Oil Painting

Another thing that was keeping me busy in my time away from posting was taking an oil painting class. I have always wanted to learn how to oil paint. I knew it was something I would eventually learn as soon as I saw some of my first Victorian and Renaissance-age paintings. Oil painters seemed to be able to portray and express themselves through realism that was remarkably convincing. The soft look they have compared to acrylics only adds to the realistic quality of the image.

I've seen Bob Ross and maybe a couple other people work with oils, but I had never oil painted before.

Oil painting is very different from other kinds of paints. They are not water soluble like watercolors or acrylics, so you cannot use water to thin them out. Certain chemicals like turpentine or additives like liquin have to be used. They also take much longer to dry. Depending on the overall mixture of thinners, paint, and additives, some oil paintings can take years before they're completely dry. I didn't cake on a lot of paint or add much to it, so these all dried fairly quickly. The two on bristol board dried enough to touch within a day or so. The rest that are on canvas panels took about a week to completely dry - maybe a week and a half tops.

A picture from my Instagram: my first two oil paintings. The paint bucket on the box was the first. Both were direct observation studies of different still life setups.
They're also both on bristol board, which surprisingly holds oil paint much better than watercolors.

This was my first oil painting on canvas. Not a stretched canvas, but a panel.

I made the artistic decision to make the shadow apart of the subject of the painting rather than cropping more of it out. I felt like it made the scene more dramatic, which is helpful when you're working with random motionless objects.

The still life we worked from.

The key was realizing and drawing out the green that was in the vase and the deer's fur. There isn't even a lot of it, but you'd be surprised how much of a difference that little bit of paint made.

Getting this thing made bringing the painted panels back-and-forth between my class and home much easier. It's an ezPORT panel carrier, made by EASyL. They're mostly used by artists involved in plein air painting, which is something else I'd like to get into. It's a fancy French term for direct observation painting outside, usually in oils with nature being the subject. I've also purchased a collapsable stool and portable easel to further that endeavor.

For our next still life we were allowed to set up our own using objects from home. This was around October of last year, so my mother had Halloween costumes and decorations out. I had also recently watched the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. The idea grew from there.

First there's the drawing of your subject. Then you start the underpainting which lays out the tonal values. You're pretty much making a monochromatic painting at this point. That means you use only one color that you make darker or lighter by adding black or white. Think of it like a black and white photograph with a color filter over it. After you've established your values, you move on and add color where it's needed. Since your values are already in place, it gives you a little less to worry about while you make sure your color palette is on point.

I wanted to try using color pencil for the drawing this time. I had seen one of my classmates using one. Since it was lighter than graphite, it was easier to cover up using less paint. He must have been using a particular kind of pencil, because my Prismacolor decided not to work the same way. The oils in the paint smudged the colored pencil around and mixed with the paint. It made for a cool effect, but I would have to correct it if I was going to convey the image realistically.

Finished underpainting.

It's going to be called Commodore even though it's a deceased pirate in the painting. The naval title is said a lot in Pirates of the Caribbean, and the hat reminds me of a particular scene were it's said. It's fun to say. Try it.

If you're really young, you might not recognize a rocking horse. Some Walmarts and other stores still have larger motorized versions. Basically it was your horse if you wanted to be a cowboy or a princess with a pony and were too young or broke for riding lessons and a horse.

If you think the subject is hard to pull off by itself, that's not even the half of it. The entire time we were in the class we were not allowed to use black in any way, shape, or form. There was not to be a spec of black paint on our panels. We had to substitute combinations of blues and browns with reds mixed in. We were told many of the master painters of the Renaissance and past ages, when oil painting was at its peak, also took this approach rather than using black. Not in all, but most cases. It made sense. We often think of shadows and certain clothing or objects as being mostly or completely black, when this is realistically not the case. When you're outside on a clear, sunny day, many of the shadows you'll see will probably contain some amount of blue because of the reflected light coming from the blue sky above them.

My teacher told me that he thought my underpainting for this particular painting was too light. Traditionally one would use a darker color like burnt umber or burnt sepia (which is what I did for the two prior to this one). Since I had already done this, and I wanted to make sure I wouldn't go in too dark right away, I wanted to use a lighter color. I would be going over it again in another color to darken the values, but I wanted to establish them lightly. I was already far enough along in it and had explained my process to the teacher to were he didn't mind if I continued.

Although it was a challenge, this was pretty fun to paint, and I really like how it turned out. Not to toot my own horn or anything. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to pull it off. I'm probably going to call it Black Beauty, inspired by a book about a black horse with the same title.

For my last project I wanted to do a realistic painting of an animal. This was the only painting that did not have to be direct observation, so I was going to use a photo reference. I wasn't sure which one to do though. I went through all my old photographs of different trips I've been on and narrowed it down to three very different options: a black-tipped reef shark that was at Kentucky's Newport Aquarium, a juvenile bison I photographed at Big Bone Lick State Park, and a seagull I saw on one of many trips to Empire and the Lealanau Peninsula up north in Michigan. I didn't really mind which one I did. They would all make good paintings in my eyes, but I don't make everything just so I can look at it. I wanted to see what other people thought. I figured what best way to do that would be to make a little social poll of it. I uploaded the picture below to my Instagram and asked my followers as well as anyone searching the hashtags it's marked under which one they thought would make the best painting.

I asked my followers if I should come by land, sea, or air. I'm not sure they all understood the reference, but it's no big deal. I did change the phrasing slightly, and I don't have a whole lot of followers at the moment.

The shark was the winner, having a total of eleven votes. The seagull came in at second with seven votes, and the bison came in last with four votes.
I took votes from my Instagram comments on the picture I posted of the three contestant pictures above, and by word of mouth asking people around me. I was hoping for a bigger turnout of opinions, but I think I wasn't clear about the poll with how I worded the caption.

I learned from the mistake I had made starting Commodore. On this panel I used a coat of clear acrylic gesso after making the drawing in pencil so I can paint over any part of the drawing without having it smudge. A thing to remember about acrylic and oil paints: you can paint oils over acrylics, but not acrylics over oils. Of course it looks a little smudged right now from the gesso, but since it is dried and the drawn lines are still visible there shouldn't be a problem covering it.
I was reaching an extremely exhausted and stressed out point towards the end of the semester, which is why it was the least worked-on.

Like most of my work, I wasn't able to finish these within the time allotted, but now that I have some time to take a couple semesters off I'll be going back to finish all of these as well. I'm not about to let my few fans and followers down. It will be completed, it will look awesome, and I will make sure you get to see it.

If you get a chance to work with oil paints, don't hesitate! It's very fun and relaxing, and most people work faster than I do, so even though they take a while to dry, it's plenty worth it. If you're considering taking oil painting farther than a few tries, I'd suggest first practicing on different still lifes like our class did; testing out different surfaces and color arrangements.

Check in again for an in-depth look at my recent trip to the Big Apple!

Wood D

The warping of the bristol board the manuscript pages are painted on meant that they needed to be mounted to something more sturdy and able to remain flat while keeping the pages flat. I came up with a framing concept shown below. It involves mounting the page to a heavier mat board, having a thin mat board frame the page, and then mounting the mat board-backed page to reclaimed wood that would sit in a picture frame.

Some people might have picked up the mat boards first. It doesn't really matter which items you get first  since you need them all to complete it. I decided it would be more fun to check out the reclaimed wood first. I've drove by some, but I've never been to a junk yard or any other kind of salvage place.

I wasn't driving, so I took a couple pictures when the car wasn't moving too much.

My destination lead me through the industrial district in the southernmost part of Detroit just above River Rouge area.

Here's a little piece of Detroit history for you. On my way there I saw the Boblo Boat (SS Ste. Claire) docked along the Rouge River. There used to be an amusement park called Boblo Island that the boat would ferry people back-and-forth from. There were a couple other boats further down the river along with it that I wasn't able to get a shot of.

My first stop was the Architectural Salvage Warehouse (ASW). I had never been to a place like this, so it was pretty interesting. There's a lot of vacant and decaying houses in the greater Metro Detroit area, so places like this get new stuff all the time I'm sure.

I really wanted that redish cabinet door. It was that fake, composite wood pulp stuff with a faux cover on it, but the red would have looked great with the Caroline Graphic Renewal page. As long as the ends wouldn't split when I went to trim it down to size, that is.
The man I spoke with said they wouldn't sell it without the whole cabinet though, and they weren't even sure how much it would cost because they hadn't set it up and put it together yet. I didn't need a whole cabinet, and it didn't have much of an old look to it anyway, so I kept searching.

They didn't really have much wood for being a place that does architectural salvage. It was mostly stuff to install or put in your home: ceiling fans, windows, doors, furniture, etc.

They didn't have anything close to what I was looking for besides that red door that I wasn't going to get. They said they have another warehouse with more reclaimed wood and less home furnishings over on the East Side. That sounds more like it.
The other locations I was planning on heading to were either not open or had their warehouses located even farther away than the other side of town. So I hopped back on the Edsel Ford Freeway over to their other warehouse, and it turns out it's just down the block from the old Packard Plant.

If I didn't have more to do back home, it would've been fun to explore. I'll have to come back before the city tears the rest of it down. Piles of brick and cinder blocks don't scare me.

Partially torn down buildings adjacent.

YOGRT's a regular "up" name around Detroit.

ASW's other warehouse.

I really liked their banner. Not the fanciest type, but the saying is pretty solid.

I found some really great boards and a couple panels that will work perfectly for my idea.

There's something satisfying about woodworking. It's one of those more manual labor-type tasks that I enjoy. This wasn't my first time using a table saw. I started a whole other project involving wood pallets a couple years ago that required a lot of table saw usage. Another story for another day.

The panels had to be trimmed down which wasn't a problem, but the boards were not wide enough. This meant I had to saw the board into two long sections, and get the remaining width I needed from the second section. I thought it might look better split into three pieces, so I cut the first section in half. The second section would go between the those two pieces.

I didn't have enough money to grab boards and panels for all the pages, so I'll have to come back. I'm really excited to continue now that I'm down to the last steps before the pages are finally ready to be printed and framed.

When I start gluing and attaching the separated boards together before they're framed I'll take some pictures and show you guys how that works. I'm not sure the matting deserves its own post, so the next time you'll see the pages they'll be fit to be called finished for good. Tomorrow will be something different though, so check back for more.

Making a Manuscript

I'm going to be posting daily for a little while until I can really catch everyone up with where I'm at right now in detail.
There were posts related to what I was doing during that long stretch of silence that I didn't publish which will now have to wait until after I tell you what I've been doing recently. That makes the posting a little out of chronological order, but if I published those other posts first and waited to tell you about what I've been doing recently, it would all be old news. Right? Right. So here we go.

Cover of the Passio Sanctorum Martyrum Decem Milium.

Manuscripts and codexes were the first books to be made before more advanced methods of bookmaking and binding were developed. Printing presses had not yet been invented, so every page of every book made during these times was hand-lettered and all the illustrations were one-of-a-kind. The more decorative of these are often referred to as illuminated manuscripts. Illumination of the page wasn't limited to gold leaf embellishments. They include decorative borders, stylized "drop-cap" initials, which are the large letters that usually start the text or a portion of it, and individual scenes that sometimes but not always relate directly to the text, which are called miniatures.

(click on the pictures to view full-size) 

Pages from a Book of Hours, Les Enluminures (1490), and the Serat Jayalengkara Wulang (1803), a Javanese manuscript.

No matter what their background was, these different groups of people had a desire to transcribe their thoughts to pages to be passed around. From the very beginning, bookmaking has been about the transfer of knowledge and ideas. It really is a powerful thing.
A Book of Hours, as pictured above on the left, was a type of manuscript. They were prayer books for Christians containing different prayers to say throughout the hours of the day, hence the name.

Pages from The Book of Wonders of the Age (17ᵀᴴ/18ᵀᴴ century) and the Book of Kells (c. 800).

One of the projects I was working on while I wasn't writing posts was the making of multiple manuscript pages, each in a different style from a different time period. It was for my History of Graphic Design class. I still wasn't finished when I turned them in. The class ended, and even an extension went by without any of them being completely finished. What work I had done received a B that was much appreciated, but I wasn't about to leave them unfinished. They still need a little work, but not very much.

I had already planned on using them after the class. While staying true to the style of each culture, I wanted to make an original image that I could use later and meant something beyond conveying a likable picture. Some of the pages contain more meaning than others. The ones that do not are more direct, or just meant to convey the style. A lot of reference images were used as inspiration throughout the process, but the overall image and text are all me.

I figured watercolors would be the best choice of medium since it's relatively close in consistency to tempera paint which was traditionally used. They're also very forgiving. You can remove paint you've already laid down just by lifting it with some water and a paper towel.
I used bristol board to paint on, and that was not the best choice to pair with watercolors. I figured since it was a kind of card stock it would hold up better to water absorption. It ended up warping and bending immediately after I stained each page, but I had bought an entire pad of bristol board just for this project, and I already had the idea laid out, so I went through with it anyway. I figured I could mount each page to some kind of heavier board with some adhesive to keep them permanently flat.

Classical (Greek/Roman)

Celtic

Caroline Graphic Renewal

Spanish Pictorial Expressionism

Gothic

Judaic

Islamic

Late Medieval

Now that the class is over, I've decided the collection of pieces are going to be my next series as an artist. I say "next" because I've already started a different series you'll learn more about later, but I'm farther along in this one since it was a class assignment, so this will be technically be my first. There are not enough pages to make a book, and the continuous style and language change would make it a difficult read, but they would look nice framed.

As soon as each of the pages are finished, they're going to be mounted on and matted with board, then mounted again on reclaimed wood I picked up from downtown. I'll show you some of the boards and pictures from that trip tomorrow.

I'll be translating the Islamic and Judaic pages for you guys further down the line. There's also some distinct differences that set some of my pages apart from others made by the culture at that time that I'll also be explaining in the same post, so don't miss out!