Details in painting are always a varied preference to the artist-when is it too much, when is the painting overworked or left unfinished? They can often be overwhelming and cause the eye to lose its focus. With teaching painting I have recently learned several ways to help a student get over the hurdle of details without wanting to discard painting all together.

The simplest option is finding shapes in the painting and isolating the areas. The student creates shapes and fills in the detail of each shape and the focus can be on the shape and its content instead of the whole image with all of its detail at once. The good thing about this technique is that the shapes create interest and the creation of the detail is more deliberate and distance and changes in value can be easily formed through the creation and separation of the individual shapes. When I first started painting, I used to get a technique of texture down and would overuse it, losing depth and interest, this technique helps to avoid this obstacle.

Another option is to cut a circle out of a cardboard piece and cover the picture that you are using for reference. This technique allows the student to concentrate on a smaller image of details and the work is faster and less intense. When the student finishes a small area of the painting the mask is moved to another area.

Details can be an overwhelming part of painting and often we lose focus of the overall painting when we concentrate too much on a small area of texture or extreme detail. It is challenge enough deciphering details for the artist in their own work but when you need to help a student get past handling detail it's good to have some techniques that can help the process.

Art by Gordon: Tonight's questions- For fellow creatives-what ins...

Art by Gordon: Tonight's questions- For fellow creatives-what ins...: Tonight's questions - For fellow creatives-what inspires you to create and do words often come from pictures or do pictures follow words? Fo...

Tonight's questions- For fellow creatives-what inspires you to create and do words often come from pictures or do pictures follow words? For the non-creatives-what about art attracts or interests you and again do you think of images while reading a story or do images tell more of a story than words? I hope to have lots of comments and insights on both sides of the creative spectrum-maybe we'll all learn something about what inspires us and where true inspiration originates from.


In this blog I will include a painting and than the words behind them-normally that would be poetry but in this case it is more of a prose description of a time and place.

At the beginning of football season-my son was ten I think, I sat on the ground watching storms pass through the sky over the field as all the parents wondered if they would call the practice but it continued. Later we even sat on slick bleachers and ignored the fact that we were all soaked, that's parenting I guess and I can tell you not one seemed put out-okay we hide it well-another parent thing.

This first painting was inspired after the storms had subsided and a swarm of dragonflies stormed in the sky around the great burst of light that broke through the clouds. The light was amazing and the break in the rain was a welcome spectacle for us drenched parents at the beginning of another football season.

The wonderful thing about that space and time of
watching my son practice is I actually get to sit and spend time observing, the time is his not mine, we actually act like a community-If I wanted to be hoaky I would say the light coming through the clouds was hope for a winning season or maybe just a spark of hope through the storm, but I won't be hoaky-no really, I won't. The inspiration for it was the beginning of the season, my son and I enjoying a time that was precious and unable to be duplicated. It was a moment in time-the dragonflies, the end of summer and time to notice the simple things-my life stopped for that moment and even when it was a burden to go at times, even sitting in the pouring rain, it was somehow worth it and the relationships my son         and I developed were wonderful.

The bottom picture is another pastel of the same place, different time- he was more like five and the sport was soccer, another group of people to know, another great moment in our lives captured. These images were all sketched out for several years before I ever actually finished them, it's almost like they have to ferment for a while.

Now we are in football again, different group of people, again moments captured that create images that become pastel sketches and always remind me of those moments. I'll always remember the dragonflies, the light of the evening and the light of the storms that would pass-all of these feelings and moments become the colors in my paintings.

Do you have problems finishing things? My summation of an aspect of the creative process.

Sorry for the delay in posting but I am in the process of getting more paintings together to send out and working on more avenues for writing poetry and showcasing painting. Let' start this blog out with a question as I want feedback from followers and would be followers-If you are creative than I am asking about creative projects and if not I am asking about your processes on hobbies or home projects. Here is the question, Do you tend to start multiple tasks simultaneously and if so why do you think? Secondly are you happy with the progress in finishing multiple projects?


I will explain my process and the way the creative process tends to ebb and flow for me. I think that often the inspiration is often either beyond the skill level or the inspiration is not strong or clear enough to be able to finish the image in the expected time. I will start multiple paintings, each are very different and have distinct moods, I will work through cycling between up to ten paintings at the same time in hour segments on each-it is almost as if in an hour I get too close to the image and can no longer see past the details. Each time I start on a new hour with a new image I have a new perspective and problems in composition or color seem to be more clear.

Another reason for this cycling through multiple paintings is the fact that if I am in a rainy day mood, I can't paint a sunny day and vice versa. I can't usually paint because I feel like painting, the feeling is there or it's not and the unseen cues for the next step in the painting often is completely vague. A process that has helped me get better at continuing a painting past the initial inspiration is with teaching-I believe I have learned more discipline because regardless if the thought or next step is vague you have to work through the awkwardness.

A problem I have with painting multiple works is the fact that some don't get finished for years, which could be a good or bad thing-either the inspiration grows and becomes something different or a weaker inspiration strengthens over time. I have recently begun pastel images of ideas I have sketched out ten years earlier and only now have either gotten brave enough to work through the doubt or have finally solidified the image well enough to commence to painting.

I usually paint from memory, I assist that vision with multiple pictures for details but much of the image comes from memory and depending on the day, the vision grows from crystal clear to extremely vague.
If I am in good form, the colors and the composition tend to create themselves and I tend to just be the vehicle for the image that is already pretty much created in my mind.

I am working on several paintings right now and much of them are very different than previous works, the subject matter is city images, rainy evenings, mixing the water and night sky together in an urban setting. I'm excited about getting these out very soon. I will blog about the process and how I finally decided that they were finished and actually signed a finished work-one can dream-I hope I can keep the inspiration going and finish them this year. I guess we'll see. I hope some of you send some comments and I could have more insight to the process of completing something.

Community-it's where we began and where we're going

Community is something that is innate in our culture. With the rise of the web and the increasing state of anonymity the web offers, we have grown further away from our natural propensity. Community used to be the neighborhood, where people would raise their children, live their lives and die in the same neighborhood where they were raised. Newspapers were necessary to bring us just a glimpse of the world outside the microcosm of the community. Now with a trend of job hopping and the transient nature of people today we tend to not have the roots in a given neighborhood, news isn't just available-we are bombarded by multiple mediums on a daily basis and the community has become a global phenomenon where no one knows everyone but we all know small aspects of everyone's life depending on personal interests and business priorities shared across a global scale.

How do we get to know this community when it tends to be overwhelming and how do we get to know customers without bombarding them with the same advertising we have all come to loathe? A community which we see at a coffee shop has become the atrophied muscle-we know it's integral to our nature but we're not quite sure how. When people go to a coffee shop where we all should socialize we use our laptops and cell phones that become a way to avoid social contact. Customers and people in general like to be seen as people not numbers and the state of our electronic age has calloused much of our reflex to talk with each other but the underlying need still persists. Customers need to know that the business isn't selling to them, people we connect with on the web need to know that there is a connection and their needs and interest mean more than a name on a database or information for future advertising.

The act of creating a community does not create a store front, it creates a place where people can connect with like people with similar interests that can together find a common need that might bring them to a storefront when the need arises. Brand awareness and mind share is what the purpose of the connection and not just the traditional sharing of marketing information as previously intended. An awareness grows that will slowly spread to others with similar interests-now we have a neighborhood that has grown to include strangers that might not even know us by our appearance but knows our interests and trusts our opinion. This trust is not something that can be created quickly nor faked through advertising campaigns that seek to capture the name and info and ignore the needs and interests of the customer.

I have recently created a website, what I have learned in the process is that first you send out the word about what is new and at first, friends will show interest but the interest is short term and quickly the response lingers to glances and an ocasional like. What creates the buzz is the constant flow of new information and activity but also through the engaging of multiple people who have the same interests.
What starts out with minor interest slowly becomes one person sending an article to another person or posting something on their website-the name and recognition of the information slowly markets itself.

A community can't be faked, it is as honest and natural as the neighborhood. We all desire to be connected and we all strive to be heard-todays' electronic neighborhood enlarges the scope of our community but the same rules of being genuine, honest and straightforward hasn't changed-no one likes to be sold or advertised to-we want to belong to a group that we can trust and feel our interests are a priority-welcome to the neighborhood.

Getting Back to Painting

I have had a rather long break from any kind of painting, yet I have been teaching and have been learning more about my subject matter and painting. The strange process of getting back to painting is the fact that all of the ideas and images stay somewhat intact in the mind and the inspiration although often a bit changed keeps its initial interest.

I have just sketched two paintings out that have been on my list and sketched out for the last fifteen years and suddenly I know how to sketch them and have an image that is clearer than ever before. I believe the initial inspiration begins with an image but the skills and processes might not be up to the challenge. The image sits in somewhat of a holding pattern until the skills can catch up with the inspiration. I am painting urban scenes which I have never taken further than an initial stage. I am in the process of doing quick figurative sketches in pastels-they will be finished images that will be a basis for the larger oil if warranted. I also plan on painting landscapes from my trip. I believe the pastel sketch will open the door and work out the problems that might be originally awkward, in the past I would have painted a painting and worked through the problems on the canvas. I hope with this technique I will be less overworked and the viewer will have a starting place as well as several versions of the same scene.

I have always been a night and water artist but now I am combining them. I am in the process of sketching out rain scenes where the water is reflecting rich evening lights and am also including figures in the painting as well. It is a strange feeling when a totally different style and process creates itself and a new artistic outlook is explored, which brings me to the reason for the long hiatus.

I think the artist had preconceived notions of his or her own work and when the inspiration or approach strays from the original before the skills are up to the task, the logical and creative side fight each other. Instead of the fast and furious painting that usually occurs in the process of painting the inspiration and the image tend to fight each other. The same process I had when I learned from an artistic mentor, suddenly instead of painting by reflex I was thinking of every process and the process was slowed until the mind can put the two new process together naturally. I believe painting and  creativity are reflex actions and if you have to think about what you are painting some of the magic is lost. My zone begins when I don't even remember what I have written or my hand moves across the canvas as if it knows what it needs to do. My eyes and my mind don't even control or maintain the process. There are no questions in this zone and the painting pretty much paints itself.

I have sketched out two new paintings today and am well into another night scene that I started earlier in the week. When I start back to painting it usually becomes a fast and furious process almost to make up for lost time. I am excited about this series and will continue to blog as the series progresses.