Karen Cooper

Blog

1/26/2009 8:26:09 PM

Daily Painting, Spur Of The Moment

cooper / Comment on this

Greetings,
Welcome to my daily painting place.  Let's talk canvas size yet again.  Earlier this monthI contrasted large canvases with smaller canvases.   Say, 30 inches square versus 12 inches square.
I have discovered another good reason to keep a few of the 12 inch canvases ready and waiting.  They are becoming valuable as 'spur of the moment' targets.  As in, you get the vision, you need to act on the vision while you've got it, quick, what can I use?  12 inches is good :)
And look what happened:

   Light Reading,  an acrylic painting on a gallery wrapped canvas, measuring a lovely 12 x 12 inches!

Also gaining the signature of finish:

   Sharing The News,   an acrylic painting on canvas, 20 x 30 inches.   12 inches versus 30 inches, one afternoon versus one week---there truely must be two sides to every story, er, canvas! 

Time for some popcorn.
Later, Cooper
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1/22/2009 11:20:23 AM

Daily Painting, Life Drawing

cooper / Comment on this

Greetings,
Welcome to my daily painting place.  Today's daily paint has landed on a canvas started at our life drawing session yesterday.  Sorry, no photos as yet.  We'll put that on the todo list.
Two paintings went with me as I drove to the art center for our life drawing session.  Mission Theatre Company, a new company in Okoboji, Iowa, working to produce challenging and thought provoking theatre, is performing The Vagina Monologues as part of the V-day.org national campaign to end violence against women.   Three performances, February 19, 20, 21 will be at The Gardens in Arnolds Park, Iowa.  The production is a fundraiser for CAASA (centers against abuse and sexual assault).  In conjunction with the performance will be an All Woman Art Show to be exhibited beginning January 22, 2009 at the Pearson Lakes Art Center and will culminate at the performance. 
I have contributed two paintings for the show, Morning News, and Studio Model 4.

  
---should be a great week of art for the Iowa Great Lakes region!

Later, Cooper
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1/20/2009 4:21:08 PM

Daily Painting,Acrylic Painting, Sharing The News

cooper / Comment on this

Greetings,
Welcome to my daily painting place.  Today, while listening/watching an historic inaugural celebration ! I also managed to spread quite a bit of paint on the current canvas.
This, not being a blog of politics :), let's get right to that painting!

  
Yup, the first image was midday.  The second image is 4:30pm.  One of us should have leaned this canvas against the wall and let it mellow right about image #1-time.  It looks like we now have some backtracking to do.  Darn, I hate when that happens.  And how can it happen, when I know better than to let it happen.  Sheesh.

Later, Cooper
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1/19/2009 4:01:58 PM

Daily Painting And The Lament Of The Personal Confuser

cooper / Comment on this

Greetings, and welcome to my daily painting place.

A few weeks ago, a fellow FASO artist was bemoaning the death of her computer.  I vaguely remember sending consoling words.  What comes around goes around, and now it's here. 

Who knew that being an artist without a computer, could be so difficult?  Possibly I'm just imagining those difficulties?  I am the one who almost had a panic attack when the library card catalog was computerized---and now I am lost without it?  How can that be?  And how is it that I find the computer so valuable in the studio?  Ha!  Let me count the ways.

1.  Online marketing
2.  Staying current with other artists
3.  Submitting work for competitions,events, exhibits
4.  Keeping the visual inventory current

Then we get to the actual 'tools' part:

5.  Uploading the current canvas to 'black and white' it to check values
6.  The model has left and you can't remember how that chin looked--there's always a spare one to be googled
7.  Looking at painting progress photos in sequence, to see where it's been and understand where it wants to go
8.  Cutting, pasting, moving things around, reversing-and-do-I-like-it-better-that-way?

We have a new hard drive ordered and it's supposed to be delivered tomorrow.  In the meantime, I somehow beat this one into submission, and undoubtedly momentary good behavior.  Let's call that moderately good behavior.  At the moment the sucker is hanging open with all it's wires spilling out the back.  What a lovely sight.

When things were still well on the personal confuser front, I had promised a completed image of the then current canvas, Morning News.  Let's do that image now:

  Morning News is an acrylic painting on a lovely little 12 x 12 inch canvas.  Not yet varnished, but that's happening soon :)
And I finished yet another:

   Studio Model 7 is an acrylic painting on a 14.5 x 17.25 canvas.  I started it at a recent life drawing session at the art center, and decided it really wanted to be finished up rather than leaning on the wall waiting!  This painting awaits the varnish brush as well.  Back to the studio!

Later, Cooper
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1/12/2009 7:31:42 PM

Daily Painting Discipline

cooper / Comment on this

Greetings,

Welcome to my daily painting place, where today, discipline was on the menu yet again. 

By the way there's a raging blizzard outside at the moment, just thought that might interest you :)  Nothing new for Spencer, Iowa, trust me.  It was an excellent day for painting. 

I have been thinking about discipline in painting, or the lack thereof.  There are a lot of heads that hat could cover, right?  But.  The discipline I am seeking, is to gain a litle more control over what happens on the canvas.  I have an ongoing struggle with just how messy can you be with the brush strokes and still be considered this side (the good side) of outlandish?  On the days when I feel like I'm teetering on the brink, I go grab my favorite Berthe Morisot book and console myself with the idea that my brushstrokes are not too much messier than hers.  (sure!)

But let's get back to discipline.  On the last post, I wrote about my discipline-sized canvas, a nice little 12 x 12 inch.  My favorite canvas size is more in the 30 x 30, or 40 x 40 inch range.  When brand new, clean and white, they all have a ton of potential, but I think size impacts the outcome in more than just square inches.

12 x 12 inch canvas:
    allows you to focus close on a simple subject
    big brush strokes run off the page, so you're required to shorten up and CONTROL
    not nearly as much square footage to cover, the painting goes faster, and you achieve more paintings if that needs be
   
30 x 30 or 40 x 40 inch canvas:
    you can stand back, (glasses off !) and paint big because you've got the room
    when you've got more of a story to tell, you've got the room to do it
    it takes longer to cover that much space, not as many paintings are completed in a month/year/whatever
    when you hang the finished painting on the wall, you can see it, and understand it, even from the far side of the room

So now how about a couple of images:

  This is a 12 x 12 inch canvas I started today, and the second image is a 40 x 40 inch canvas painted last summer.



They do register well with my self-made lists, don't they?  I promise to finish the smaller canvas tomorrow,  post a finished image, and then we'll vote on the discipline/control part!

Later, Cooper


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1/9/2009 4:44:04 PM

Daily Painting, Acrylic Painting Today's News

cooper / Comment on this

Greetings,

Welcome to my daily painting place, where today's daily paint polished off the latest canvas in the reader's series.  Truely, in fact, it is signed.  I would offer up a great photo image of said canvas, but it's snowing in Spencer, Iowa.  Big, fat, fluffy white snowflakes, and the wind is blowing them around pretty seriously, too. 

Now, what on earth does "it's snowing" have to do with photos?  A couple of years ago I had an a-ha moment, or maybe someone else shared their secret with me, or maybe it was plain old dumb luck discovey.  But.  Have you ever wondered how much easier it is to use natural lighting, than to dig through the closet for the indoor lighting setup, that probably has at least one bulb burnt out anyway?  I'm here to tell you:  LOTS.  And even here in northwest Iowa, (ha) you can usually find a moment or two outdoors that's suitable for photography. Without further ado, here's that not yet perfected photo:

  And did I tell you? It grew a title:  Today's News.  It's acrylic paint, as usual, and on a "discipline-sized" (!) canvas.  That means a petite 12 x 12 inches.  I suppose I'd better share with you my "discipline-sized" definition.  With a smaller canvas, I've found these things to be mandatory:

1.  Go for the mid-size brush instead of that monster-sized one.
2.  Resist the urge to complicate the scene.  Did somebody say less is more?
3.  Look for the "it's done" signals to come a little quicker, and then STOP.

And yes, it's a smaller canvas than I normally work on, but I contend that it's still perfectly fine to sign it in red :)

Later, Cooper
 


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1/8/2009 4:10:09 PM

Daily Painting, And Is It Bad When The Hair Matches The Shirt?

cooper / Comment on this

Greetings,
Welcome to my daily painting place.  Today's daily paint has landed on the current "reader" that's been hanging on the easel for a few days now.  It's coming along nicely, eh?

  Sometimes problems sneak up on us.  Other times things have been (ahem) unusual all along and it takes a photo for us to realize the whole effect.  Take this little canvas for example:  this person needs to be a redhead, wants to be a redhead.  But what about that shirt match?  Do you agree with me that something has to change? :)

By the way, I just got done reading Lori Woodward Simon's article in today's FineArtViews---excellent article.  If you haven't been there yet, you should.  And now, regarding her paragraph on practicing, I'm going to go get my sketch book and draw a whole fleet of hands!

Later, Cooper
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1/7/2009 9:12:26 AM

Daily Painting, Life Drawing

cooper / Comment on this

Greetings,
Welcome to my daily painting place, which yesterday, was actually the studio at the art center.  Our life drawing group managed to get together for a session.  We were all feeling a bit rusty, as our last meeting was November 17th.  Here's a new take on the economy for you that one member of our group verbalized:  With everyone's 401K now dead and/or gone, staying close to home and painting is a good option!  Ha!  Art wins again! 

Ok, now back to life drawing.  There are getting to be quite a few of those "post your art on the net" kind of places.  Some have really good examples of paintings/drawings of life studies.  Brushspace.com is one that has a unique feature called 'random art'.  It randomly selects art from artists profiles and assembles them, again randomly, on a page that the viewer can quickly scroll through.  Maybe I have looked at too many paintings (no, wait, that's NOT POSSIBLE) but it's amazing how fast I can scroll those 'random art' pages and then come to a screeching halt and stop to spend several minutes when an exceptional image comes up.  Two artists that make brushspace worth visiting are Pauline Adair, and Gavin Calf.  Both use life drawing as I feel it should be used, to show the beauty of creation in the human figure.  No sensationalizing necessary, just the honest beauty of creation expressed by line and shape and color.

So after talking about life drawing and beauty, it's time to get on with the posting and add last night's humble, slightly messy, incomplete, but always striving for better, images of life drawing at the Pearson Lakes Art Center from yours truely.

     

yeah, where there's life, there's hope!

Later, Cooper
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1/5/2009 4:52:37 PM

Daily Painting, All The Readers Are At The Library

cooper / Comment on this

Greetings,
Welcome to my daily painting place.  Truely, all the readers have left the building, er, studio.  I have been painting various people, in various places, reading various books for about three years running now.  Quite a few of the earlier 'readers' have moved on the happy homes, but I retained a few from each year, and had painted readers fairly seriously during the second half of 2008 which is evidenced by the new solo show of my work now currently hanging at theState Of Iowa Library.  Does that seem like too much, have a series of work called "The Readers Series" showing at the state library?!  I think there might be a pun in there somewhere, but I'm not going to go hunting for it. 
But.  It truely took every 'wall-worthy' reader painting in my inventory for the show, so now, it must be time to paint, yet another reader :)  This one is just barely blocked in.  You might not get the idea yet, but I've got it in my head fairly securely (!), so we're good to go.  And no, her feet really aren't that big.  We will adjust tomorrow.



Thanks for stopping by.
Later, Cooper
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1/1/2009 9:29:05 AM

Daily Painting, About Ice Cream And Key Words

cooper / Comment on this

Greetings,
Welcome to my daily painting place, and a new year!
I must be feeling my leisure time this morning.  I actually took a couple of minutes to read some of the behind the scenes stuff that a good website can give you.  I have this new appreciation for stat counters on websites, and am also wondering if it's counted the number of times a person sneezes in the morning! 
Let me give you an example.  Someone came to my website because of the title/keywords of this blog post:.  It was titled 'Daily Painting, Ice Cream And Salad'.  According to the stat counter, the search key words used were painting ice cream.  I am sorry to report that I was not on page one of that Google search :)  In fact this person had definite diligence, I was on page twelve or thereabouts.
So here come the key words of this post.  'Good website, and 'key words'.  Once again, the statistics info from my website has shown me that for every artist, there's an art patron out there searching.  All you have to do is connect.  Wow, didn't I make that sound easy?!
And by the way, did you know Edvard Munch painted a painting with ice cream?!  Yup that would be the Edvard Munch of "The Scream" fame.  Ha, Google taught art history today.

Later, Cooper
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