Cock's Crow

Sometimes an idea comes along and sneaks into the sketchbook. Pretty soon it makes itself comfortable--figures out where the food's stored, which seat in the house is most comfortable--and before you know it, you've committed yourself to painting the blasted thing.

The intention with this one was to explore a method that uses translucent paints in conjunction with a more finished drawing sealed underneath a thin layer of gesso. The process worked well enough, but you can see I deviated quite a bit from the method when it came to the crow. Its wings changed rather drastically (for the better, I think).

Anyway. Thanks for stopping by.

Cock's Crow, 10x10

Homage

And He Sailed, Acrylic, 20x22, NFS

"[And] he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year..." The painting above is a glimpse of the imagery conjured in my mind by Maurice Sendak's wizardry in Where the Wild Things Are.

For My Brother

Voice from the Stars

My brother loves just about anything to do with space, so I painted him this astronaut come to rest on a [heavily fictionalized] star. Maybe the astronaut was marooned there by crew-members. Or maybe he escaped from his ship as it was torn to shreds by debris only to drift slowly into forgetfulness among the stars. His voice is silent now, but perhaps his last words still echo in the vastness of space.

Painting the Hunt

A while back I mentioned a project which I was working on for my brother. He composes and performs music, and not too long ago, he was writing music inspired by Nintendo's game, Metroid. Having fond memories of my own attached to that game (and a good portion of those that followed), I offered to contribute something to the effort, a little visual kick to round out the whole project.

Solitude, exploration, and danger are big parts of the Metroid franchise--all things I wanted to tap into for this painting. So, the main character becomes a small figure alone in the vastness of space, the stars at once alluring and frightening.

 Early thumbnails saw the bounty hunter filling the cover with an action pose, but those designs didn't feel quite right. The image needed to be moodier--the game wasn't an arcade shooter, after all. It was also decided that the painting should have a slight retro look, so initial redesigns of the famous yellow suit were scrapped (see the middle image above). Someday I'll pick that strand of thought up again and pursue it to completion... 

As for the music, you'll find a taste of the album below. If you like Metroid, or dig music with a metal vibe, definitely check out The Hunt. The music's on Spotify, Youtube, Band Camp... Just search for "Anthony Cordes, The Hunt" and you should find what you're looking for.

Sports Triptych

A small painting of a baseball glove from a few months back recently sold, and the patrons requested two other paintings to accompany the first in order to form a triptych of sorts. The project proved to be a pleasantly unexpected challenge.

A baseball glove is a visually interesting piece of sports equipment: there's all that lacing, there are different textures, there's a nice overlapping of forms, and, in the case of the glove I worked from, a nice contrast between the lacing and the leather. A football and basketball, on the other hand, aren't necessarily as interesting on their own. They are, for the most part, simple forms and create pretty unbroken silhouettes.

It seemed appropriate, however, that the two new pieces should match the original painting in pairing balls with equipment. Shoes seemed the obvious choice for basketball, especially in order to echo the lacing in the baseball glove. Pairing the football with cleats lent a bit of visual symmetry to the triptych and easily provided a more dynamic silhouette than might have been had I paired the football with a helmet.

And that touches on another interesting challenge. The glove and baseballs were all in front of my face; that painting is essentially a still life. The other two pieces, however, required a bit of imagination and reference. I do not have a football helmet, nor anything like it, and, in the case of this project, really didn't want to paint something from photographic reference only. I wanted the two new pieces to be as close to still life painting as I could manage. So, although I also do not have football cleats or basketball shoes, a pair of Asics tennis shoes worked well enough to indicate perspective and the patterns of light and shadow.

Sketching from Memory

A frequent problem of mine is being caught sans sketchbook by an inspiring view. In my defense, this often happens whilst I'm piloting my trusty Toyota on a schedule that doesn't allow for stopping. While the driver's manual may not explicitly condemn sketching while driving, I suspect my fellow travelers on highways and interstates would prefer I focus my energies on safely maneuvering my vehicle in traffic. So, stuck as I sometimes am in the flow of America's automotive arteries, I do my best to commit what I've seen to memory and then dredge those memories up as soon as I can get out of the car and get my hands on any sort of tool for image making.

Knowing that memory is faulty somehow takes the pressure out of the exercise. The aim isn't to sketch what was seen so much as it is to synthesize the memory, the impression left on the mind by the sight. (Throw in cardboard as the painting surface and the stress of making a nice image all but vanishes.)

Sometimes it's nature's colors that really make an impact, as in the image above seen on a flight home. This massive thunderhead was floating somewhere over the Great Plains, glowing in the sunset. The whole sky vibrated with rich color. Other times it's the mood of a scene that tickles fancy. I saw something like the image below while driving down a country road on a misty night. The grain elevator looked like some mysterious bastion glowing on the horizon.

Or maybe, an effect of the atmosphere or of light will catch my eye, like trees looming out of the fog or the moon glowing behind thin clouds.

And sometimes it's the landscape itself that interests me.

Plein air painting (or simply sketching from life) doubtless serves as a better method of learning, but the act of painting from memory exercises the imagination and the ability to translate what's in the mind onto the paper. Painting from life and painting from the imagination are both important activities; the former expands your visual vocabulary and the latter helps solidify what you've learned. It's not always a bad thing being caught without a sketchbook in hand...

In the Deep

Really more of a test piece than anything--hovering somewhere between the realms of Sketch and Finished Painting--this afforded me the opportunity to mess around with two hues I've seldom used: Acra Crimson and Hansa Yellow. Ultramarine Blue (red shade) and Titanium White finished up the palette. Acra Crimson and Ultramarine Blue combine to make, in my mind, a clean, bright violet.

I generally rely on intuition more than reason, which can be inefficient, at times. So, I've decided to become a little bit more familiar with the paints in my collection, paying closer attention to how they relate to other hues  and how they interact.

As it happens, my tube of Acra Crimson was old. Ancient, maybe. But still of a good, workable consistency. I think I've had it since 2007, so it shouldn't have been a surprise that the name doesn't come up on Liquitex's website. Doing some research, and comparing charts--presumably from different dates--the paint still exists, just under a different name. Acra Crimson, from what I can tell, is now Quinacridone Crimson. Both paints use the same pigment: Gamma Quinacridone Red (PV19).

Here's the latest off the desk: a small piece that started as something rather a bit different.

Twilight's Castle, 13x7

This painting emerged from the bones of a scrapped concept and gave me the opportunity to try some new things, like working with physical texture. I'll have to pick up some modeling paste in the near future for further exploration (for this painting the textured areas were just thicker applications of acrylic paint).

You might just be able to make out some of that texture in the detail shot on the left, above. It's very low relief, but worked well with some thin washes to give that bark a slightly rougher look.

Rubato

Rubato, Acrylic, 5x11

This little painting (an awkward 5x11) was supposed to be a quick, two day project. I'm trying to increase productivity, loosen up, and ditch the desire to treat as precious any little mark or doodle that comes together nicely. But as these things go, you get to noodling and two days turn into twelve. One step at a time, I guess.

Since it was supposed to be a small project, I jumped in with little more thought than “I'd like to paint a tree with a person leaning against it.” But by the end it seemed to speak of loss—or longing—and a paradoxical play between timelessness and fast approaching endings. So, rubato, a musical term for a few measures “robbed of time” when a musician may play faster or slower, seemed a fitting title.

For those who are interested in process the pictures below show the piece at earlier stages. The form of the tree changed a bit in the painting and it's root structure became a little more robust. The sky, too, changed a bit in hue, value, and saturation (although I think some of what is visible in the pictures below is the result of inconsistent photography).

More Cover Work

Here's another piece I painted for a bulletin, this time for a sermon on Romans 12:12 (part of a sermon series titled Life at Its Best). The passage reads "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer." (For a little more context, the sermon was titled "Triple Play.")