Blah

A lot on my mind this morning made it hard to focus. I hate this one. As soon as I put in those poles I wanted to quit. They instantly made it into a scene, and now it seems devoid of all the other little railroad signs and posts and wires that were in the scene. It looks unfinished to me. All I wanted to paint was the bridge. Some days you just gotta know when to pack up and go home to hit the shower. acrylic, 11×14″

Before I clean my palette and brushes I’ll darken that bottom third. That may help it for me. This is the only part I currently like:

**EDIT: I started darkening the bottom a bit. I think it’s an improvement. I’ll try to work on this again later. Maybe I can save it. Other things to do right now.

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Tired

I was tired this morning and really wanted to sleep in, but I went out anyway. Didn’t really feel into it. Deliberately painted this in a higher key than what was observed.

acrylic on canvas, 11×14″

The one below certainly would’ve benefited from some preliminary drawings. There’s something in this scene that I like but drawing could’ve helped me isolate it and make decisions about what I wanted to paint. I don’t think it’s a total loss and I’ll try working on it in the studio this week to save it from the trash can. I think I got too caught up in being literal when what interests me about the location is much less defined. Not sure about this one.

acrylic on canvas, 8×10″

I was standing in a parking lot here (as I usually try to do in the city since it seems like first come, first serve public space) and for some reason at this location people seemed uneasy with me working there. That makes me uneasy and it’s hard to paint. Painting in the city is much more difficult for me than painting in the country. It’s harder to find a subject. It’s harder to find an appropriate place to set up. And it’s harder to work somewhere where you aren’t going to bother anyone else and they aren’t going to bother you. After mornings like this I usually retreat to parks in the country and consider painting my cityscapes from photos.

My opening went well yesterday. Sold some paintings.

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Opening

My opening is today at Strawberry & Company in Lancaster, PA. Several of my paintings will be on display for the month of February. Here’s an article in today’s paper about me:

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/580144_Hank-Buffington-works-outside-and-quickly-to-create-his-landscapes-and-cityscapes.html

 

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Railroad Museum

We took the kids to the Railroad Museum in Strasburg, PA today. I got to doodle while they ran around and climbed on the trains. These were really quick. A minute or two. About 4 inches across maybe.

*!*!*!*! But even more interesting… while walking through the exhibits POW!!! Is that–? Just hanging there? A John Singer Sargent?!! In Strasburg, Pennsylvania?! Could it be???

Incidentally here is another portrait of this man in the Philadelphia Museum of Art done by his sister… Mary Cassatt. Yes, that Mary Cassatt, the famous American Impressionist.

Sorry but these are the best my little pocket camera can do.

Ironic that we went to the train museum today after I painted some train tracks this morning.

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Curiouser and Curiouser

The first spot I drove to was along the river and the river was very high. So I drove down river. The river there was very low. ??? I’m pretty sure there isn’t a dam between the two spots. I’ll have to check. Scratching my head. Anyway, I drove around for an hour and a half looking at different locations. The locations on the river where I was were mostly mud flats and nothing to look at. Just horizontal bands of mud. Having wasted so much time driving I thought I’d break out the little brushes for something different (since it’s been on my mind lately). And since I wasn’t expecting anything from this painting I thought the worst that would happen was I’d throw it away. I aimed for reproducing what I was seeing as best I could. All I was going to paint was that space under the bridge and nothing else so I could spend my entire time just getting that part right. This is acrylic, 11×14″ on stretched canvas.

I have mixed feelings about this. Tightness always looks “right”… in a safe sort of way. It isn’t leaving questions unanswered or gaps for the viewer to fill in. It just is what it is. But it always looks right. These are as close as I could get matching the colors to what I was seeing. It would’ve been easier on a white board and with some black on my palette. I loosely scrubbed on that peripheral gray just to try and kill some of that yellow of the toned ground. It kept adding a lot of yellow to the appearance of my paint mixtures so colors on the canvas weren’t appearing as I was expecting them too. Ordinarily I’m not so concerned with it and my mind is in another place while I’m mixing. This still looks very yellow.

So the results are OK with me especially considering it wasn’t an all-at-once painting, but I didn’t like the process. This is the same problem I had with my studio paintings. I stopped enjoying the process of exactitude. Plein air painting saved painting for me because it forced me to let go of that and be looser and more confident. The changing light and weather granted me the freedom to not be bound to a given, static source.

If this was worth finishing it would require at least one more morning, possibly two. I’m not sure why anyone really tries so hard to paint this way. It was boring. It seemed pointless to keep trying to get that shadow color the exact color I was seeing. I kept scraping it off, remixing, repainting. Eventually everything just looked so gray to me, like the entire scene was variations on black. And over the course of my time working on it the light changed so much it seemed futile to continue. Usually I’m so into a painting that I don’t want to stop and I have enough adrenaline to keep on painting. Today I was happy to go home and wash my brushes.

By the time I stopped and snapped this photo all the color in the scene had dropped out. The overcast light was flat and everything was a dreary mid-winter umber gray.

Eagles kept soaring over me all morning. That’s always pretty cool.

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Becoming Cityfied

I painted in the city this morning. I really like the abstract shapes that buildings can offer. Other days I like to paint weather or distant space. Today, shapes. The first one I wanted to be a quick warm-up. Loose, nothing fancy, not too dedicated to what the scene dictated. It felt good. Doing that usually feels more comfortable than fighting with the scene and letting it kick me around and tell me what and how.

Like with my drawings, I’m trying to dance around that line where these stop being buildings but don’t want to go so far over that line that it’s completely abstract. The areas of this that get further from the truth are the areas that hold my interest the most. The photos I snapped of the scene before I started painting are very uninteresting. An accurate portrait of these houses would also be equally mundane.

acrylic on canvas, 8×10″

When I set out this morning I thought that after the quick warm-up I’d slow down for something more matter-of-fact (which is why they were both small paintings today). But after the freedom of the first one I just let it keep on rolling.

acrylic on canvas, 8×10″

Shapes shapes shapes… and color too. Always color. Since I was planning on doing something more journalistic I brought this canvas un-toned. It’s much easier for me to match colors on a white surface. I think you can see how it lacks the golden under-glow of the other one (which had a tone). Painting on white for my usual technique is annoying though. My paint leans towards lean and thin so I had to work much more to make sure I had coverage. Gaps of white between strokes look harsh.

(**Edit: After looking at this all day I’m liking the cleaner crisp color of the one on white. I’ll take another white canvas with me tomorrow. Maybe I’ll try it again. )

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As done as it’s gonna be

A little more on this today. I’m done with it. My kids are off from school tomorrow anyway so I’ll lose my usual post-lunch painting hour.

I was looking at some plein air sketches by 19th century landscape titans today and they have me doubting myself again. Maybe I shouldn’t be so reluctant to take a little brush with me to paint little branches. Maybe I should slow down and be more careful.

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Trying

Today I started with a few quick sketches from my porch even though the weather today was bright and sunny.

Then I worked on the painting a little more. Happier but still not happy. I think part of what I don’t like is the small size. The weather that day really helped obliterate specifics and I tend to do that with drawing (above) so if I work on this again tomorrow I think I’ll try to loosen up some of the specific shapes and edges. I like the back house. That is the only part of this that didn’t get a new coat of paint today. I’ll aim for that handling tomorrow for the front house.

It’s feeling a little Kinkade-ish with all those soft edges. Even though that was what it was like looking through the misty fog I think I’ll try to lose some of the edges with value rather than blending.

And for anyone in Lancaster, PA next month you can check out some of my paintings at Strawberry & Co in downtown Lancaster:
http://www.strawberryandco.com/

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Some afternoon work

I’m putting my oils away for now so this may be “done”. I’ve wasted way too much of my limited time tinkering with it anyway.

And this is a plein air acrylic I did yesterday from my front porch. It was drizzling and foggy and the atmosphere and weather were really beautiful. I was seeing lots of purples and greens in the greys but instead of my usual palette I limited it to yellow ochre, pyrrole red, cobalt blue, and carbon black just for fun. I’m very unhappy with it. It definitely needs reworking and I’ll try to do that tomorrow. We’ll call this the “before” painting. As I was working on it I kept trying to let go of what the scene was giving and steer it more towards how I would’ve handled the scene with a drawing… if I wasn’t so lazy and had actually taken the time to draw it first before jumping into paint. So tomorrow I’ll work on it out of my head and probably draw first as a guide. acrylic, 8×10″

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More drawings

This gallery contains 35 photos.

Here are some more drawings that I posted on my Facebook page but forgot to put on here too. I’ve begun more organic shapes (my kids’ faces mostly) in an effort to shake things up. Faces are harder for me. … Continue reading

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