The neighbors are gathering! Best get the candy ready.

It's Halloween!

A couple of weeks back, I did a little work of three of these guys and had such a good time with the material, I decided that it needed revisiting. So, I did this work, 10" x 14", as a larger expansion of the same idea. This might be the last of my new works to be going to the Waterfowl Festival with me a bit less than two weeks from now. But, one never knows when the muse will strike!

Rolling merrily along to November 11th's Waterfowl Festival opening with even more of these little works that I have been doing the last few weeks. This little one, being the latest off the board yesterday afternoon, is just over 3" x 5".

In keeping, sort of, with yesterday's 'theme' of horsiness, here is a little work I just finished to add to the collection of little works that will be accompanying me to the Waterfowl Festival in Easton on Maryland's beautiful eastern shore about two and a half weeks from now. It's 4" square and is headed into the work room shortly to be put into its frame.

A Little 'Shop Talk'

A little 'shop talk' this morning. A couple of weeks back, I posted this completed small work of three horses which, coincidentally, is one of the new works that will be hanging at McBride Gallery for the opening on Sunday of the current gallery group show. It's a small work, being 5 1/2" x 6 1/2" but though small in size, I wanted it to have big appeal. As with any of my works, I wanted a well balanced, interesting, eye catching arrangement of composition and subject matter and even though the juxtaposing of the three horses may seem, at first quite arbitrary, a great deal of thought went into the overlapping and grouping of these three in a relatively tight spatial plain.

After digging through reference and finding a number of images that 'spoke to me', and having established a basic size format for the work, dictated primarily by my desire to use a certain frame on hand, I laid out all the photo reference on my drawing board and began zeroing in on certain gestures and body positions that seemed interesting to me. I had already, in my mind's eye, decided to do a work that would have a tight focus on three animals relying on layering of the subjects to achieve what I thought would be an interesting composition in a semi abstract form. Through the layering of one horse in front of another in front of yet another, it would also give me an opportunity to play with light, shadow, overlaying textures and finding ways of separating three dark colored animals from one another and making a convincing arrangement with appropriate depth.

As the frame, which was slightly off square, dictated an almost square compositional field, it was important to have a good balance across the entire image as well as to establish a nice movement around the work for the viewer's eye to be able to move through the work without being pulled out of the image or getting 'stuck' someplace. Yes, this may seem like a lot of thought for such a small work, but as I have said time and time again, this is the stuff that gets my creative juices really flowing; working out all the elements of a composition to make it the best that it can be. And, even on such a small work as this, the time spent in the preliminary arrangement and getting the details worked out just so, for me at any rate, is time well spent.

I settled on four or five images that seemed to embody what I had sort of been working out as an interesting arrangement in my mind as I carefully looked over my reference photos, of which about a dozen or so I had culled from well over 50 initially sifted through. I set to work now on doing some small, quick tonal sketches of one gesture over another on pieces of tracing paper so I could set one sheet on top of another to see what the over layering would look like. After finalizing the three gestures and body positions that I thought would work best within the almost square parameters, I set about to determine the best way to incorporate them into an interesting composition.


Looking at the completed drawing once again, noted just here split in half, you can see that the main or forward positioned horse has its head directly on the center line of the vertical split of the compositional area. I often will do this, position one of several important subjects directly on a center line as it generally gives me a nice challenge to establish the other subjects of a work in such a way as to counteract that intensity of a centrally placed figure and spread balance across an entire composition so the viewer will not necessarily be aware that it does occur directly on center. This works especially well, for me, when dealing with three major subjects and, as I have also spoken of many times before, I do like to use odd numbers when arranging subjects as I find they just work better than evens, with the exception of a pair.

Concentrating on that vertical center line split, I next had to figure the addition of the two other horses and where their main weight would need to fall to balance the composition. Since I had basically set the position of the forward horse, with its head on center and coming into the picture from the right margin, it made sense to me to have one each of the other two animals to either side of that center split to work out the balance. Looking at the image below, where I have delineated the left vertical rectangle, you can see that I decided to work with the rear most horse first and felt the placement of its forelegs almost on center helped to bring added weight to that part of the composition and also that brought stronger focus to the central area of the composition. In doing this and since both of these horses were looking directly out at the viewer, I could then shift, side to side, the middle animal till I found the spot where I thought its head and interest level of detail would best balance what was going on to the right of the center line. By using small scraps of tracing paper with rough outlines of each of the three animals, it was easy to shift that middle horse back and forth until I found where it worked best.


Once I had a pretty good idea of where the three subjects worked best across the horizontal of the compositional area, I wanted to make certain of it by looking at the balance from top to bottom across the diagonal. Looking at the image below where I have split the composition into four equal parts, you should be able to determine, as I did, that the diagonal balance from lower left to upper right worked, and that the diagonal balance from lower right to upper left did as well. Once I was certain that balance was achieved I could do the final full size sketch in prep for transfer to my bristol board and begin the drawing.


There were still a few minor details to be worked out though, being the picky person that I am, and a tweek here and there plus the alteration of some of what was in my actual reference photos, became necessary. As I have mentioned here, there and everywhere, it's important to take what you want from reference but not be a slave to it; make it work for you, make the reference yours, pull from it what you need and leave the rest behind.

First, in the photo of the horse that I placed in the forward position, its mane, flopped across its neck, came down further on its side back and to the right toward its shoulder, than the way I wound up describing it in the final drawing. When I worked out the full size sketch for transfer, I realized that if I had drawn the mane as it was in the photo, it would have brought too much weight to that part of the drawing and there might have been an overbalance on the right side of the work. This too, was more apparent to me when I decided to add the white blaze to the forehead of the rear most horse to add a bit more interest to it as it did not have in the photo reference. By adding that white patch, it also helped to balance, once again, the diagonal weight of the profile of the middle horse with all its added detail of the leatherwork and the hanging metal identification tag. That glint of light bouncing off the id tag was nicely balanced by the addition of the white blaze in the upper diagonal box.



A few more minor additions, like the wispy little hairs rising from the mane of the rear most horse, which were not indicated in the photo reference, brought I felt, not only a bit of movement to the static pose but also helped to eliminate what otherwise would have been a rather stark separation between the dark of its mane and the white negative background space. Also, I intentionally brightened the light highlights on the right side of the forward horse, especially around its eye which I felt added a bit more weight, balance and interest to the right of the center line.


Again, it might seem that spending time on all of these seemingly picky little points is a bit of overkill on what would seem a rather small and not terribly significant work but to me as an artist, that is the sort of 'pickiness' that not only is fun for me but, in the end I feel, makes for a much more interesting and enjoyable work of art, no matter what its size.

Paging through postings on Facebook this morning, I noted a link posted from my good friend Adele Earnshaw to an entry on artist, Tony Pro's blog page yesterday. A very timely and reflective statement and one certainly worth a second reading or even a third. Take a look. It's the kind of wisdom that not only pertains to artists and creative people in these tough times, but to anyone who is looking for a way to navigate through these doldrums, eek out a living, pay the bills and find ways to survive the continuing sluggish economic situation. Elegantly and pointedly put, Tony!

A new small scale work just off the drawing board. This one measures 10" x 4 1/2" and will be 'winging' its way to the Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut next week for the upcoming show, Maritime Miniatures by Maritime Masters. This show will open on November 20 and run through the month of January, 2011.

Next Sunday, October 24th, McBride Gallery in Annapolis will host a reception for the opening of this year's Autumn Celebrati0n of Art from 1 to 4 PM. I will have several new works included in the group show and will be in the gallery during the afternoon, along with many other of the gallery artists including my good friend, Jeremy Pearse, who is the featured artist during the run of the show through November 14th. If near, stop in and say hello!

Sat down to the drawing board early today, well before noon which is 'early' for me to be starting studio time, and this is today's little work - 4" square.

A little whimsy work from yesterday, yet another of the smaller works that will make up a large part of what my inventory for the upcoming Waterfowl Festival shall be. The image size on this one is a tad over 5" x 7".

Being very unlike my usual 'need' to purchase the accompanying catalog from any museum exhibition I see, I did not do so on Sunday at the Rockwell in DC. So, it was a tough slog this morning, googling across the Internet to try and find images of several of the charcoals included in the exhibition to use as examples of what I mentioned in the previous posting about seeing Rockwell's full size 'studies' for his final oils. Unfortunately I could not find images of the several that were my favorites at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, but I did manage to come across these three which were also part of the wonderful exhibition. It's hard to imagine these as being full sized works, in the neighborhood of 4 feet by 3 feet or larger, from these small images, but they were indeed, that large. You still, though, can get an idea of the detail to which Rockwell went to work out his images prior to setting brush to canvas.

Being so plugged into composition as I am as an artist, I have thought greatly the last couple of days, as I sit at my drawing board, about the efforts that Rockwell put into his compositions. I recall that when I was in art school, all those many years ago, Rockwell's work was, to a great extent, considered to be mere illustration by many in the 'art world'. I suppose for a long period of time, I tended to follow along with the crowd and it was not till maybe twenty or twenty five years ago, after I had been dealing in more detail in my life as an artist, that I began to see how truly gifted an artist Rockwell was, and that I could learn a great deal from looking at his work.

The exhibition at the Smithsonian runs through early January and I would say it is well worth a trip into the city for an afternoon's visit.

Off yesterday for a day in DC. Visited the Smithsonian's American Art Museum and enjoyed the works of Norman Rockwell from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's individual collections. A very nice group of some of Rockwell's originals for the Saturday Evening Post covers as well as numerous others. I was most taken with his full size, very detailed and intricate charcoal studies of a number of the originals on display. I was unaware that Rockwell did full size, some measuring four feet by three or larger, renderings before starting a painting. I was very drawn into his 'sketches' and found much to dwell upon as I sat and worked today.

Another smaller scale work, this one a shade over 3" square, for the upcoming Waterfowl Festival a short four weeks from this coming Thursday.

A little something, well actually a 'Little Swimmer' hot off the drawing board. This one measures 3" square and will be one of many small, inexpensive works to be going with me to next month's Waterfowl Festival on the eastern shore of Maryland. Have lost count but it seems like this is my 17th or 18th year of doing that large scale group show.

Another small work that will be going to the McBride Gallery Fall Show opening on October 24th. This one, just finished up ten minutes ago, chimes in at 5 1/2" x 6 1/2".

' Tweedledum and Tweedledee '

The weekend's work. This one will be one of several new works to go to McBride Gallery in Annapolis for their annual Fall Group Show opening on the 24th of this month. Image size on this one is just a hair over 11" x 8".

And, done. This one will be heading west next month to the Howard/Mandville Gallery in Kirkland, Washington for their 20th Annual Invitational Small Works Show opening November 6th with reception and sale on November 13th. Image size on this one, 5 1/4" x 13 1/4".