Add a little black to all your colors

I am having a little bit of a meltdown. Some combination of the seasonal changes, impending holiday stress, and the huge acres of canvas I have committed to paint for upcoming shows has given me pretty awful anxiety attacks. I am working right through them but it feels pretty grim here in my studio. I don't understand why they happen or how to get over this, but I am still working and that is enough for now.

 I had an amazing photo shoot a month or so ago and am starting to use the photos in this painting.

 

 I then make a black and white scale mock-up to see how it will look full-size, and to use for tracing the image onto canvas.

Then I transfer the drawing.
 

I am adding a little black to all my colors, to grey them a bit, to unify them, and because I am so fucking depressed these days.

Lots of looseness at this stage, just sploshing paint and blocking in shapes.

 

Now I am starting to paint the figures and its really fucking hard as always. It gets better when the figures have more going on in them, but for now I get pretty frustrated easily. I guess a lot of that is my current 

state of enervation. It will pass soon. I just want to be quiet and peaceful and not bother anyone and paint. Is that too much to fucking ask for?

 

Whistler's mother and the girl with the pearl earring.

I decided to increase the complexity around the central figure, so I added some more traditional painting references (see title of blog). I also changed the painting Pollack is standing on to a wall. He is painting over a void, almost pulling the red paint out of the depths. The girl was initially painted very sharp and crisp but was distracting from Pollock, so I attacked the wet paint and motion blurred her head. The lettering is some crazy graffiti font. I have to finish this this week! Details, glazing, rendering.

Commission

I have been doing commissions lately. I will show a bit of the process in this blog.

1. Initial contact. Gallery contacted me and informed me that a client would be interested in me developing a painting from a specific photo. Chilean riot police covered with paint from protesters.

 2. I develop a possible composition in Photoshop and send to the client.

3. The Idea was that Jackson Pollack is splashing paint and that the riot police are protecting aspects of traditional painting: Still-life, landscape, etc.

4. Idea is OK'd!

5. Drawing transferred and painting begun.

6. Closeup!