A lot of artists that paint in a traditional or classical realist style seem convinced that there's some kind of conspiracy going on that prevents their art from gaining wider exposure and being taken seriously by some of the major art periodicals. They feel that their art is being ignored because it requires dedication, effort, and talent, while the work that is getting most of the exposure has none of these.
                The first thing that one needs to realize is that critics do not create art. They may ignore one type of art in favor of another but they are not the ones generating the art. Artists are the ones who create the art, and many realist painters feel that young artists gravitate towards conceptual art because of the lack of traditional training at most art colleges. If the young artists do end up using traditional methods they always seem to feel the need to put some sly tongue in cheek spin on it.
                Many of the artists working in the classical realist tradition today, that have studied at private ateliers, did not study art as undergraduates. It amazes me when I look at artists resumes how many of them list undergraduate degrees in philosophy, engineering, music etc;. A lot of them started off with a degree in illustration and then gravitated towards fine art. Very few resumes list an undergraduate degree in fine art. This may explain why so many traditional painters are mystified by todays art world.
              I went to art college as an undergraduate in the late seventies, early eighties. It's impossible to imagine, unless you've experienced it firsthand, the enormous emphasis that was placed on the students to carry the mantle forward, to make their mark on the history of art. One was led to believe that every artist has the potential within themselves to be the next Picasso, and that it was your sacred duty to give it your best shot. It was the young artists job to create a type of art that hadn't been done before. To create the effect , as Robert Hughes calls it, of the "shock of the new".
             In our art history classes it was pounded into us how every generation of artists has managed to "one up" the generation that preceded it. That new and worthy art should always be misunderstood at first until eventually the true genius of it reveals itself. The Impressionists banished Academic art, the Cubists killed off Impressionism, the Abstract Expressionists made Picasso obsolete etc; This was the way things were in the "real" art world and everything else was just hobby art.
          I can remember the long conversations that my fellow students and I would have about how we would seize our rightful place and show up our poser professors for who they really were; pretenders to the throne, aged dinosaurs, who needed to move over and make room. We weren't cynical about what we were doing, we were young dreamers who were excited to feel like we were a part of something that made us special. We had a mission.
          Things weren't much different when I went for my MFA. Even though the school that I went to was considered a bastion of realism, the professors still seemed to prefer innovation over craft. Some of my fellow students have gone on to glowing careers in the art world. One a highly touted and respected professor first gained notice with paintings that were enlarged from polaroids taken while engaged in sexual activity. I don't think things have changed much. My daughter attended an art school in a big city and she was chastized for trying to make her paintings look too "finished".
        Realist painters need to stop pining for an art world that they can never be a part of. Realist art isn't trying to be shocking or innovative but instead is interested in beauty and truth and craft; all worthwhile endeavors but not in the least bit "shocking". Installing atelier style training in more colleges and universities is not going to change the appeal of the "art revolution" to the young artist. The idea of the misunderstood artistic genius is so engrained in our culture that it has become a powerful archetype. Realist painting will always be a part of the "checks and balances" that make up the current art world but it will never be in the limelight. That's not necessarily a bad thing. The art styles that become the next big thing usually have a short shelf life and the artists end up replicating themselves, frozen in a moment, unable or unwilling to discard their established signature look. Realist painters who stay the course, on the other hand, have the promise of artists like Titian and Rembrandt whose art changed gradually and poetically into it's final full flowering.

               Usually at the start of each new year I have a list of goals that I hope to accomplish before the year is out. I don't write them down or anything, They're just hanging out in the back of my mind waiting to be accounted for. This year I've been pretty much on target, but I don't beat myself up about it either way. I just dust myself off and jump back into the ring.
             My plan of study has been progressing on schedule. I'm finishing up cast painting and I've started to study figure drawing. Although I've been drawing the figure for a long time this is my first real figure drawing class. It's a little bit like art boot-camp. I guess the instructor senses that I'm not playing around and so he's been pretty tough on me. I've got a lifetime of bad habits to get rid of.
            I had planned to do more landscape painting, but things don't always go as planned. For one thing, my favorite beach spot to paint was closed down due to budget cuts. I also had air conditioning installed in my studio which made me never want to leave. I was pleased with the paintings that I did get to. I always re-read "Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting" at the beginning of the season. It seems to make more sense each time I read it and I can see his logic informing my work.
              I only managed to squeeze in one figure painting this year, but I did it exactly the way I had envisioned. I mixed up and tubed a flesh color string using a Zorn palette, and I worked on a single pose for eight weeks once a week. I've also managed to do a few quick three hour figure paintings at my bi-monthly figure group. I copied a Sargent portrait from a book, which was a lot of fun. I used  my tubed colors, as it is my belief that Sargent also used a limited palette in his early work.
               My still life paintings are beginning to show subtle changes. The cast painting has influenced my understanding of light, and I'm beginning to include a little more detail. I like brushstrokes to show so I'm focusing a little more intently while trying not to lose the spontaneity which has always been one of my strengths. The exhibit of paintings by Luis Melendez has had a strong influence on me as well. His exacting touch and breadth of vision has inspired me to push myself even harder.
                  In the coming year I plan to do more figure paintings. I'm thinking of hiring a model over the summer. My studio is big enough to accomadate two easels so maybe I'll get someone to go in on it with me. If that doesn't work I know a model who's price is right. I've been meaning to start a self portrait and now might be a good time. I can wait for a better circumstance or I can create opportunities of my own. That's pretty much ben the story of my life.
            Overall, I feel like 2009 was a good year. Things are going according to plan. I'm looking forward to doing more of the same only better. With the support of my wife and family I feel like I can succeed on my own terms if I want to badly enough. My self improvement goals encompass more than just my art. I have a few personality flaws that could use improving, and like everything else, the change is slow, but it is coming. Heres looking forward to a great 2010.

                       The function of an eyelash is to shade the eye somewhat from the sun and to keep debris out. Yet, when one looks at the eyelash mass we can see how beautifully it integrates with the iris. It creates a dark, calligraphic accent that captures our attention and our imagination. This seems to be one of the keys to representing nature; in order to capture beauty you must first understand the function of the thing being depicted.
                       In painting, one cannot hope to rival nature, yet we can use natures logic to create visually stimulating artwork. Every brushstroke that's placed should have a function. Every decision that's made about color and value and placement should somehow lead to our ultimate goal of creating an alternate world where the artist creates beauty that's inspired by nature, yet, of necessity, completely different. Verissimilitude might capture a scene with precision, but unless the artist has a vision or design, mimesis will not appear natural. It may seem strange that this is so, but I've seen it in the work of many painters. The functional aspect of the painting does not correspond with the beauty the artist is attempting to capture. Most scientific illustrations are not beautiful, because it is not their function to be beautiful.
                      In the figure drawing class that I'm currently taking, the instructor is really pushing me to learn anatomy. I've been a little resistant because I've always been pretty much of an eyeball realist. I figured that I would be fine with the parts of the anatomy that I could see and that whatever I couldn't see, I didn't need to bother about. I was also worried that my drawings would begin to have that clunky look that I see in the work of some artists who put their figures together like G.I. Joes. They know all the parts and where they go, but their drawings lack grace. In spite of this, I have been studying to learn the visible parts of anatomy and how they work and the names of the larger internal masses. It appears to be helping to improve my block-ins. The idea of the block-in is to capture the abstract quality of the large forms and the basic light and dark divisions. Yet some forms are resistant to being drawn that way. I'm thinking in particular of a bent, foreshortened, knee.
                        When I'm drawing the figure now, I'm thinking about the relationship of the head to the ribcage and of the ribcage to the pelvis. I'm thinking about how they relate as shapes, as forms in space, but also how they flow along an invisible curve. In other words, not just how they function as body parts, but how they harmonize into beautiful and graceful gestures. I'm starting to get that learning how things work can give me insight into understanding how my paintings work and how I can get them to work even better.

             Recently a good friend of mine was asking me if I could ever foresee a time when I would be free on Saturdays.  I told him I would probably stop when I felt that I'd completed the Classical Realist training that I've been trying to stitch together as best as I can through part time study. It's been a while. I spent three years at the Long Island Academy of Fine Art studying still life painting for two and a half years and portrait for about six months. At that point I kind of felt like I was putting the cart before the horse so about two years ago I started to study cast drawing at the Grand Central Academy of Art. I stayed with that for about a year and then I moved into Cast painting. The GCA doesn't really have a proscribed program for part time students but if you read their mission statement it outlines a sequence necessary for a sound Classical education. So that's been my focus, not to jump around from course to course but to stick to the plan; cast drawing, cast painting, figure drawing, figure painting. Right now I'm doing cast painting in the morning and figure drawing in the afternoon.
           So, I do have a plan, it's just hard to say exactly how long it will take me to get there. But I do see the end of the tunnel. It's not my goal to be a perpetual student. I'm quite capable of working on my own, as I have been doing for twenty five years. I'm starting to get a good sense of the direction my work is headed in and I'm always eager to get into my studio.
           So why did I go back to school (private Atelier) after all those years of working on my own. It's simple. I just wanted to improve. I realized I'd gone about as far as I could on my own. My day job is teaching art at an inner city high school. I think most educators are life long learners. Our students ask us questions that make us want to know more so that we can share what we've learned. Going back to school has made me a better educator. Having confidence and mastery in what I love has enabled me to motivate students who possess gifts they didn't know they have. I'm never at work thinking I wish I was in my studio and I'm not thinking about work when I'm painting. The two aspects of my life have a symbiotic relationship.
              Teaching during the day and painting in the evenings and on weekends has never been a problem for me. I kind of enjoy the challenge of it.(I might be a little deranged) I know I'm going to miss it when I retire. I have no plans to retire in the immediate future although technically I could retire in three years. Unfortunately the city where I teach does not value the experience of older techers .They feel that our salaries are too high and that we become complacent and lack the enthusiasm of younger teachers. One of the things that I'm kind of known for is the older students walking into my room and saying "How come we didn't get to do that?" And my answer is because I didn't think of it then. In other words, my curriculum is constantly evolving. As my understanding of art deepens so too does the way that I present ideas and challenges to my students.
           When I first started to teach, it was the older teachers who provided me with counsel and wisdom that got me through the tough times. It's not an easy job. Doesn't everybody want summers off? Maybe so, but many who  make a run at it don't last more than six years. When I walk into my classroom I don't have to worry about classroom management . My classroom management is simple. Know what the hell you're talking about, be as excited about it as you want the students to be, and treat each student exactly the way you would want your own child to be treated. It's not brain surgery but it amazes me how few of the teachers I've seen out there are able to pull it off. The reason for that is clear. The trend is towards new schools, new teachers, new test scores. The passing on of wisdom and experience from older teachers to young has been tabooed. Younger teachers are wary of educators who are portrayed as bitter and burnt out. That stereotype was around when I started teaching twenty five years ago, and it's a bunch of garbage. I've met many educators who have inspired me with their constant quest to know more. To have more expertise in their field. To be able to answer the students question with " Yes, I saw it with my own eyes, it was wonderful". One of the teachers in the school within my school, that will eventually force my school to close, and possibly push me into retiring a little sooner than I planned, is considered a role model by the powers that be and gives workshops on better teaching methods. Yet the other day I heard him screaming at his class, essentially trying to browbeat them into submission. If I had a chance to counsel him, and if he thought my opinion was worth anything, I would explain to him why this doesn't work and give him alternatives that actually do work. Methods that aren't found in these educrats self congratulatory textbooks but come from years of experience in asking one simple question. "How could I have handled that better?" And then doing it better. That's the way that I paint and that's the way that I teach.
          If I think of my life like a painting, I would say that I'm drawn in, I've got a solid underpainting, and I'm starting to work up to a finish, keeping open to the possibiliy of changing things as I go along; a work in progress.

            I can remember, I guess it was about six or seven years ago, when I saw my first Charles Bargue drawing, from the book that I believe translates to a "course of design". I was immediately struck by how much the drawings resembled the early cubist drawings of Picasso and Juan Gris. Particularly the first or block in stage diagrams. They had that same kind of schematic, straight line, abstracting of form. Picasso was trained in the classical method and one of his drawings that's always featured in discussions of his beginnings as an artist is clearly a copy of one of Bargue's drawings (although oddly enough it's never credited that way). Of course Cubism veers wildly off from any intentions that Bargue and Gerome (the co-author) may have had, but it does point out some things that are common to most types of visual art; that the beginning stages require one to think abstractly in order to get to the essential nature of what's being drawn or painted.
            Good design and solid compositions rarely have anything to do with ones ability to faithfully replicate a variety of textures and surface details. Not that these are neccessarily bad skills to have, but they are the icing on the cake, not the cake. Without a solid design sense, it's a pile of frosting and little else. So where does this come from, this ability to disassociate oneself from the subjective or empirical nature of what's being seen and instead tune into the order and organization of the shapes and tilts and black and white patterns, etc;? It's not easy. The brains survival mode is set up to scan and file quickly. This requires a database of known symbols and signifiers. When I scan a face I'm seeing every face that I've ever seen and making comparisons and distinctions. In order to objectively render that face I need to dump all of the symbols and associations that will naturally come to mind and in fact it would be best if I didn't think of it as a face at all, but as a series of light and dark patterns with boundaries. More like a map, less like a portrait. That's a pretty abstract way of thinking about the world but it's nothing new and can be traced back to the ancient Greeks whose statues are like math theorems made whole. That's not to say that their statues are cold and lacking in humanity, but that their timeless beauty goes beyond the mere recording of human physiognomy.
              There have been several occasions where someone has pointed out to me that the composition in one of my paintings or drawings falls along divisions associated with the Golden Mean. The Golden Mean or Section is a divison of any rectangle by a fraction, roughly about a third (.6218 to the whole) . It is a fractional division that can be found in the growth pattern of most living things, including humans( the location of the elbow to the arm, and the hand to the elbow) and was thought to be, by many of the Old Masters, the most pleasing division of a composition. I have to admit that any Golden Sections that can be found in my work are purely accidental. I wish I could be that methodical or cerebral, but alas, as I've come to realize, it is not in my nature. But that doesn't prevent me from appreciating it in the work of other artists.
              So, following this line of thinking, there must have been a point in the creation of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" when his canvas was criss-crossed with lines and shapes and little else. Did Botticelli than stand back and analyze his painting from a purely formal design sense before committing to his figures and subject matter or did he quicly sketch in his figures in a rush of creativity and then corral them into Golden Mean harmonies? It boggles the mind to think about it. I chose "The Birth of Venus" because in most of the diagrams that I've seen laid over the painting, the composition is overrun with structural grids and designs.Does that make it a better painting? Botticelli must have thought so. Still, I think that at a certain point abstract design is not something that can be quantatively measured or codified. I believe that it's largely intuitive or instinctual. I have seen some contemporary artists who have used the Golden Section in their paintings and yet their compositions are dead in the water. Setting up points of location in a design and using them to locate centers of interest, etc; is not neccessarily good abstract design. When one is moved by the pattern of dark clumps found in the foliage of a tree or the shapes made by cloud formations (go Joanie) , one is responding to something that I think is inherently human and yet something that cannot be labeled or bottled to say "this is what it is".
         The great painters of the past and present have many things about their work that can be analyzed and written about but there will always be that certain something that is intangible. It is why the students of Rembrandt could mimic his style exactly but rarely ever approached his greatness. It is why I think that labels and categorizations, when it comes to paintings, are pretty meaningless. I respond to paintings as a painter. I don't really care what style it's painted in. Either it works for me or it doesn't. It has to hit me in the gut. That's probably going to have very little to do with, initially, what the subject matter is. Once I've been drawn into the work than I will begin to contemplate the subject and mood etc: But if the first response isn't there, I don't care if you call your painting "The Greatest Story Ever Told", I'm moving on. I despise Bonnard's drawing abilities but yet I find myself liking his paintings in spite of myself. Whatever "it" is he clearly has "it" in spades. This isn't really meant as a discourse to present anything new. I think most painters realize these things whether they consciously think about them or not. I'm really thinking out loud about ideas that I have because I realize that as my work begins to get technically sound I mustn't lose sight of the bigger picture; that the work must be expressive as well as descriptive and that I need to constantly be tuning in to my own frequency or whatever essence I may have that's worthy of contemplation, will be lost.

                 Typically, the summer can be a very wierd time for me. A lot of my friends and relatives like to rib me a little about having the summer "off" (they are so jealous!), but I think if they knew what I actually spend my summer days doing they might think otherwise. I wake up at 5a.m., have breakfast and read for about twenty minutes, exercise, shower, walk the dog etc;, in the studio ready to paint by 7a.m.. This year I had air conditioning and heat installed in my converted garage studio, so I'll work through the day until about 5:30 or 6 p.m.. I'll keep going like this seven days a week until something comes up to break my schedule. It's not that I'm overly obsessive (maybe just a little), but this is the only time of year when I can push myself hard enough to make something significant happen. Not necessarily a major breakthrough but a leg up, so to speak, on my work, that can only be achieved through consistent, sustained effort. It took me a while to get the idea that the artists whose work I admire aren't just super talented but are driven. The old cliche; 90% sweat, 10 % inspiration, theres a lot of truth to that.
             Most of my work is still life painting, so that's what I'm focusing on. In summers past I would be engaged in a potpourri of artmaking; landscape painting, portraits, workshops etc;. This year I decided to really stay concentrated on one thing. I've slowed down my process considerably. I used to work directly on the canvas. A quick charcoal drawing, ebauche, and jump right in. Now I make a detailed pencil drawing, transfer it, do a wipe out, and while that's setting up I make a poster study. Is this making a difference? I think so. And I feel like I could slow things down even more. Make more thumbnail sketches when arranging a composition. Do a modeled, fully refined pencil study. At heart, I'm a figure painter, making compositions involving numerous subjects, in emulation of my hero, Rubens. But I realize that practical matters being what they are, job, space, funds etc; that that kind of painting is, at least for now, out of my reach. So I plan to treat my still life paintings as if they are figure compositions on the grand scale. I don't mean grand in the physical sense, I just mean that I want to put into them the kind of planning, and energy, that an old master, such as Rubens would put into his paintings. The summer is really the only time when I can give these grandiose ambitions a dress rehearsal. See what I'm made of. It's easy enough to talk about how great it would be to be a full time artist, but when you're actually there in the studio, it's not all wine and roses.
             For one thing, you have just way too much time to think. You talk out loud quite a bit. Make silly noises. It can get a little tedious and a little lonely. You really have to discipline yourself. Keep  your eyes on the prize. It's no wonder that Michelangelo wrote all that crazy poetry while he was working on the Sistine chapel. I wish I could turn off my brain and just work. Eventually I do settle in and I'm "on the form", in meditative concentration. That's when I'm going to do my best work. It's hard to get there when I'm in the throes of my regular life; Teacher, husband, father etc:, but not impossible. These long summer days spent finding out who I am, if it's a productive summer, will carry me through the rest of the year. I realize that it's not most peoples idea of a vacation but it's a refreshing break from my usual routine, which is to get a couple of hard won, frantic hours, in the studio each day after work, and the full days (when I'm free) on the weekends. It's not all work and no play. I'm looking forward to a week long camping trip, with my grown children and their significant others, and some friends, that should be a blast. As much hiking, kayaking, fishing, staring at campfires as can be crammed into six days. And no art. I probably won't even bring a sketch pad.
             I've been spending quite a few days this summer thinking about form. (is there a cure for this?). Theres a scene in "The Matrix", the first one (the only good one), towards the end of the movie, where Neo is fighting the bad guys, and eventually he starts to see things as they really are. He sees their bodies made up of waves of energy and this allows him to calmly "kick butt". It's a good analogy for perceiving pure form. It's one of the hardest concepts to get your mind around when you're studying cast drawing and cast painting. The instructors are constantly advising you to stay on the form. To think about where that specific section of form is in relation to the light and at what angle it tilts up towards the light and how much light it really has as opposed to how much it appears to have. Heavy stuff. I couldn't get my mind around it. The instructor would say to me " make your sculpture (your drawing) look like that sculpture (the cast). "Say what?" Eventually what worked for me was a kind of disassociation. I would look at my drawing without thinking about what it was representing. I would then ask myself, what do the visual cues that I've rendered look like. What are the forms in my drawing actually doing? If they weren't doing what they were supposed to do than I knew I needed to make changes. That's when your pencil can feel like a sculptor's tool as you reach into the space of the drawing and carve away or add form. Even though I didn't fully grasp the whole "where is the form on the light sphere thing?" this was enough to allow me to begin to see pure form. And as I'm painting I'm constantly trying to see if I can disassociate myself from what I'm doing, and have that "Matrix" moment. As Picasso once said, you can put the eyes and nose wherever you want and people will still see a face. For a classical painter that's not good enough. You want to get beyond symbolic mark making and search for a purer truth. Well I do, anyway, I can't really speak for all Classical painters. It seems to me that this is what Chardin was after. His paintings don't have quite the bourgoise aspect to them that can be found in the works of the Dutch masters and some of his contemporaries. At his purest and simplest his paintings become objects captured in a world of light, with no need to be anything other than what they are. And that's enough.

            In life we are always forced to make compromises. Imagine trying to make your way in this world without compromising. My wife says that it is my inability to compromise that makes me so hard headed. But the reality is that I have learned to go along to get along just like everyone else. In art there can be no compromise.When I look at the paintings of Steven Levin or Jeffrey Larson, two artists who both trained at Atelier Lack, I can see how their training has enabled them to pursue their unique visions of the world with art that needs no excuses. I can see that near enough is not good enough. I'm not talking about an exacting realism. Both of these painters can be considered quite painterly. It's that striving to hit the nail squarely on the head. Every time. Recently, I've discovered the work of Luis Melendez, who has an exhibit at the National Gallery, and I'm just blown away by the completeness, for want of a better word, of his paintings. Not one element could be changed without destroying the whole, and yet the paintings look very fresh and not labor intensive. Not at all.
          And so Classical Atelier training  becomes something other than what one might at first suspect. The hours spent on a block in, and then refining the contours, and spending eight hours to model about a square inch of form aren't really geared towards making you into a "super realist". It's about getting an attitude, getting your mind right, that will ultimately help you make the kind of art that you want to make, if you are open to it. And it isn't easy. We have been so conditioned to expect to compromise that are brain is primed with easy rationalizations. The hardest thing for me has been to stop letting myself off the hook. But I'm working at it. I'm getting the sense that If I can be conditioned to accept easy solutions than my brain can also be programmed to always strive for my very best. This is not to say that one should constantly beat oneself up. You don't want to be like the character in the Emile Zola novel who destroyed every painting because he was never satisfied.
          I guess the idea is to not take a work to completion that has so many flaws that you want to burn it and kick it out into the street. Look for ways of improving the earlier stages and the later stages will be stronger for it. This is where the block-in becomes so helpful. It is a simple armature on which your painting will be hung and fancy brushwork and bright colors won't help if your armature is weak. I have made the block- in an integral part of my drawing process. Whether I'm doing a still life, portrait or landscape, I always start by marking off a base line and an envelope and proceeding no further than that until it feels exactly right. And by slowly going from the simple to the complex without hurry or anxiety, I try to hold myself to that standard through each stage of the process. Like the prisoner on death row, I am always waiting for that phone call from the governor. I am always looking for a "reprieve". What I mean is that I know something isn't going to be right that I may have missed. I'm only human after all, I'm not a computer scanning a scene.  But I know there will be a problem area that I will have missed, there always is. In a sense that's what keeps me coming back. What fun would it be if it wasn't challenging. Sometimes I get the reprieve. Recently I was at the stage of tracing a drawing to transfer to canvas and when I flipped the tracing over to put charcoal on it, there it was, the "flaw". So I was able to correct it before I had inked in the tracing. Sometimes a mirror will help, but a mirror can become a crutch, that can also be a weakness. Why " get it right" when you know the mirror will reveal the problem areas. When I really work hard on the block-in, when I really push myself harder than I thought possible, I know that the mirror isn't going to tell me anything because the drawing will already have the "rightness" that I'm after.
             Painting isn't drawing though and even a control freak like myself will have to come to terms with the greased pig that is a brush stroke filled with paint. Even so, the best way I find to  deal with this is to try and make each stroke count for something. I don't want to just fill in areas like a coloring book. I guess that's one of the reasons that I prefer a closed palette, to mix color strings for each area of the painting. I try to stay focused on one little area at a time without, of course losing sight of the whole. I tell myself that I'm going to paint this little two inch area today and I'm not going to leave that area until I'm totally satisfied. It seems somewhat ironic that the slower I go the more I accomplish and I actually end up working a little quicker than than if I use an all over approach. In the same way that a landscape painter will block in a color scheme and lay in a wet ground for an entire painting I will lay in a base of tile like brushstrokes for an area and then work into that until it feels unified and complete. I have always sort of worked this way but I think that cast painting has really helped me to intensify my focus.
         It's funny how many artists there are out there today that want to paint like Sargent. If I had mentioned Sargent to my professors back in the 70's, I would have been laughed out of art class. Yet many of the artists who strive to emulate Sargent fall short. Why is that? Is it Sargent's super talent that makes it so?. Maybe. But I also think it has to do with Sargents uncompromising vision. I have read of many instances where Sargent would wipe off a days work only to start completely over, sometimes doing that ten times to a single painting. When artists go for the bravura brush work of a Sargent and fail to see the underlying armature that keeps the brushstrokes from falling apart like thrown confetti, It's no surprise that they come up short. I know that this is a battle that I will always be having with myself. What constitutes real expression as opposed to lazyness ? The best thing I think, for myself at this stage anyway, is not to worry about expression. Let it come of it's own accord. It's there. It's like handwriting, unmistakeable. I think it is possible to re-program ourselves as artists. Sometimes after a long day at work I will think to myself that I am really too tired to go into the studio today. I will make excuses for myself. And then when I catch myself doing that I will remind myself that I now have a new motto " make excuses to do something, not to get out of doing something". It sounds crazy, I know, but more often than not it works. The energy behind the impulse is there it just has to be re-directed.
         Anways, the point of this whole, somewhat rambling diatribe, is really just to clarify some of the misconceptions that people may have about how art should be taught. When I am teaching my students how to draw, I will not let them proceed further than each given stage without my approval. Now some might say that I am killing their creativity. Well, if my classroom is the only place that they're choosing to be creative, how creative can they really be? A lot of students are put off by art because they feel that it's something that you should just be instantly good at, and when they're not, they become discouraged and quit. How creative is that? But if I can break the process down for them, de-mystify it, and show them how to take small steps, with achievable goals, it builds up their confidence and they discover that they have a lot more ability than they imagined. And like kids with a new toy they want to use it everywhere. That's how I have learned and am still learning, I wouldn't want anything less for my students.

                  The other day, in my high school painting class, I was talking to my students about the underpainting technique of Leonardo Da Vinci. We were discussing the difference between direct and indirect painting. One of the students wanted to know why Da Vinci didn't just paint Mona directly instead of fussing around with all that underpainting. I grabbed up a tube of paint and said "because he didn't have this!". I then proceeded to explain how Leo would have had to make his own paint by grinding up rocks and then mulling it together with oils. I could see that they weren't rolling their eyes back into their heads yet so I continued to explain further that not only did they have to mix their own paint but that the only way to preserve it for a short time was to stuff it into a pig's bladder. "eewh! That's nasty" I also explained that if I was teaching this class during the Renaissance they would all be involved in mixing my paint and sweeping up my studio on a daily basis."yeah, right!"
               Of course a lack of commercially prepared paint was not the sole reason that Da Vinci used underpainting. He was a big fan of glazing and was probably trained at a time when artists were making the transition from egg tempera painting techniques into oils. It's interesting to speculate about that time. Did Da Vinci ever let his hair down and just blast the paint on without preparation? He did write extensively about light and color so he probably did do some color notations that haven't survived. My students always want to know what's so great about the Mona Lisa and I tell them that it's a beautiful painting of an ugly woman. I tell them that the magic of the painting doesn't really come across in reproduction but that when you stand in front of it the painting has an inner light that transfixes the viewer and is not an effect that could be achieved through direct painting.
           Many artists today still prefer to mix their own paints and will give some pretty good reasons for doing so. Marc Dalessio and Anthony Velasquez are two artists with blogs that give some pretty good insights as to why they prefer to mix their own. It's not really about being a traditional purist, as you might assume. It's more about taking control of the product; it's viscosity, intensity, lack of fillers etc;. Some of the ateliers have that as part of their training. The Florence Academy of Art, John Angel Academy. Water Street atelier does not.
            I don't really have anything against mixing up my own paint it's just not part of my training. I will admit to having had a certain skepticism when it comes to using old fashioned recipes. For years I resisted working on oil primed linen because I didn't feel that the expense justified the hype. When they kind of forced me to use it at Grand Central Academy I realized that there's a good reason why artists like to paint on linen. It's better. Once you try it you'll realize it immediately, it's a no brainer. Cotton duck canvas just doesn't compare. At least not for classical painting techniques. I've also had to use some paint that was a little different from my usual brand, Winsor and Newton. Like many artists, I prefer Winsor and Newton for their consistency. You know what you're getting and it's going to be the same every time. Recently I've been experimenting with Old Holland Cremnitz white and Vasari Ivory Black and Burnt Umber. These paints are clearly made to seem more like paint that you might have mulled yourself. They definitely have a richness and buttery quality that's missing in the more commercially prepared paints. But they are expensive. Which is a pretty good reason for making your own I guess. Hopefully. I remember when I first started flyfishing my friends talked me into learning to tie my own flies and the big money that I would be saving. I soon started to realize that by the time I'd bought hand picked plumes and silk from India, it was ending up costing me more. But still theres a satisfaction in creating and using your own lures and I would imagine it's the same with painting.
               When I first taught myself to paint, over thirty years ago, my method was to make a drawing and then paint it directly, top to bottom. I spent quite a few years in college being taught why this was the wrong approach. No one area of a painting should be developed at a time. The whole painting should gradually emerge. Like a face emerging horizontally from a lake. One of my professor's told me that if you wanted to learn how to paint you should watch the original version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". The way that the seed pod eventually turns into a human clone is exactly the way that your painting should progress. And for many years I cultivated my "seed pods" and made sure that they didn't ripen too quickly. But it never felt natural. I felt kind of like a duck being trained to bark like a dog.. When I decided to enroll myself part time at the Long Island Academy of Fine Art, I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was my preferred way of painting acceptable, it was encouraged. My instructors philosophy was to go for broke in the first pass and if you don't get it, go back in and fix it, but you'll be that much closer to getting it the next time. I couldn't get over it. My "wrong" way of painting was suddenly right. And now that I'm painting at Grand Central Academy in the cast painting class I'm surrounded by artists who all, with varying degrees of approach, use a similar wet-in-wet painting method.
           It's not that I have anything against more layered approaches; many of my favorite artists both living and dead, use methods that require gradually building up the paint to a finish. For me theres something very Zen in trying to get it right as I go along. It's hard to explain, but paint is so elemental and mercurial, that when I'm working my mind goes into this place of extreme calm and inner peace. I know the stereotype of the artist is to be tortured and moody while working. I get that way after I'm done with a day's work, never while I'm working. It's one of the few times when I can feel all the engines of my brain firing at once. I have to consider so many factors simultaneously; the shape of the stroke, does the stroke read as form, does the color have light, hard edge or soft? It's quite a list. Yet when everything is going right somehow it all comes together, which I find completely astounding. Every time.

         In the film "New York Stories" theres an artist, based loosely, I believe on Chuck Connelly, who paints in this huge studio (that features a basketball court) while using a garbage pail lid for a palette. The depiction is so over the top that it's hard to take it seriously, but after watching a documentary on the artist, it seems a little more plausible. After all, the function of a palette is to hold paint while you put it on the canvas, so I guess if you're working monumentally large, why not a trash can lid?
         In the book I have on the painter Sorolla it shows him holding a palette that's about the size of a small coffee table. Since the brushes he's holding are about two feet long maybe the palette has to match. I would expect him to have had a severe case of tennis elbow. How can you hold a palette that large for any significant amount of time? Most of my palettes average around 16" by 20", some round and some square. After a day of painting I have an incised welt around my thumb, and my arm is killing me. And I work out; push-ups rowing machine, weights, etc;. I can't see myself using a palette any larger than I do right now without needing corrective surgery down the line.
       Some artists favor a rolling table top as a palette. Usually a piece of glass with a neutrally colored paper underneath it. Edward Minoff features a unique approach on his website, he has a Munsell neutral value scale underneath his palette. He uses Munsell's paint chips quite extensively in his working process. Eventually I could see him painting Munsell value stripes on the walls of his studio. I've tried the table palette approach and I didn't like it. I felt a disconnect between my impulse and the hesitation to find the color note on the palette. To use a musical analogy, it would be like playing the violin and laying it down after each note. Flowus interruptus. It was killing my flow.
       I think it was Velasquez who occasionally would use the edge of a canvas as a palette. Usually for small studies. The paint would be mixed from the piles at the bottom of the painting. I saw on Chris Puglieses web site that he has been playing around with this idea with some interesting results. It's neat to watch the little piles get mixed into values that find their way onto the forms. On Tony Ryder's studio blog theres a picture of one of his student's palettes where Tony has done a demo showing how to conceptualize the eye as a storefront window. If that was my palette I would have put it aside and gotten a new one or at the very least, made a transfer rubbing of the image. Not to sell it or anything, but just because it's one of those unique things that artists occasionally do that highlights the transformative powers of art.
      In videos and pictures I've seen of Steven Assael's demos he has his palette clamped vertically to his easel. I guess that makes it a lot easier to see his mixing process. I don't know what kind of paint he uses, but if I tried that, I'm pretty sure my paint would slowly start to slime it's way down the side and eventually onto the floor. It seems that the more expensive the paint is, the more likely it will have some oil separation, because it has less of those binding fillers and stabilizers. I remember showing up to paint at one class where the other students were amazed at my palette because I had half inch mounds of dried color underneath each fresh pile. I explained that I only scraped off the color after it would begin to dry. It didn't make sense to throw away paint that for some colors, might stay usable for a week. I would only clean and wipe down the mixing area. Nelson Shanks takes this idea to the extreme. His dried piles are inches high. I know I need a new palette when I experience "dead arm" after a day of painting.
       It's said that when Whistler gave painting instruction he would critique his student's work by looking at their palettes, not their paintings. Probably apocryphal, but still it highlights the importance some artists place on that miniature stage where the preliminary battle takes place.(sorry for the mixed metaphor). When Matisse was asked to comment on the young upstart Picasso who was challenging his pre-eminence, his comment was that he was good but that he "has no palette". Whew! I can't think of a worse insult. But I'd have to agree with that assessment. Matisse certainly had a palette, no doubt about it. Whatever one may feel about his modernist flourishes, the man certainly knew his colors.
       In "Classical Painting Atelier" the author talks about the difference between a closed palette and an open one. Basically one uses pre- mixed color strings (closed) and the other is mix with your brush as you go (open). When I'm painting still lifes I do a lot of premixing. I l.ike to plan out my strategy and I want my colors placed cleanly and confidantly. When I'm painting out of doors I use the brush mixing system. There just isn't time to mix color strings while you're trying to capture a fleeting light effect while fighting off insects, wayward ducks and tourists. I have to admit that I do enjoy the challenge of it. It is a little more improvisational and often features happy little accidents that find their way back into studio practices.
     One of my instructors encouraged me to hold the palette up vertically near my face as I rushed to the canvas to  apply paint. That way the distance between palette and canvas would be even less. I already suffer from "painters allergies" and I'm sure that if I tried using that technicque that my wife would find me one day passed out on the floor of my studio with paint smeared all over my face. That reminds me of another weird artist movie "Vincent and Theo" which shows Van Gogh with his face alongside his palette eating paint and sipping turpentine. Talk about being "one with your instrument". Lucian Freud has a self portrait (unfortunately nude) that shows the aged artist holding his palette, kind of tipped down, but not dropped to the floor. His knarled up thumb hanging on. I imagine that eventually my fingers will become arthritic from years of being abused by my palette, but I can't ever really see myself painting without one. For me the palette is really the heart and soul of what I do.

                 In the scene from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco showing the creation of Adam, we see God reaching out His hand to give Adam the spark of life. Michelangelo could just as easily have painted Adam holding a brush giving the spark of life to an empty canvas. Not that I'm saying artists are God-like in any way, but there is some kind of magic that takes place between the brush and the canvas. It's probably for that reason that artists are so particular about the types of brushes that we use.
                I like a long handled brush. I like to hold it at the very tip when I'm working broadly and then choke up on it a little bit when I need to get in close. Velasquez is said to have favored brushes attached to three foot long handles. I guess the idea being that he could gauge the overall effect without the necessity of constantly stepping back. Most of the old masters used round brushes, square tips being a relatively new idea. Parkhurst recommends using bristle brushes so that one doesn't get caught up in too much niggling over detail. I've used bristle brushes for quite a long time, but I don't feel that they are of the same quality that might have been around in Parkhurst's day. I think if he had to use what passes for bristle these days he might switch over to synthetics, a change I've recently made myself.
             Dan Thompson has a 30 minute demo clip on American Artist that features a very unusual brush technicque. When laying in his first coat, he holds two brushes in one hand, sort of at right angles to each other. One is used to put paint on and the other is used to remove paint or adjust lines. He kind of resembles a bull parrying a matador. After watching the video I tried it out on a small painting, and it was kind of cool but ultimately not for me, after all there's only one Dan Thompson. In terms of experimenting, Rembrandt has to be high on the list. In one painting he will have passages of subtle refinement, heavy application and gouge marks made with the handle of his brush. It is also said that he wasn't averse to putting the paint on with his fingers.
           At the Grand Central Academy of Art where I've been studying cast drawing and now cast painting, pretty much everyone paints with rounds on smooth linen canvas. When I knew I was going to be getting to cast painting I decided to start doing some paintings using small rounds so that I wouldn't be going into it without some prior experience. That was probably a good idea because initially I had no idea how to paint with a round brush. Most of my experience was with flats, brights and more recently filberts. What I liked about those brushes was that I could really push the paint around. I would take the tip of the brush and scoop it under the paint when I wanted to lay on an extra thick passage. I once read a quote, I think it was by David Leffel that the artists' brush should never touch the canvas without some paint on it, and that's the way that I've always worked. When I want to blend a passage or connect values I don't take a dry brush and fan them together, I mix the intermediary value and lay it in, and I'll keep tiling in values until I get the effect that I'm after. So when I switched to rounds I was fumbling around trying to do my old tricks without too much success.
          I had once read somewhere that the advantage of painting with a round brush was that you had several options in the same brush; you could make a broad stroke, or use the tip when you needed a line or a detail. The problem I was having was that I couldn't see how to use the darn things to make a broad stroke. When I was just beginning my first cast painting, I was fumbling around with the tip, laying down one mini stroke next to another. Fortunately my instructor didn't let me get too far before coming over and giving me a little demonstration. That's when I had an "aha" moment. He was pretty much painting as I had always painted, broadly at first and then gradually refining, but he was getting the broad strokes by pushing down on the brush until the heel (near the ferrule) of the brush deposited the paint in a wider mark. Once I saw that it didn't take me too long to get the hang of it. The difference is that when you're painting in this way you have to go just a bit slower and make each stroke thoughtfully. The nice thing is that the strokes tend to automatically blend a little as you go so you don;t need to do as much noodling.
         When I was looking to buy some round brushes and I was trying to decide which kind to buy, I would go to various artists websites and see what they recommended. Quite a few recommended using sable. I've painted with sable in the past and I didn't really like it. And besides they're expensive and don't seem to last very long. Eventually I ended up on the website of the Ryder Studio School. Tony uses Raphael synthetic rounds, which the company actually recommends for acrylic paint. I'm a great admirer of his paintings so I figured I'd try them out. They have the weirdest tip of any brush that I've ever seen. They have this blunt center point surrounded by flagged hairs that curl towards the tip. It's a wild looking idea that somehow actually works. The tip seems to keep coming back to find it's center no matter how much you beat the heck out of it. You'll know you need a new brush when the hairs eventually go limp, but they will not splay. Awesome. They aren't inexpensive but they do seem to last longer than the average brush and they may be made for acrylics but they work great with oils. They hold the paint well and give nice, crisp strokes.
       So as you can see, I've found a brush that I really like. I went to Utrecht to pick up a few the other day and the display case was out of my size. I asked the salesman if he had any stock. After about a twenty minute wait he tells me that not only does he not have any stock but that he won't be getting any more in because they were being discontinued. Aaargh! Could this be true? I jumped in my car and hustled over to Pearl paint. They had only two brushes left in their display case and they were badly damaged. At this point I'm freaking out. Am I going to have to be like Elaine Benis, buying out all the available brushes I can find on the internet, trying to decide if a painting is "brush-worthy"? I can't have a lot of brushes all at one time. I'll go through them too quickly. I need to have one brush at a time so that I can squeeze the life out of it. If I have three dozen brushes in my studio they'll be gone in a week. I even mark my newer brushes with tape so I don't pick up a used up one by mistake. Since Pearl's was also out of them I decided to go with some other artist recommended brushes. Sadie Jernigan Valeri recommends an inexpensive white sable round so I grabbed one or two of those and Ryder also uses W&N university white rounds. I also remembered using a Robert Simmons synthetic sable in the past that I kind of like, which is made specifically for oils, so we'll see what happens, but ultimately what I really crave is those Raphaels so be warned if you go to order them and find they're out of stock; I may have a closet full of them and maybe you just aren't brush-worthy.:)