Early Oil Painting

As I started to paint in oil I would find small pictures in travel magazines to copy.  This photo probably was a 2 inch by 3 inch photo.  I picked it because of its colors and also the French church that was in the photo.  Oil paint allows an artist to blend colors so uniquely having gradual value and color changes.  I see that I did this back in 1987 when I had started to paint many things during my summer break.

My Early Work.......C.Y Stephens

During a time of shifting and moving artwork around in our gallery recently we got into a few of my earlier works of art.  If they have been posted before that is ok as I have taken better photos of them and want to repost them to share.

While attending Iowa State University I took one of the painting courses offered.  The course was one that required much discipline to accomplish a number of paintings in a very short period of time.  I really was not an experienced artist and was in college to learn the skills of teaching and the art mediums.   During the painting class I produced many different kinds of painting as I really didn't have any established style of painting.  I was very inexperienced.

I had taken a photography class earlier and I took a picture of the C.Y. Stephens Auditorium.  Being that the photo was mine I could project the photo onto a canvas and I could then start painting.  C.Y. Stephens is a modern building with lots of concrete and windows.  The stairs is a one of many stairs design to take the public up to the main entrances of the auditorium.

The black and white version of the painting gives you a feeling of what I had for references as I mixed the paints to make the values of color for the painting.  My instructor did not give directions or opinions about the students work but this one she felt that I had perfected a great work of art.

I was 20 years old then and fresh out of a small town high school.  It amazes me to this day that I could figure it out as best that I did to get the colors working in the composition. It was trial and error being a major part of the job.  I am sure some of those squares have been painted many layers before I got the right colors to work. At the time this was a popular way of doing paintings fitting into the Pop Art world in some way. I remember specifically a person drawing out the side view of a threshing machine into shapes and painting it in a similar color scheme.

Forty some years later the painting is in good shape. The varnish that we were taught to apply with a brush has yellowed in places.  I am sure there is a process to remove it and replace it with a thin spray of varnish. The modern paining hangs at the top of the stairs in our house and it has always fit into our everyday life.

Painting in my Past.......

We were at a motel along Lake Superior 15 years or more ago. It was north of Grand Marais. Minnesota.  Directly behind the motel sat this building.  It was sitting so close to the motel that driving was tight in order to park the car. It was being used for storage for the maintenance of the business  I photographed the building as the character was so good. I had to take shots of it in parts as I could stand far enough away from it to get it all in one photo.  Later that summer I recreated it in this scene.  The old truck was a photo I had found in a newspaper and the barn comes from my experiences of being on farms as a farm boy. The goats and hollyhocks helped add to the finished painting for sure.

I sold the painting 10 years ago and I just now found in an image file probably the only image of the painting.  I was glad to find it.  Artists do get attached to some of there work and this one was one of my favorites.  I am glad that I can share this one with you today.

ACEO Cards.......

I am not a part of the group that trades artist trading cards.  I just thought it would be fun to try my hand at it.  ACEO cards are small artworks created by artist in many different mediums.  They can be  designs, portraits, landscapes and I guess abstracts.  The official size is suppose to be 2 and 1/2 inches by 3 and 1/2 inches.

My latest creation was done while I was observing and assisting a high school art class.  It is a challenge to just start off and blindly create.  I like to react to what I have put on the paper and then add to enhance the composition.

This is an older one that I had done last year.  I really don't know where my ideas are coming from but sometimes the space theme invades my designs.

I find when I have free time that it is good to keep using the skills moving, even when the artwork is so small. 

Crafty Painting.......

A few years back I would be working on a work and find some down time when I wasn't working.  I would paint on things. The rocks are fun to paint on with acrylic paint.  The piece of walnut wood took a while to get the paint to self seal itself on the wood.  Once I had enough coats of acrylic paint the bottom layers dried into the wood and sealed the porous walnut wood.

The colors are not quite correct here but I wanted you to see closer the natural wood texture that is at the top of the walnut slab of wood.

This one is a little weathered from laying in the kitchen window ledge.  It took on moisture.  It makes it look like it has  been antiqued. 

Finally a new post.......

My wife surprised me with a mug that had my painting glazed onto it.  I thought she had found one that a business was selling and I was concerned that someone was stealing my work and using it for profit.  That wasn't the case as she sent an image over the internet to the company and they made the mug for her to give to me.  You can see the original acrylic painting to the right at the top of the blog.  I have made prints of this painting and do sell them once in a while.  I don't think I will ever sell the original as it is a painting that I created first time out of the gate when I retired from teaching in 2008.

I have never posted about my pottery works that I have done in the past.  As an art teacher one is required to demonstrate working on the wheel to teach the skill.  Sometime is the past 35 years of teaching I would just selfishly make my own to keep.  I do recognize that modeling being an artist is what the process of teaching is all about so I would make things through out the years.

When I was required to get more hours in order to renew my teaching license I took an art history class. I was to recreate older works of pottery using the Navajo style of pottery making.  Hand built, coil method was the beginning of the process and then scraping and smoothing by hand with wooden tools.  The final process was to burnish the piece by using a smooth rock, sometimes I used a spoon, to get a smooth hard finish.  You can see how rustic it looks on the inside and I believe a true native American Indian art did probably smooth out the insides.

The taller piece in this photo was one I made back in the early 70's while in college.  It is a miracle that I could get a good one out of the work I was doing on a treadle board driven device.  The wheel was powered by kicking the wood lever back and forth.  It was hard to learn centering when your body is shaking.  The experienced potters probably learned to move their one leg and not the rest of their body but I could do that then very well. 

We have pottery throughout our house and some stored in the basement.  They are artworks and can be appreciated for that. I have a lot of special ones that I do treat that way and others are utilitarian pieces holding wooden spoons, pencils and pens and even loose pennies.

In Storage.....

I haven't been painting for a couple of years.  I am finding old ones that I can share that I have forgotten about until I run into them in the store room.  This is an oil pastel that I did on the shoreline of Lake Superior.  My wife and I sat out on the rocks and the seagulls would land around us and take naps.   Oil pastel is good for some things but doing detail seagulls is not a good medium to use.  I remember that I use to get out oil paint white and black and paint my birds in on the oil pastel painting.

This painting was specifically at the Gooseberry Falls park along the north shore and it is not visited as much as they falls are the main attraction.   If you follow the river down to the lake shore this is the area you would see, a large rock formation with cliffs that tower over the water.

Three Year Anniversary..........

There wasn't a big fanfare that took place when we finished it. There were sighs of relief from the artists. It was put up and then slowly through the years we have been given feedback on the six foot square mural from various people in the community.  It has been three years since July that we completed it.  It was a big challenge to paint but my wife  and I did accomplished it.  I do remember that we had a few false starts before we finally settled on the style of the trolley.  The painting is at the train station, inside,  here in Woodward.  Many different styles of trollies were use to pick up and deliver people and farm products.  It started out from the downtown Des Moines area and had two routes a day to Woodward.

I did notice that one of the trollies in all the old phots had a bell on top of it and at one time we were planning to do one.  I guess it missed the final sessions of being included during our detailing period.