The daily dose of art TIME FOR MORE GRIME

One more day of grime before moving on to whatever comes next.  All three of these painting started out as clay mono types, to be enhanced with soft pastel.  Each one is a scene from my imagination.

The daily dose of art THE GRIME OF INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPES

There is no accounting for personal tastes.

                                     

Pastel enhanced clay mono types

FAVORITES #2 Grain Elevator or Feed Mill?

This structure sits one block from the main street in the small town of Elmer, in southern New Jersey, surrounded by small crop farms and dairy farms.  I am fascinated by its clutter, texture, and seemingly totally incoherent architecture and it has been the subject of several pastel paintings.  Every side of the building is totally different from the others.  My favorite rendering, one that I include in this series of "my favorite works", is this construction done in 2004.

The list of materials used includes acrylic, pastel, ink, scale model building supplies, and miscellaneous gadgets and gizmos lying around the studio.

I'm often asked what my favorite medium is, and I say "the one I'm working with".  But for pure fun, nothing comes close to working on these constructions.

Here are 2 other renderings of the subject:

Pastel and ink - 30x20

Pastel - 30x20

BACKING INTO THE WORLD OF PASTELS

After almost 20 years of watercolors I needed a break from the medium and began exploring the world of clay printing, a unique process for creating mono types.  I very quickly learned that this medium would not allow me to create the precise, tight architectural images I did with the watercolors. While I experimented with abstract art I continued to look into ways to render the architectural subjects that still held my attention,   At the same time, for reasons I cannot explain I became interested in the industrial environment and began depicting what I called “Industrial Skylines”.

They did not require the same precise technique as my watercolors, and the clay process was well suited for what I was trying to do, but I still needed to have more control of the medium.  Soft pastels were the solution to my problem.  After deciding on the mood/colors and the composition I would create a clay mono type, using Pellon interfacing for the support.   Then I would refine the image, adding details and adjusting colors, basically doing a pastel painting over the print.  Depending on the image, the “pastel content” of the final piece could vary from as low as 50% to as high as 90%.  It was only a matter of time before I began omitting the clay print to work  directly with the pastel.

Here are several early pastel over clay mono type paintings:

Oliver's Skyline  18x36  about 50% pastel

Re-worked skyline about 75% pastel

Prairie Grain Elevators  about 90% pastel

INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPES part 3…constructions

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Not satisfied with the clay mono types, with or without pastels, and still feeling like something was missing using just pastels, I did what any self-respecting  artist would do…turned to another combination of mediums.

In my first attempt at constructions I used primarily scale modeling material from my model railroading days, combined with acrylic paints, pastels, and India ink.

Emboldened my the success of the feed mill I moved on to larger, more ambitious works, adding to my resources a variety of scraps of wood, plastic pieces, and small junk that model railroaders seem to accumulate.

Each construction measures approximately 20x48"

Next post...the shadow box industries