Lesley Spanos Art » Places

Mr. Bee Poses For His Portrait

Lesley Spanos — Sun, 20 May 2012 19:51:32 +0000

I don’t know why I love the Bumble Bee Bop so much. I guess part of the reason is because these guys are always cheerful, and just so darn cute.

Then there’s pure artistic admiration. The designers managed to create believable personalities from basic shapes that remind me of a giant billiard ball stacked on top of a giant yellow golf ball. The simplest designs can be the most effective! These bees have no moving parts – the head doesn’t turn, and the arms are stationary – yet from every angle they present a different expression. Sometimes it’s “Ta Da!” or “Peace, brother.” This one’s my favorite, the humble “Oh, gosh, you want to paint little ol’ me?” look.

There’s a new Angry Birds theme park in Finland. Their version of the Bumble Bee Bop features the Big Brother bird from the game. Too cute!

Available on Artfire

The Buzz

Lesley Spanos — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 22:08:12 +0000

It seems like months since these happy little bees rolled into the state fairgrounds on the back of a truck, but really, it was just over two weeks ago. My husband was over at fairgrounds as the carnival rides were arriving for the fair, and snapped some photos of the unassembled Bumble Bee Bop ride – the cutest ride in the world – knowing I’d jump at the chance to paint it. I got to work on it right away, but then the Fair started, and I put it aside as I went into information gathering mode. I only get eighteen days to gather reference material for the rest of the year, so I have to make the most of it. I shot – and organized – thousands of photos and hours of video. I sketched, and took notes for my book. Sometimes I just sat and soaked up the atmosphere. I love the fair.

Last Saturday morning, the weather was gorgeous and moods were light. Someone was playing classic rock from the ’70s over the PA system, and people were singing to themselves. Bye, bye, Miss American Pie, and welcome to the Hotel California. I saw one woman dancing in the street, and I swear, if the rest of us felt we could sing and dance we would’ve joined her in an impromptu performance. I watched weiner dog races, a pole vaulting demonstration, and the Governor’s wife as she lead a fitness walk around the grounds. It was one of the best mornings ever at the fair.

That evening, everything changed. Just before Sugarland went onstage for their show, the roof at the main concert stage collapsed in a sudden freak storm, killing 5 6 people and injuring dozens. I had planned to be there that night, but after long back-to-back photo sessions the night before and that morning, I was exhausted, and after a few days at the fair, the cupboard was bare. So instead of going to the fair, I went to the supermarket. On my way out of the store, I was caught in the storm, and I can say firsthand that the wind was utterly freakish. It came out of nowhere, and was strong enough to rock my Jeep. It wasn’t a storm, but a hammer blow from the sky.

The fair was cancelled Sunday, so all we could do was watch the sad news on television. Monday, the fair reopened, but I didn’t go. I had planned to shoot the rodeo that day, but every event scheduled for the grandstand – the rodeo, concerts, harness racing, demolition derby, and fireworks – was cancelled. So I worked on the Bumble Bee Bop painting. I thought the bees would lift my mood, but really, I was annoyed at them for being so cheerful. That’s probably why it took me so long to finish them.

This week I’ve been forced to think about what my State Fair USA project is about. I thought it was all fun, rides, cute animals, and junk food, but maybe I need to dig deeper than that. Someone on the news called the State Fair a “family reunion in Indiana’s back yard.” As a non-native observer, I’d never thought of it that way. Now I feel the need to work more relationships into my paintings.

Here are some shots from yesterday. Due to the ongoing investigation, the roof has not been moved, so it’s a constant reminder of the tragedy.

The band Sugarland lost all their gear in the accident, and had to leave their trailers behind. Thursday they were able to retrieve some of it, but this trailer remained. Their logo and graphics are the best, ever.

Two tragedies: The Pepsi Coliseum looms over the broken stage at the Indiana state fairgrounds. During an Ice Capades performance in 1963, a propane explosion killed 74 people in the Coliseum. On the plus side, The Beatles performed in both locations.

A growing memorial under the grandstand.

Dusk on the Midway

Lesley Spanos — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:52:12 +0000

Dusk is my favorite time to photograph the midway. As blue skies deepen, the lights begin to sparkle. The hot, humid day gives way to cooling breezes, and the grandstand pulses to the beat of an American Idol. There’s a little extra excitement in the air. We’re going to have some fun tonight!

This is my first experience using Ampersand Aquabord. (Not a misspelling. Ampersand calls all their boards “‘bord.”) As the name implies, this surface designed for water media. I picked up some on sale, thinking if I hated it I could always use it to mount prints or paper. But I liked it. With some more experience, I think I could do some cool things on this surface. The gesso is absorbent, like paper, so I used that to my advantage for the initial soft washes (first image, below). When the background was dry, I sealed it with binder medium so the “bord” wouldn’t be quite so absorbent as I painted subsequent layers. I’m not ready to give up my beloved Gessobord, but it’s nice to have options.

Some paintings gradually come into focus as elements are layered into the scene. This is one of them. I’ve watched this carnival being built from the asphalt up, and I’ve painted it in much the same way. Here are a few images I saved along the way:

Available on Zatista

Rivalry

Lesley Spanos — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:07:43 +0000

Their trappings are bright and colorful, yet their faces are frozen in eternal screams. I can hear them when I paint them. Yet in all my hours photographing carousels, I’ve never seen a child shy away from them.

This is a warmup sketch for a larger painting. Lately my painting has been too timid and still, so my goal was to forget the preliminary drawing, throw some paint around, and have faith that in the end it would work.

Here are some photos taken along the way:

Available on Zatista

Bumble Bee Bop

Lesley Spanos — Mon, 30 May 2011 23:31:29 +0000

Bumble Bee Bop. I love that name! It sounds like something adult bees do to make baby bees. It’s actually a kiddie ride found in carnivals and small amusement parks. Those goofy, cheerful bees have been calling to my paintbrushes for some time now.

If you want to see photos of this painting in progress, hit the “read more” button.

Here are a few images taken along the way:

tyiuyo

The Palladium

Lesley Spanos — Tue, 17 May 2011 19:10:50 +0000

This is the newly built Palladium, a 1600 seat concert hall in Carmel-by-the-Interstate, Indiana. Those of you who remember your art history might notice its resemblance to Andrea Palladio’s (1508-1580) La Rotunda. Palladio was also influential in the field of theater design as the architect of the Olympic Theater, which still stands in Vicenza. The Palladium combines aspects of both designs. It’s a graceful monument to the arts built of limestone, tile, marble, and plaster.

Last week I attended a PBS taping of a Micheal Feinstein special there, and felt inspired to paint it. My husband provided a photo taken on his iphone.

The interior of The Palladium

By a Nose

Lesley Spanos — Sun, 08 May 2011 01:15:02 +0000

I began this painting on Kentucky Derby day in honor of all horses who run in circles. I didn’t expect it to be a three-day painting! The details really grabbed me.

This painting is available on the Daily Paintworks auction. Auction ends next Monday, and I’m starting it at a low price of $100.

Here are some images taken along the way:

Bid on Auction

Krembo

Lesley Spanos — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:31:41 +0000

Here’s another one from the Blue Monkey Sideshow. This is Krembo, the Master of Cermonies, a dashing and authentic figure with his Wild Bill Hickok beard and hair. If you want to see Krembo and all the Monkey Men in action, check out their video below:

Pretty cool, huh?

Here are a few images taken along the way:

Sideshow

Lesley Spanos — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:57:14 +0000

A new one from my State Fair USA series. These sword-swallowing, bed-of-nails-laying, walking-on-broken-glass,swinging-paint-cans-from-nipples guys are from the Blue Monkey Sideshow, based in Indianapolis. It’s a fun show and they create an authentic vibe with their costuming and some really cool painted drops. Painting them was great fun, and I’m sure they’ll be on my drawing board again sometime in the near future.

Here are a few images taken along the way:

After toning the surface, I roughed in a sketch with pastel…

… then defined it further with waterproof marker. Once the marker lines were in, I rubbed off the pastel.

Starting to rough in the faces with thin layers of paint. At this point I’m not trying to get a likeness, just something that looks rounded and human.

Starting to refine the faces a little…

…and even more…

…and even more.

Now that the faces have some dimension, I start the process of trying to make each look like the character I’m portraying. Notice how the guy with the shaved head has gotten a personality and longer, less squishy face since the last step?

A few more details and I’m finally done.

Gotta love a guy who wears a dog collar with a tie.

Scrambled

Lesley Spanos — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:19:19 +0000

Still working on my State Fair series, and loving it! My latest painting in the series is taken from a photo I took last summer of people riding the Scrambler after dark. I love how the guy on the left looks like he’s going to hurl at any moment. I used to feel the same way when I rode those things. That’s why I don’t do it anymore.

Here are some images taken along the way:

I started with a loose marker sketch over a toned background. At this point I thought the guy on the left looked like a caveman in a Geico commercial.

Adding paint as sparingly as possible. My goal was to use the toned ground for the lighter shadows and just hit the middle tones and highlights with paint.

I can’t believe how little paint I put on the left side of the ride car, yet it looks really good. That’s my favorite part of the painting.

Painting the girl’s face made me a little nervous, because I have never done well with teeth and open mouths. Or faces, for that matter. So I pulled from my mind a vision of a work I spent some time memorizing in the Met a few years ago – Degas’ Singer In Green. I just kept telling myself to channel Degas as I layered with dry-brushed acrylic. It actually sort of worked, in the sense that it’s easier to imitate someone when you’re feeling unsure.

Next came the guy on the right. His head was at a tough angle to draw, plus I had to do more teeth. Looks a bit like chef Mario Batali, doesn’t he?

The final stage was about texture and lighting. I wanted to suggest hair on the arms and legs of the guys, so I used a few directional strokes and was pleased with the results.

The darkest darks and lightest lights were added last. And voila, we’re done!

The Merry Jester

Lesley Spanos — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:25:14 +0000

This is the image that got me interested in doing a State Fair series. I love how the carving sparkles. My favorite time to photograph an outdoor carousel is around sunset. That’s when it comes to life, when it’s just dark enough for the glow of the bulbs to be visible, yet there’s still enough daylight to give it form. This time of day sets me up for a pleasing mix of complementary colors, from the the cool reflected colors of the sky to the warmth of the electric lights.

Here’s a shot taken in the morning:

See how flat and uninteresting the molded carvings look when the light is less than ideal?

Here are some images taken along the way:

After tinting the board with reds, I blocked in the masses with paint instead of drawing lines. Sometimes you just need to dive right in to the paint.

I refined as much of the drawing as I could with the brush before picking up a pen.

The face is the hardest part, so I decided to knock it out first. I would love to know who the artist used as a model. He looks a lot like entertainer/’80s talk show host John Davidson to me.

Acrylics are ideal for paintings like this because they dry quickly, allowing me to draw the intricate carvings directly over the paint minutes after it’s applied. I wouldn’t be able to do that with oils. Because my markers are water soluble, I can wipe off mistakes quickly with a wet paper towel.

The sky looked more like paint than sky, so I redid it. The key to getting a sky you can look through is using a variety of colors. In this case, it was violets, greens, and yellows. Anything but blue.

The bulbs on the carousel have a swirly pattern in the glass, so when I applied the paint I swirled it like the frosting on top of a cupcake. It doesn’t show in the scan, but I like the way it looks in real life.

Adding the final carvings. I’m so glad I chose acrylics for this piece so I could quickly build up these layers. I’m intentionally leaving some areas loose. I usually want my paint to look like paint, suggesting a surface rather than tightly mimicking it.

I thought the carvings at the bottom would be hard, but they were actually kind of fun. It was just a matter of laying in a mid-tone, followed by darks, then highlights.

This one was so much fun, I might need to do it again, larger.

Pop-Up Showers

Lesley Spanos — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 00:07:08 +0000

The local weather people like to forecast “pop-up showers.” Cracks me up every time I hear it. I’m reminded of the old “Pop-up Videos” on VH1. This painting shows the aftermath of one of these brief Midwestern storms at the Indiana State Fair a couple of years ago.

Meander

Lesley Spanos — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:55:40 +0000

This week Bill Guffey’s Virtual Paintout explores the islands of Hawaii. It was hard to narrow it down to one image out of the fourteen I chose, but eventually I settled on this beach scene in Hau’ula, Hawaii, on the northeast shore of Oahu:
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If I could go for a walk on a beach like that every morning, I could give up caffeine…

No. 1059

Lesley Spanos — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:39:29 +0000

Trolley No. 1059 was built in 1948 and acquired by San Francisco in 1992 to become part of their historic streetcar collection. Though it served in Philadelphia, the car is painted to represent the Boston Elevated Railway Co..

Our location is on the Embarcadero at a stop near the Ferry Building, with the Bay Bridge in the background:
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Pretty, eh?

This week my goal was to not murder the paint by working it to death, so I limited myself to only one hour. Got finished in only 50 minutes. Yay! I’d love to have a bigger version of this one for my wall, so I might try it again when I have a big birch panel on hand.

Many thanks to Lee Brown for providing yet another spectacular HDR photo for his A Day Not Wasted June challenge. His process removes most of the “bad” stuff artists encounter when painting from photographic references, like dead shadows and blown out highlights. His photos are so lifelike it’s almost like painting on location.

Available on Artfire

Hey! Google!

Lesley Spanos — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:27:36 +0000

This month’s Virtual Paintout is in the Czech Republic. Finding a subject was difficult for me, until I came across this guy mugging for the Google Street Views camera. I liked him. Here he is on Street Views:
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I’ve seen collections of images of girls baring their chests for the Google cameras, but haven’t come across that yet while roaming the virtual streets.

Here are a few images taken along the way:

Gran Canaria Highway

Lesley Spanos — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:19:55 +0000

This one almost ended up in the dumpster. It’s another piece I started for Bill Guffey’s Virtual Paintout, but things didn’t go the way I planned.

This time we’re on the island of Gran Canaria, one of Spain’s Canary Islands:

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Such a beautiful place! I want to be on that road driving a convertible with the wind whipping my hair.

Here are a few shots taken along the way:

I like the look of taped edges on a gouache, so I began by masking off the margins with clear packing tape. The tape needs to be burnished thoroughly so the pigment won’t bleed through.

Since I can’t draw a straight line, much less paint one (see last painting), I’ve indicated the water line in pencil.

Color is blocked in quickly.

Starting to refine and add some detail.

This was the finished piece when I packed up my paints for the day. It wasn’t working for me, and I was ready to toss it in the trash and chalk it up to experience.

This morning when I came into the studio, that big empty space in the middle was staring at me, and I realized what it needed – a car! Duh! Just because it’s not in the shot doesn’t mean I can’t pull one up from another Street View, right? So I traveled a little further up the virtual highway and found this one:
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I have a hard time drawing cars and it looks a bit wonky, but it improves the composition enough so I don’t hate the painting so much anymore. A few more adjustments, like greying the highway, and it’s done. Yay!

Tenerife Overlook

Lesley Spanos — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:00:03 +0000

Every month I tell myself I should participate in Bill Guffey’s Virtual Paintout, but I never get past the planning stage. Google’s Street View is too addicting. I get caught up in wandering the virtual streets looking for the perfect painting location, always sure there’s a slightly better angle or view just around the corner. I keep going like a cartoon donkey following a carrot on a stick and never choose a spot. For the current Canary Islands challenge I decided to bypass information overload and just pick a spot and paint. Since I love the ocean – and frankly, didn’t want to struggle with buildings and perspective – I restricted my search to a random five mile stretch on the southern coast of the island of Tenrife.

Here’s my chosen location:
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Google uses a pod-like cluster of cameras on top of a mast on the roof of the car, so the view is much higher than normal eye level for anyone but an oversized NBA athlete. In addition, the images are taken through wide angle lenses and stitched together, so the photos are distorted in odd ways, and sometimes bits are missing. When drawing from Google Stree View, we can either make the most of the quirky distorted look, or try to get rid of it.

I don’t like my paintings to look like they were copied from photos, so I try to get rid of the distortion. Easier said than done. I try to imagine I’m there and paint from the image in my mind, rather than copy the digital image in front of me. To help with that process, I put the photo behind me on the computer screen across the room, and glanced at it as little as possible. It worked for everything but the car.

Not much in-progress work to show this week. The acrylic paint was drying fast (the painting took less than two hours) and there was no time to shoot. I started with the standard red underpainting, which you can see in the car area. My favorite spot in the painting is the area in the water below the sun where the red shows through.

Sedona Morning

Lesley Spanos — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:37:50 +0000

What’s that wretched creaking sound? Must be my rusty painting skills! It seems like all my creative focus lately has been on planning paintings, rather than actually painting. But then along comes a good art challenge, and like the challenge whore I am, I can’t help but play along. This one is hosted by Lee Brown on his A Day Not Wasted blog. An artist and photographer himself, Lee is providing some drool-worthy HDR photos that are an absolute pleasure to work from. No dead shadows in his work! Go see his Sedona Sunrise Challenge yourself for some great visual treats, and play along, if you’re so inclined.

This one didn’t exactly fall off the brushes, but at least I finished something. Here are a few photos taken along the way:

Starting with a loose brush sketch over a red ground. When I sketch with a brush, I use an angled flat, which makes good lines as well as filling in large areas quickly. With the paint, I tried to approximate the tone of the deepest shadows.

As the painting progresses, I try to let bits of the red show through. Easier said than done.

Here’s where I wish I’d stopped. I prefer the painting at this stage because it’s looser, warmer, and the values are closer together. But, as usual, I thought it needed to be more finished…

…so I tightened up the details and added more light and contrast. Now it looks more like 10am than sunrise.

I really loved how those twigs in the foreground caught the light in the reference photo, but I was having a devil of a time painting them with a brush, so I scratched them out with an exacto knife. I had to really dig in to get down to clean gesso. It was an okay experiment, but next time I’ll make the lines more “lost and found” rather than continuous, ’cause that’s how twigs catch the light.

Many thanks to Lee Brown for a fun challenge!

Telegraph Hill

Lesley Spanos — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:10:34 +0000

This was one of those crazy weeks when I thought I’d never get anything done for the current Different Strokes From Different Folks challenge hosted by Karin Jurick. My first mistake was forgetting to seal the paper before I started painting in oils. The paper sucked all the oils out of the paint and it felt like Play-Doh under my brush. I should’ve just started over, but I kept torturing myself with it. Here’s where it was when I abandoned it:

It didn’t totally suck – the light was okay in parts of it – but I didn’t like how tentative it looked. It was obvious I was unsure of myself and was adding detail just because I didn’t know what else to do.

I needed to loosen up, and it was too early in the day for wine, so I turned on some music, got out my acrylics, out and did a quickie:

Not pretty, but it got me out of that paint-every-detail mindset so I could move on. I started wondering how much detail I could omit and still have it read as a street on a hill. Using the same colors I used in the first painting, I painted this:

I almost left it like that, but I thought it needed a couple more identifying elements:

Hopefully now it looks more like city streets than a canyon.

I tried a new technique to get the telephone pole straight: I dipped the edge a piece of cardboard in paint and stamped it on.

This is going to be one of those paintings people either like, or will say “WTF?”

Just in case any of you artists are still working on this challenge and need a street view of some of the finer details, here’s the location:
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This is actually a block closer than Karin’s view, at the 3-way intersection at the bottom of the hill. I know that view well – Karin was probably next to the San Francisco Art Institute when she took the reference photo. There’s a cable car line that goes from Taylor to Columbus in this intersection, so painting in a cable car wouldn’t be out of the question. (I thought about it…) Just around the corner on Columbus, you’ll see the world famous Bimbo’s 365 Club. Up at the top of Telegraph Hill a couple of blocks over is Coit Tower, which has some really cool murals in it.

Chicago Lifeguard

Lesley Spanos — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:58:25 +0000

Here’s the latest challenge from Karin Jurick’s Different Strokes From Different Folks. This time we’re painting a floating lifeguard on Lake Michigan. I wonder what it’s like out there, isolated on that little boat for hours at a time? Is it a fun way to spend the summer, or the world’s more boring job?

Here are some images taken along the way. I spent too much time watching the Michael Jackson memorial on TV, so no time left for commentary today:

She Brings Lemonade

Lesley Spanos — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:50:56 +0000

She brings lemonade for her man, and water for the horses. Is it any different than when I bring my husband a beer while he’s working on his Jeep on a hot day?

This is another painting for Karin Jurick’s Different Strokes From Different Folks painting challenge. This time we’re in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I’ve never been to Lancaster County, but my ancestral roots run deep there. I’m only a couple of generations removed from making quilts instead of paintings.

A few images captured along the way:

My photo of a farmer and horses laid over Karin's photo.

I’ve got to admit that empty landscapes don’t hold my interest. Maybe because I’m a city girl, they seem sad and lonely, like empty stage sets waiting for the actors to bring them to life. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate other artist’s landscapes – some painters do fabulous things with dirt and sky! I just feel that if I want to enjoy this painting, I need to add some people. Amish people.

I use Photoshop to layer images together so I have only a single reference to work from. I was envisioning a farmer working the fields, and luckily I had photos I’d taken of a man with some horses at the state fair last summer. With a little makeover he might pass for Amish, so I traveled to Google Land to look for tips on clothes, hats, and beards. A lot of their fabrics are blue or purple – I wonder what kind of dye they’re using? Must be a natural plant dye. My guy’s going to get a nice purple shirt, because I love purple.

This time I’m painting on a bright yellow/orange/red background. The yellows will help the transparent greens to glow, and the complementary red and orange will help tone down the greens.

Blocking in the colors. I’m trying hard NOT to cover all that orange. I need some peeking through for interest.

Here I’ve added the Amish women.

The horizontal lines in the field have been changed to sweeping curves to show the woman’s path. Also, I’m hoping it helps show that we’re on a hill.

I don’t know why, but this exhausted me! Nothing seemed to go right, and I really struggled with the horses and the man. By the time I got to painting the landscape details, I realized I was out of time. Karin’s deadline for the DSFDF challenge is in a couple of hours, so I’m calling it done and submitting it. Maybe later I’ll go back and fix a couple of things, like the man’s shirt and hat.

Madison Avenue

Lesley Spanos — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:00:46 +0000

Here’s another painting for Karin Jurick’s Different Strokes From Different Folks painting challenge.

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Karen tells us that our location is the corner of Madison Avenue and 39th Street in New York City. This is useful information, because it allows me to look it up in Google Maps using Street View.

I can’t paint from a photo unless I can imagine myself inside the scene, and Google Street View helps me do that. I can see what’s behind me, up, down, on the next block, etc. I can even see that beyond that red awning there’s a McDonald’s in case I want some virtual high octane coffee while I paint. Photos are never as good as being there, but Street View is the next best thing. (BTW, if you haven’t seen it yet, check out Bill Guffey’s Virtual Paintout challenge. They paint – with Google’s blessings – from Google Street Views.)

By looking at the Google map, I can see that we’re facing north, and the time of day is probably – as I’d guessed – morning. That will help me make my color choices. Coincidentally, the Google Street View image looks like it was taken about the same time of day that Karin took her photo.

For comparison, I’ve also included Karin’s original reference photo. It’s the same scene, the same size, yet see how different these two images are? Photos DO lie! Always. Neither of these photos is completely accurate. The Google image was taken with a series of wide angle lenses, creating all sorts of distortion and making distances appear much longer than they really are. My guess is that Karin’s was taken with a bit of a telephoto, compressing distances unnaturally. The truth can be found somewhere between these two images.

If I had time, I could try to correct the distortion by drawing the buildings using perspective. But I’m in a rush, and more attracted to the cars than the skyline (I like colorful shiny things!), so I’ll focus just on the lower right corner of the reference for my painting.

Here are a few photos I took along the way:

Hmmm… what color to tone the background? Well, the tail lights are my favorite part of this photo, so let’s try “tail light color.”

The background toning is acrylic. From here on out, I’ll be using oils. I didn’t want to get too fussy, so I’m drawing directly on the panel with a brush and Mars Black oil color.

(Note: The next few in-progress images are were taken in the studio with a camera at night, and I didn’t take the time to color correct them well. Too much red, too little blue.)

The painting progresses, and I can’t make up my mind about the figure on the street corner…

A woman striking a “casual” pose?

A businessman on his way to work?

An indistinct cluster of people?

Yeah, I think I’ll go with that last one.

This final image was done on the scanner and color-corrected so it’s truer to the original painting.

Jefferson Memorial After Dark

Lesley Spanos — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:54:45 +0000

Yet another painting from Karin Jurik’s excellent “Different Strokes From Different Folks” challenge.

I’ve never been to the Jefferson Memorial, and the reference photo didn’t offer a lot of information, so I had to do a little research on this one so I could understand what I was seeing. I couldn’t tell if we were on the water side, or the land side. Knowing this was important because I wanted to brighten the dark foreground area with reflections, and I needed to know what kind of reflections to paint.

First, I pulled up the satellite image on Google Earth and calculated where Karin stood to take the photo. Okay, it looks like she was facing northeast, perhaps standing in the drive or just to the west of it. That helped me to determine that we are probably looking at an asphalt drive, cement sidewalk, and lawn in the foreground.

Here’s where it gets really anal: Early on, I was thinking about putting stars in the sky, so I switched to the Google star charts, because I wouldn’t want the wrong stars in the sky. This is a well-known monument, and there are people who would appreciate that kind of detail. Eventually I nixed this idea and went for a looser look. Still, I like knowing Cassiopeia is there somewhere. Some people can copy the colors and shapes they see in a photo and create a great painting, but I need to be able to put myself in that location in my mind and paint from “life.” I need to feel the night air on my face and know where the North Star is, even if I don’t paint it.

Next I started studying photos and reading about the monument. I figured out why the light on the dome looks the way it does, almost like flourescent rings. (The lights focused on the dome are behind short “walls.”) I learned that the tree I’m painting is probably a cherry. I stopped before I got too carried away with what was happening on the interior of the building.

Here are some photos I took during the painting process:

I started with a blueish-blackish-reddish background, and left much of it exposed. Like Karen said, it’s best to work from dark to light when doing nocturnes.

I thought I’d keep the sky smooth and add some stars, but that wasn’t working. It was so boring. So I repainted the sky wet-in-wet using all the colors used in the painting, and kicked up the reds a bit in the rest of the painting to tie it all together.

Oils would have been more suited for this because I could have blended more, but I opted for acrylics so I could frame it right away and put it up for sale.

The final step was to add a couple of people on the sidewalk, something I had to re-do four times before they finally looked human. Sort of.

Last month I ordered a box of chunky little frames with 5″ openings. Here’s how this painting looks in a couple of them:

When I offer this on Boundless Gallery I’ll let the buyer choose the one they like.

DSFDF in the news:

In just a few short months, “Different Strokes From Different Folks” has already become quite a phenomenon! Check out page 83 of this month’s issue of Southwest Art magazine for a blurb about it. Kudos to Karin Jurick and all the artists who have made it so special.

A New Day: US Capital Building

Lesley Spanos — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:58:00 +0000

“A New Day”
Acrylic on Multimedia ArtBoard, 8.5 x 15″

I feel like I’ve waited for this day longer, and with more anticipation, than I waited for Christmas as a kid. Finally, it’s Election Day in the US, and a new era is here! I’ve never felt this kind of electricity before at election time. From what I’ve heard standing in line at Obama rallies, there’s going to be partying in the streets tonight because “this is bigger than winning the Superbowl!” We’ll be celebrating more quietly at home, watching election results on TV with a bottle of champagne.

Karin Jurick provided us with a fitting challenge this week on “Different Strokes From Different Folks.” The reference photo lent itself to many interpretations. I’m on a bit of an Obama painting kick, so my first thought was to build a composite using him in the foreground. But, I decided it would be more of a challenge to paint how I feel without including him. So I made it my goal to paint one feeling: Fresh. I wanted to illustrate a fresh, clean new beginning for our government. I used a fairly high key palette and “pretty” colors. The clouds are receding, and the world is bathed in morning light. The Capitol dome is soaring toward the heavens, enduring and… oh, crap, just a little crooked. I just can’t seem to get buildings straight no matter what I do.

New York Stock Exchange

Lesley Spanos — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:21:00 +0000

“New York Stock Exchange”
Acrylic painting on paper, 7.5 x 16″

Here’s another one painted for Karin Jurick’s “Different Strokes” weekly challenge. You can see her original photo on the Week 6-7 thread on her blog. It was quite complex, and a small image, so not much detail was available. I guess that’s a good thing – it keeps me from going too crazy with the detail. (Yeah, like I didn’t anyway!)

The floor was one of the first things I laid down. I was going to start bright with the underpainting, then overpaint it with a duller color. But the yellow reminded me of a Van Gogh floor (albeit brighter than his), so I left it that way. Yellow is almost universally used to suggest cheerfulness, but as I painted, I realized that Van Gogh had a knack for making yellow look somber and somewhat mad. If a headache had a color, it would be the throbbing yellow of a Van Gogh floor. It’s a color that says, “I’ve gone insane because the floor keeps me awake at night.” Maybe not a bad color for the trading floor after two weeks of financial chaos.

I might add more people later. For now, I need a break from painting little men in ugly smocks!

Da Bean

Lesley Spanos — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:22:00 +0000

“Da Bean” 12 x 9″ acrylic on panel

Talk about being late – this one was supposed to be done by October 8 so I could send it to Karin Jurick for her Week 5 challenge on “Different Strokes From Different Folks.”

But somehow I got lost in a gloomy diptych which was probably way too challenging for a quick project like this. That’s the bottom image, still in progress.

I don’t know how it got so dark and depressing, because that wasn’t what I was going for. I think maybe I was reacting to the gloom and doom surrounding the economic collapse in the US, and it came out in my painting. Maybe one of these days I’ll try to finish it, because I like the concept. My intent was to put the couple making out under the bean in the left panel, and the same couple having their photo taken on their wedding day on the right panel. Maybe I’ll keep the rain on the left side, and make the right side a sunnier day.

(Now maybe I shouldn’t point this out, but doesn’t the left-hand panel remind you of Eric Cartman mooning? All I can see is a big, fat cartoon butt.)

The much brighter piece at the top of this post is an acrylic I did at the last minute just so I’d have something to turn in, but not fast enough to get it to Karin for her to put it on her blog. It’s listed on my Boundless Gallery space for $70, shipping included.