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I haven’t posted much this month, so I thought I would wrap up February with an overview of the sock knitting marathon, and a mini-tirade about yarn availability and service.

Sock Update

First up is a portrait of Jeremy’s finished Trekking socks. These are currently wending their way across the country in the good company of granola and banana bread. I used Priscilla’s Dream Socks as the pattern, #0 bamboo needles, and just under one skein of Trekking (yessss!) in a seemingly discontinued colorway. I based the sizing on some well-fitting socks that Jeremy left at home, but of course I’m still agonizing over whether or not they will fit. Cross your fingers!

After finishing these socks, I cast on for a pair of Pretty Comfy Socks in Alaskan Blue Esprit from Elann.com, just for a change of pace. So far so good.

After two pattern repeats, I was ready to start a second pair of gray Trekking socks, this time for my dad. (I’ll work on the Comfy socks whenever I need a break from the toothpick needles and stockinette/ribbing.) These are nearly the same as the ones for Jeremy—same pattern, yarn, and needles; slight adjustments to number of stitches. I decided to carry the ribbing down onto the instep for these sock, just for a little variety. I should note in passing that this is a great pattern, particularly since it is a master pattern with a huge range of sizes and gauges. Since I have knit socks with Priscilla Gibson-Roberts’ short-row heel and toe technique before, I barely even had to look at the pattern, which was nice. I still don’t much like grafting, though, and there is more of it with this pattern than in the standard paired toe decrease. As of tonight, I am about an inch from starting the heel of the second sock.

Also for variety’s sake (ahem), I managed to start a pair of socks for my mom, in Regia Jubilee Colors #5466. I am doing these toe-up, with short row heels and toes, to avoid grafting; I used #0 needles for durability in the foot, and switched to my lovely rosewood #1s for the cuff. After taking this picture, I actually finished off the sock, and am ready to cast on for the second one (but not until after I work the heel on my dad’s second sock, promise!).

Regarding Yarn

I keep hearing so much about Trekking that I asked my mom to see if she could track some down in Littleton (more re: Salem as sock yarn vacuum later). She did, and in husband-friendly (non)colors, though I think this is a printed self-striping colorway that is atypical of Trekking, so the quest continues. As for the yarn itself, I was pleased with it. I had little trouble with splitting, and it worked up into a nice solid—but not stiff—fabric that promises to be durable. Time will tell. It is definitely a bit scratchy for my sensitive skin, but I’m going to work up a swatch with my leftovers from Jeremy’s socks and wash it to see if that will soften it up at all. If so, I may use my third skein of it to knit a pair of Jaywalkers (after two pairs, the plain gray stripes are starting to lose my interest).

I liked the Regia Jubilee Colors a lot more than I thought I would, based on how it looked in the ball. The photo above is a little harsh. As for the self-patterning, it is lovely, but too busy to sustain anything but straight stockinette. I’m not sure if it was just because I have been knitting all these Trekking socks on #0s, but when I started the toe on #1s with this yarn, it seemed a bit loose, though that isn’t a problem on the cuff.

And now for a mini-tirade, courtesy of Salem local yarn stores:

I walked to the closer of Salem’s two yarn stores on Saturday (it’s about a mile and a half from my house; the other one is out of walking distance), after stupidly fracturing one of my bendy little bamboo #0 toothpicks. Since I had to walk all that way anyhow, I decided to make the most of the trip and get some more sock yarn, either in neutrals for Jeremy and my dad, or pretty handpaints for me and my mom, and whoever else I know that would like pretty handpainted socks. Um, no. Although they had the DPNs I wanted (I love you, 5″ Britanny Birches!), the sock yarn selection was pitifully lacking, even more than usual. A little self-patterning Opal, Regia, and Cascade Sassy Stripes, some Wildfoote, and—count ‘em—exactly two skeins of CTH Supersock Merino, in colorways prominently featuring orange (no thanks). They carry absolutely no other options for handpainted sock yarn–Koigu, Lorna’s Laces, Fleece Artist, Mountain Colors, Socks that Rock, anyone?–or even any cotton yarns, such as Fortissima Cotton or Fixation. Not to mention that there were virtually no neutral, simple options for fussy husbands, other than plain old black (bleh!). When I brought up this sad state of affairs to one of the owners, she acted as though she was unaware that there were even other options out in the world than the yarns she carried in her store. This non-helpful, blase response is what I get every time I try to shop there (laceweight yarn? what’s that?), and I’ve virtually (heehee) resorted to shopping online for my knitting needs, or asking my mom to browse her better-stocked Denver stores.

End mini-tirade.

At any rate, I really wanted to pick out some sock yarn in person, so I ended up getting two balls of Opal Rainforest yarn in Owl and Ladybug. The Owl was the most neutral yarn I could find (still too fancy for Jeremy, though), and the Ladybug made me think of my mom and grandma, so that will eventually be socks for one or the other.

Dead Soldiers

Last but not least, I want to comment briefly about the casualties of this recent bout of sock knitting. I already mentioned the sadly fractured bamboo needle, a foolish mistake on my part in which I bent over to pick up an escaping ball of yarn with my knitting on my lap. The broken needle is one of my Lantern Moon rosewood #1s: it snapped before I even had a chance to knit with it or put any pressure on it whatsoever. I was naturally dismayed, and wrote to the company to find out if they could send me a replacement needle. They promptly did so, and sent not only one replacement, but a whole new set, so now I have 4 extras in the event of future catastrophes. Now that’s good service.

Didn’t get quite as much done today as I was hoping. I had a plan for dealing with some of the colors that I wanted to start introducing—it all worked so perfectly in my mind, but when I went to apply my theory in paint, something went wrong. So I spent some time removing the wet paint I had just applied. Oh well… I did manage to get most of the figures completely blocked in. I’m told that it is important to have everything in the painting working at once. Failure to do so will often end up with a painting that looks patchy. Hopefully I will be able to avoid that. May try to get a first pass at one of the heads tomorrow or perhaps finish the block in.

- Jeremy

I hope that no one had their heart set on one of the other colors….

It took literally took about twenty dollars of oil paint to cover the background, and that was using mostly earth tones (earth tones are generally the least expensive oil paints).

I’m planning on doing some more painting tomorrow, hopefully I’ll have more pictures late tomorrow night or early Wednesday morning. I’ve also got a critique with Martha Erlebacher on Wednesday, which means that I should have sufficiently altered the painting to the point that she’ll try to spin me back to the way I was thinking before Vincent had his say…

Wish me Luck,

– Jeremy

So, obviously I was feeling a bit spun around after that last critique. New strategy is to work out the color schemes, and in particular to determine what will be the background color. Perhaps background color is too simple a term—basically I’m not looking for a monotone hue, but rather something that I cannot only label, but push to warms and cools, darks and lights. I did three quick oil sketches with potential background hues on Friday. Three paintings in one day, I guess that’s a record for me. It is very important to be able to do these quick sketches and to allow oneself to have the confidence to make something which is not finished and aesthetic. I learned quite a lot in doing these sketches, and I would admonish any artist out there to work at getting good at developing the facility of the oil sketch. It will be an invaluable skill.

Here’s some shots of the sketches (they are all about 5″x7″):

This one is based on yellow ochre

This one is what I call the old-master green

This is a vitriolic red made from alizarine and flesh ochre (mostly)

I’ve decided that I want to go with the yellow one. I know I can make the green one work, and as such it feels like a safe choice. It’s based on the old-master green that I love (ivory black and yellow ochre). It’s sort of my default choice when I don’t know what else to do in the background, which is another reason to avoid it. The red is obnoxious, which can be a good thing. There are some great red paintings: Sargent did a great full length portrait of a physician in a violent red robe set against bright red curtains. It can be done, but it takes a confidence that one won’t have any other issues with the painting than working out the chromatic and temperature problems of the red. I like the yellow; I also spent a good deal of time mixing out different half-tones of the yellow ocher I was using as the base, mixing it with different whites, unbleached titanium, naples yellow, burnt sienna, raw umber, sepia extra and even ultramarine violet.

I think I’ve got what I need in terms of information to proceed. My only real concern is that the flesh tones will melt too much into the similar values of the background. I’ll just have to make sure that I don’t match the value and temperature anywhere along the silhouette. Last semester it sort of dawned on me that the actual hue was the least important aspect of the ‘color’. If you get the correct value and temperature, you can pretty much select any hue you like and the forms will read properly. That is not to say the hues should be selected arbitrarily; if you can place complementary but slightly antagonistic hues next to each other, but still have them all sit in place on the larger form, the color will be that much more alive. I need to constantly remind myself not to get caught up in naming colors (once you name something, you stop exploring it) and that all colors should be tertiary colors (that is, they contain all three of the primary colors to varying degrees).

Wish me luck…

– Jeremy

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had an individual critique with Vincent Desiderio. This is the reason that one comes to school in New York City: to have an opportunity to interact with world class artists like Vincent Desiderio. I am really extremely fortunate to have had such an opportunity.

This was actually my third critique of the year with Vincent. The previous two dialogues were more on the level of composition and conception, which were equally illuminating. If I may summarize his opinions, he believes that Art is one of the few places left for one to exert an individual voice. Which means that painting, which the art world has been trying to destroy since abstraction became institutionalized, is one of the few truly human venues left. In a digital world where literally everything we come in contact with on a daily basis is mass-produced, it is a compelling—if romantic—world view. However, subscribing to such an idea means working to create paintings which are worthy of evoking the human, or rather, not producing works with any taint of banality or sentimentality. A worthy endeavor to be sure, but necessarily much more difficult than simply making a pretty picture.

Today’s discussion was less theoretical, but no less useful. I’m writing about the experience partly to help the advice I received to gel in my own mind, and partly because I know there are many people out there who would love to have had the experience.

Some of the thoughts:

• The essence of color is in the half-lights, these areas need to sing
• Need to think about the color of the light as well as the color of the environment
• The half-lights will be reflecting pools of the environmental colors and often quite chromatic (think Delacroix)
• For this reason, it is critical to get a background tone in very early on in the under-painting. It is impossible to paint the half-tones without knowing what the ambient hues will be
• This is also why wipe-outs immediately look ‘good’ the lights are separated from the darks and the half-tones are the same chromatically as the ambient color
• Despite evidence to the contrary, no great painter ever worked on true or even monochromatic grisaille. (I mentioned the Ingres painting in the Met that is described as an under-painting, but Vincent claims that the work was done to be used for creating a toned engraving and not as a painting)
• Think about working in a “chromatic grisaille”
• Temperature changes are one of the most effective ways of creating volume and getting forms to turn, you cannot leave this to the latter stages of the painting. Work on getting the temperature changes from the start. Warm lights will usually have cool shadows and vice versa
• Capitalize on temperature changes to get forms to come forward or recede
• Chalkiness and muddiness can usually be traced to the light and shadows having homogenous temperatures, e.g. cool light and cool shadows
• Use your brightest light to organize the rest of the painting hierarchically
• Pump the contrast, paintings should jump off the wall in terms of value
• Trying to make brown ‘old-master’ paintings is inaccurate pastiche; the old-masters never made dark paintings—they were full of light. Paintings should not be dark, they should be illuminated
• The use of a limited palette may be a form of reductivism and is not based on actual historical studio practice. It’s alright to start with a limited palette but you should quickly move on to a full palette
• Work the entire canvas at once, it all has to work together chromatically, tonally and hierarchically. You cannot do this if you work piecemeal
• Work in robust opposition to the ground tone, if the ground is dark and transparent, put in a background that is light and opaque.
• Even with indirect painters, 90% of the painting is direct painting

Obviously I need to take some time to digest and formulate a new strategy for continuing my painting. I think a trip to the Met is in order—I need to see how much of this I can corroborate with the ‘old-masters’ and thereby internalize and make it part of my own studio practice.

Vincent Desiderio has been termed by Donald Kuspit as a ‘new old-master’ and one of the artists who is going to save the art world from itself. There’s a new monograph of Vincent’s work out as well: if you aren’t familiar with his work, I would definitely recommend checking it out.

– Jeremy

I’ve put in three solid days working on the under-painting. Most of it is still a first pass to block in the major masses and try to find the contour while building up some texture. Though you probably can’t see it, I’ve done a second pass over my hand and Leah’s leg (the one I’m holding). Hopefully tomorrow morning (when there is real light out again), I can get a better detail photo of that passage to convey a sense of what the more finished under-painting will look like. I’ve also got a critique with Vincent Desiderio tomorrow morning. So wish me luck with that.

– Jeremy

I have been pining for a digital SLR camera for a while now. I’m not sure if Julie simply got tired of my complaining about the noise levels (noise refers to the amount of digital artifacts or bad data in the image) of my old Olympus point-and-shoot, though I’m pretty sure that had an effect on the end result. Perhaps it was just in the cards, given that the largest camera trade show is occurring later this month, which means that all of the major manufacturers are going to be announcing new digital cameras. This also means that major retailers need to get rid of surplus stock of the current generation of cameras to make room for the soon-to-be-released models. One might expect that waiting until after the show would be the optimal time to purchase; however, experience has taught me that to survive in the internet age, large retailers must shed most of the bulk of their stock before the replacement models hit the shelves. Ironically, this mean that the ‘older’ models actually become more expensive after the announcements.

What this all means is that I was able to find a deal (discounted price with multiple coupons) on a Nikon D50 kit (camera and single lens) which was good enough that it was worth scraping together the money to make the purchase. The bargain being that said camera would have to suffice simultaneously as a birthday, Valentine’s day, President’s day, St. Patrick’s day, Spring Break, Easter, April Fool’s Day and graduation present.

As Paul was about to come to NYC for a visit, and I have only a few months left in such a photogenic locale, it was possible to justify the expense. It sounds easy now, but poor Julie had to listen to me debate the relative merits of all the options back and forth for several days (or was it months?).

I am also very much indebted to Julie’s parents, Nelson and Rita, who sent me a generous check for my birthday. That was used to subsidize the cost of the new camera.

Don’t know if anyone out there noticed—perhaps not since the photos on the web are typically quite small and of reduced quality (optimized for download speed rather than image quality)—but all of the photos I’ve taken since February 2nd have been with the new Nikon camera. Having used the camera for a couple of weeks now, I must say that I couldn’t be happier with the purchase. It is an excellent camera, especially considering the cost. If you’re in the market, as they say, I do recommend picking one up. There’s also an exceptionally extensive review online, if you’d like a second opinion.

I feel like I should show a picture at this point, so here’s the sunset as it appeared out my window on St. Valentine’s Day. Even though it is not a larger image than I normally post, it is a higher quality image so it may take a few seconds to load. But, as they say, the view is worth it.

– Jeremy

I have not been idle the past couple of weeks. I completed head studies of all the principle characters in my composition and I have moved on with the final support, finally getting into some real painting today. Here are the head studies: I’m really pleased with the way the one of Tayler turned out; the others all have small issues, but it was enough to do the transfer.

Once the head studies were completed, I ran them through a copier to reduce or enlarge them to the correct size for the final support and then transferred the important points onto the canvas.

Once that was done I put down a ground tone. There really are only a couple of occasions for one to work on a white canvas; for example, when working in an impressionist vernacular. For most paintings, it behooves the artist to create some non-white tone to lay down thinly. The tone can really be anything, but it can be helpful to set the mood for the entire composition. Often it is helpful to think about what the dominant hue and value of the finished work will be and then choose the compliment as the ground tone. It’s probably difficult to tell from the photo, but I’ve mixed up Blue-Black with Yellow Ochre and Cremitz White to make a light blue-green tone. While nothing of this color will be apparent in the final image, applying the ground tone in a very streaky and broken manner can enhance what is sometimes referred to as ‘the mystery of surface’ in the final layers. That is to say, they help to build up an uneven texture than makes the final work more interesting to look at, though most would be unable to say why.

Once the ground tone dried, I was able to start in with some real painting. There is no art to laying in the ground tone: it should be done quickly and without a lot of pre-mediated brush strokes. Starting a wipe-out is similar. Take two complimentary colors to create a neutral brown color. It helps to select a warm and a cool color and not mix the two completely so that some portions of the canvas are randomly slightly warmer and others cooler. Alizarine Crimson and Sap Green are a good choice; here I’ve used Transparent Red-Oxide and Blue Black. Again, streaky and random brush strokes are desirable. Once that is on the canvas, work begins in earnest. Here I’ve spend a couple of hours working out some of the lights and darks for the overall composition. One can spend a great deal of time working on the wipe-out, almost like working up a finished grisaille painting (think Mark Tansey).

Personally I’ve found that the wipe-out is useful for starting to correct drawing problems, but that as I move on to the more opaque layers of paint I tend to cover it completely, so I’ve started to shy away from doing a very intricate wipe-out (though you may note that I have moved a number of contour lines in this layer).

I spent the rest of the day getting mixed-up. That is to say, I mixed out a number of half-tones of a venetian palette that Martha Erlebacher taught us. Basically it’s a 5 x 3 grid of paint tones the top row is made by adding Indian Red to Cremitz White, then that row is split down and Ivory Black is added to neutralize the chroma and add some lavender colors to the grid. I’ll take a picture tomorrow and add that; it’s much easier to understand with a photo than in words.

Update: here’s a photo of my palette.

I used a fair amount of thinner in the wipe-out layer, so hopefully it will be dry enough to paint on tomorrow. I’m planning on using the venetian palette for the flesh, and a true grisaille for the fabric. Still not entirely sure how I’m going to put in the background, though I’ve been leaning towards a old-master green made from Yellow Ochre and Ivory Black (yes, black and yellow make green— didn’t they teach you that in primary school? )

– Jeremy

The reports are true: the Northeast is covered in a blanket of white. It has been snowing fiercly for the past 24 hours, though it seems to be letting up now. I can actually see the church out my window again—before it was barely discernable through the cloud of snow. Here’s a picture of the Riverside Church as seen through my window…. note the foot of snow on my windowsill.

– Jeremy

Tuesday – February 7th

Paul’s last full day in NYC. We decided that a trip to NYC without visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art would be incomplete at best, so early in the morning we made our way across Central Park to that mecca in the cult of culture. Here’s a shot of the facade.

We arrived before 10:30 and stayed until they started to close up at quarter past 5. A day well spent indeed, and despite the length of time we were at the museum there were whole room, nay, wings that we didn’t even set foot in. I have always thought that the Met is one of the few places in Manhattan that does not feel like Manhattan. Most locations attempt to pack so much in per square foot that there is barely enough room to maneuver (just ask Paul about sharing a room in the I.House). However, in the Met, there are vast open courtyards and entire rooms that are simply there to house, for instance, an honest-to-goodness Egyptian temple.

We saw too much to enumerate here, but the list includes Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya, Velasquez, Poussin, Tiepolo, Duccio, Van Eyck, Rubens, Raphael, Titian, Cranach, Memling, Caravaggio, Sargent, Eakins, Whistler, Cassat, Homer, Van Gogh, Renoir, Manet, Monet, Degas, Rodin, Carpeaux, Cannova, Houdon, Negrioli, and Stradivarius, among many others.

After leaving the Met, we met up with Tara, Loren and Jee for another dinner, this time at a little French Bistro known as Camaje. Oddly, this was one of the first restaurants that I found in NYC: it is charmingly small, comfortable, and affordable (considering it’s location in NYC). Paul enjoyed the halibut while Jee and I took the shrimp and avocado salad sandwich, Tara a panini sandwich, and Loren the Kobe burger (in which he found no end of delight to the fact that it was less expensive than the burgers in Kobe are). We shared a couple of crepes for a (pre-dessert) dessert. All agreed the food was delicious. And in a sign of his magnanimity and despite sincere protestations, Paul refused to allow the rest of us to pay for our portions of the meal.

After the meal, we walked up the block to view the Washington Square Arch near the campus of New York University. (It was awfully cold that night.)

Then on to another dessert place near Amy’s Bread, where we sat and debated matters both of import and banality as only graduate students may, all the while munching on a variety of dainties and dessert beverages. Several hours later, we decided to call it a night and thus ended another enjoyable evening, as well as Paul’s sojourn in Manhattan. Back to the grind for me…

– Jeremy