productivity and momentum

after a period of slumber, i have had two of the most productive weeks of the year. two weeks ago today, stuck without my painting kit, i bought a canvas and a tube of white and a tube of black from my pals at utrecht and went out to sauvie island. ever since i read about dekooning using black and white house paints (because he was broke) i have wanted to try that in a plein air environment. it was as i had expected; tough to express the greens, reds, ochres, and blues with just two
tones. impossible to describe cool and warm. it was all about composition and texture. a fun exercise and something i will do again. i learned from the experience. had to do more with less, which is something i strive to do anyway (and usually end up pulling every tube out of the carrier).

all the while i am also playing with painting on my iphone. it has become my new coffee shop past time.

say what you will about this, i know many painters poo poo it, but i think it's every bit as informative as sketching. i have already converted two of these small sketches into paintings,

one of which isn't half bad. pictured here is a view out the window of the coffee shop in oceanside.

last week i read about an artist using walnut stain, and that sparked an idea to use various shades of wood stain on a plein air piece. i bought three colors, a golden oak, deep red cherry, and dark ebony. i worked on three small (24 x 24) panels last week, and four more panels today. all were done out on sauvie island.

like the black and white piece, i find it good to limit my material choices. again, i have no way of defining warm and cool (only warm and warmer), and everything is in a tone of red or yellow. the first week i introduced some white chalk to provide some additional contrast. this week i brought the spray paint with me, which was fun.

the spray paint and the stain really don't play well together, but that's part of the fun. of the four today, i think there are two with potential. i'm still figuring out what to do with this medium, and really these are just experiments in how the materials react. i have done some drawing (either with a fine brush or a "stain pen" (from home depot, used to fill scratches in furniture) and some big abstract washes. in all the material is more workable than i first thought. i figured i would have big ambiguous puddles of red and black, but really it's not unlike painting with watercolor.

for some reason i keep thinking the "puddles of abstraction" will be the more exciting pictures, but so far each trip has included those as well as a couple of more traditional representative experiments which have been the more interesting pieces.