on canvas.:

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Or it might finish like the featured painting in this blog, “The Power of Ordinary Things,” 18″x24″ watercolor mounted on canvas.

Coming home with a new color palette to explore, I was too excited (even though exhausted from teaching for 2 days) not to start a new abstract. This one is in progress and small enough that I hope to finish it tonight. Tentatively, it’s titled, “Blue Perspective.”

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Abstract Painting Workshop: 30-Minute WarmUps

As a bonus in our workshop this month at the Brazos Valley Art League, we’ll start each day with a small warm-up painting.

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I’m often amazed at what can be accomplished when we limit the size of the canvas – these are 8×10″ – and our time to work on it.

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Excluding drying time, each of these was done in about half an hour, and it’s a great way to warm up before starting on a larger piece.

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So, in addition to our two main canvases, we’ll go home with 2 small gems.

Abstract Painting 2-Day Workshop

March 23-24, 2017 – 9am to 4pm at The Arts Center of Brazos Valley, 2275 Dartmouth, College Station, TX 77840

$125 includes lunch both days

To enroll, contact me: rogerschris495@gmail.com or Iva Banik, furdos9@gmail.com

 

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Abstract Painting Workshop: March 23-24

 

In the workshop, Abstract Painting: Method v Madness, we’ll study 2 diverse styles of putting paint on canvas and creating visually dramatic pieces of art. “Yellow-Orange Composition” is an example of the “method” style. This next picture is a detail from “Water Spirit,” a “madness” style painting.

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As a BONUS, we’ll do a 30-minute warm-up painting each day, such as this:

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WORKSHOP

March 23-24, 9 AM-4 PM

The Arts Center of Brazos Valley, 2275 Dartmouth, College Station, TX 77840

$125 – includes lunch both days

For more information, email Workshop Director Iva Banik furdos9@gmail.com

 

 

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