WORK IN PROGRESS II

I cannot begin to describe how good it feels to be back to work. I spent all day yesterday moving between two works in progress and look forward to another afternoon of the same today.

I've made it this far with the landscape...



and on the market scene...

NEW WORKS

I don't want to scare them away, but I do believe the muses have returned and I have two new works in progress, each following a very different approach.

This first is a scene based loosely on the Philadelphia Italian market, an absolutely wonderful place to be. In this case my intention is to paint it piece by piece, completing each section as I go along with little or no under painting, similar to the way I use watercolors. What does not show up very well in these photos is the fairly complete drawing on the canvas.

work in progress #1

work in progress #1 detail

The second piece will be an autumn landscape of my own creation. Here I am starting with an under painting on which I will add multiple layers of color to achieve the finished results.

work in progress #2

MILK TOAST & WEDDING SOUP

For reasons I still do not understand, I grew up with an intense dislike for milk and eggs. This was unfortunate, and must have driven my mother crazy, because in addition to almost 10,000 egg laying chickens, we had a milk cow on our farm.
Of course today I like eggs, even the whites, and I will drink milk, although not too often.

But my mother, bless her devious heart, wasn’t the smartest woman in the world for nothing; she knew how to accomplish the impossible. Knowing how much I liked buttered toast sprinkled with cinnamon, she simply served it to me in a shallow bowel, 2 slices neatly cut into inviting pieces, lying in a bowl of warm milk. She was even cunning enough not to serve it too frequently so it remained something special. I cant’t begin to imagine how much milk, warm milk at that, that I consumed with each serving.

So much for the milk; the eggs required a bit more subterfuge. It wasn’t until I was an adult and married with a family of my own that I learned that the white clumps and strings that were always floating in the broth of her wedding soup and in the beans and greens were egg whites and not the cheese that mother told me it was! She was not above telling what she called “white lies

NYC STREET

It's finished, and it has has been an instructive effort. Overall I'm pleased with the results, but realize I have to work on rendering the loose, semi-abstract stuff. It is more difficult with the built environment (cars, signs, other objects) than with the natural landscape. My initial attempts at the foreground were awkward and stilted. Things improved when I learned to loosen up a bit, but some of the stiffness is still evident.

No doubt I will try again.


NYC Street acrylic 30x24 $1500

ROY ROGERS IN AN ENGLISH SADDLE?

The year was 1948 and I was in the third grade when my father picked me up after school, something he NEVER did before. I climbed into the truck (we did not have a car then) and all he said was we had to stop somewhere before going home. That somewhere happened to be a farm about 2-3 miles from home where we “picked up” the pony he had bought for me. It was a total, absolute surprise!! Although I had never been on a pony or horse before, I was instructed on how to put on the English saddle that was included in the purchase and rode the pony home while my father slowly followed with the truck. To fully appreciate the significance of this pony one must remember the time, 1948, when a young boy's heroes were Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and a host of other cowboys who did battle with the bad guys and the Indians.

Pal, the old one eyed Shetland circus pony was to be my companion for several years to follow. His “barn” was a small shelter my father constructed onto the end of one of the chicken coops. He spent most of his time grazing in one of the many small fields around the farm. I taught myself how to ride and spent countless hours chasing bad guys with my six guns blazing, either out in our range or in the fields across the road. When our neighbors got their pony we would ride together through nearby farms and orchards, or race one another in one of the fields. Although their pony was at least 2 hands bigger than Pal, I believe we did win at least some of those contests.

Of course there were certain things that were required of any cowboy worth his salt, like grabbing an overhead limb and dismounting while galloping under a tree, or running and leaping into the saddle from behind your steed, and of course waving your hat while the horse rears up into the air. Being the good cowboy that I was, I practiced all of these with rather limited success, often determined by the amount of cooperation from Pal. He was rather stubborn, and frequently decided on his own when it was time to run, walk, or go home. On more than one occasion our riding session would abruptly end and all I could do was hang on while he headed for his barn at full gallop. I lost count of the number of times I hit my head on the low branches of the Mulberry tree on the corner of our lane; branches or not, Pal was not deterred from his mission to reach his barn. I wondered if Trigger ever did that to Roy Rogers.


OK, so I left my hat and guns at home.


Albert and me...

MANHATTEN STREET SCENE

I'm making progress. I finally overcame my inhibitions and began loosening up in the foreground. Here is how the day ended. There remains a few details that need my attention.

URBAN LANDSCAPE IN PROGRESS

I've been forcing myself to work for the past week. For whatever reason, I decided to paint another urban scene, this one a little different from the last one I posted a few months ago.
It has been a slow process due to my lack of enthusiasm plus an unfamiliarity with the technical approaches needed for the work. With few exceptions, all of my urban paintings have been rendered in watercolor.

Although the scene is different, I'm attempting to follow the same approach as I used in this pastel painting a few years ago, with an abstract/impressionistic foreground against a stark, geometric background.


Orchard St. NYC pastel

The background - the easy part is done. Now I have to tackle the foreground which I find much more difficult to do.


Work in progress acrylic 30x20