The 1% Principle

It’s been tough trying to get motivated to paint after coming home from work. But I always remind myself of the 1% principle. It can be illustrated by this: 1 raised to the power of 365 (days) will equal 1. However, 1.01 raised to the same power (365) will equal 37.8.

All I need everyday is that .01 effort to start the blood flowing when I’m in front of my easel. Just a bit of effort will get me somewhere.

I’ve been chipping away at this small commission for the last two weeks. It’s been a little frustrating trying to portray the bubble bath to my liking. But all I have to do is add one bubble at a time.

Now it’s time to hit the easel.

Triplets

I'm trying to achieve a few things with this portrait and shying away from others.
1. It's a technical exercise in portraiture. How close can I come to getting a semblance to the model? In this case it's me and i think I'm pretty close in some parts and off on others.
The other part about painting a self portrait specifically is that I find that I could be a bit looser with it. I'm not so precious about get the semblance down and have room to experiment... (yeah, I just contradicted myself). I find when I paint friends, I'm a lot more uptight about getting them to look like them and get a bit upset when it doesn't turn out.
2. The other objective with the triple heads was to bring it closer to my sketchbook layouts. I like the look of my SB spreads where one form flows into another and it's just a mess. I like that look and I'm trying to bring that "messiness" into my paintings.
3. As for the black and white rendering. I suck at colour. I look at other portrait artists and they have a knack for skin colour but also harmonizing the entire painting. I find my colour works are a bit too plastic/artificial. But I guess one way to overcome that is to keep on painting in colour.
4. Lastly, this is my diary. I don't a have written one so these images will remind me of the circumstances surrounding the painting of it.

WIP

Every time I’m faced with a blank canvas the words of my mom come back to me: Just put down something so you have something to work with. Those words were said to me while I was in high school struggling with paper writing, but I think they apply to my painting practice as well. So I’m just putting something down. Thanks, mom.

Heineken commission

It’s been a slow start on this one. When I was asked to do this commission, I had no idea how elaborate the Heineken logo was. In my mind it was just a green can, with the “Heineken” word mark running vertically. HOw hard could that be? Well when I when to the beer store to buy a can the reality hit me. As you could tell I don’t drink that often so to see this logo threw me back a bit. So the difficulty of portraying this and a winter cold threw me off. Hopefully I’ll finish it in the next month. Fortunately my client is not in a big rush to get this, but it’d be nice to get it done and get paid for it.

WIP

Starting a little study of an old school pencil sharpener. I’m at a point in my painting process where I want to challenge myself with each painting.

French's Mustard

I’m currently working on a small commission. Here’s a WIP of the painting. It’s nice to return to a subject matter and see things in a different manner from the first time I painted it.

Work in Progress

This is my third piece in the “Canned Meat” series and is proving to be the most difficult to complete. In this series I’m trying to not be so rigid in my approach by just painting within the lines. I’m scraping, covering up previously painted parts, applying paint out side of their “proper” areas and trying to achieve a looser look to the painting. There’s a fair bit to go with this painting.