{"id":1494,"date":"2009-11-07T00:02:17","date_gmt":"2009-11-07T08:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=1494"},"modified":"2009-11-07T00:09:57","modified_gmt":"2009-11-07T08:09:57","slug":"still-not-going-anywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=1494","title":{"rendered":"still not going anywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago Cindy asked me to paint her. \u00a0At the time I was thinking about trying to paint again. \u00a0I’ve gotten this inclination a few times since college, and every time my little experiments ended up looking like some kind of visual torture mechanism. \u00a0I would “quit” again for a year and then try again and the cycle would repeat itself. \u00a0Well, back in 2007 I decided to try again when Cindy prodded (or maybe the whole thing was my idea, I don’t remember) me to paint her. \u00a0At first I tried to paint her laying down on her wicker couch thing that she used to have. \u00a0It looked pretty rudimentary – but when I showed her the progress she noticed that the way I had positioned things it looked like you could see up her skirt (which I really really had not intended at all). \u00a0So, I put a wash over the canvas and gave up. \u00a0(I didn’t take a photo of this early try) \u00a0In October 2008 I decided to give it another go with one of the shots from our little photo session in the park. \u00a0The result of the start is below:<\/p>\n

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Looking back now this looks like a crazy modern art Francis Bacon kind of thing.. and I could have probably slapped a silly name on it and tried to sell it for 3 million dollars. \u00a0However, to my “classical” eye it looked like complete crap – so I put a bunch of washes over it and scrubbed and washed again until I had this neat blue\/white scratched up surface. \u00a0I put the canvas away, vowing not to take it out and use it unless I came up with something cool because I really liked the way the surface looked.<\/p>\n

After finishing the “ribbon” painting I decided to try a smaller painting of a person (was originally a girl, but looks more like a guy now) with civil war guns walking through a forest. \u00a0After about two weeks this thing looked like crap too, so I stopped. \u00a0I decided to go back to the one thing that I thought worked – the “girl writhing around in the sheets” theme. \u00a0I took out the canvas that I’d hidden away a year ago and got to work:<\/p>\n

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At this point I let it sit for a few days. \u00a0I couldn’t decide on whether adding the hand below would destroy the balance of the piece or not. \u00a0But eventually I decided to go for it:<\/p>\n

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I thought the hand turned out really great (yeah, I know the ring finger is a little funky). \u00a0At this point I didn’t know where to go… and was really worried about messing up the good thing I had going. \u00a0I should have gone with my instincts and just\u00a0stopped\u00a0(after fixing that ring finger). \u00a0But… of course not…<\/p>\n

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I tried adding in the sheets… and some kind of sheet on the head… and some kind of magical thingie going on around the hand. \u00a0It wasn’t working. \u00a0I decided to take the piece into photoshop before going back and trying anything else:<\/p>\n

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“okay” I thought, this will work I guess…<\/p>\n

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ewww… hmmm… well, maybe I can polish it into something. \u00a0I decided that instead of having the water fade into the bedsheets, that I’d have her laying on a rocky surface over the water. \u00a0So, I got to work digging up more source material for granite and marble. \u00a0I also decided that Sam was right (she’d seen it in progress last weekend) and and I would eventually paint hair on her instead of a “snood.”<\/p>\n

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So here I am. \u00a0This looks like some disjointed awful mess. \u00a0 \u00a0I think I’m learning an important lesson – you can’t design a whole piece around one thing that you like (the hand).<\/p>\n

I’m 28 and I’m still trying to figure out what to do and how to do it with this art stuff. \u00a0I’m getting more and more involved in the art scene in LA. \u00a0By involved I really mean “following;” going to art galleries and subscribing to everyone’s blogs. \u00a0Something I’ve noticed is that most of the artists that I really like became skilled illustrators before transitioning to fine art. \u00a0They use different media, but their skill in representing the human form stands out. \u00a0One guy that I particularly like is Eric Fortune<\/a>. \u00a0Eric’s drawings are fantastic, and he just takes them and makes amazing paintings with them. \u00a0I was surprised to discover that Eric actually lives in Columbus. \u00a0He is doing a lot of shows here and in New York of course.<\/p>\n

With this new painting I feel like I’m moving backwards. \u00a0Most of the little paintings on wood turned out pretty well. I liked layering up the paint thinly on the smooth surface. \u00a0I also like the paintings I did on raw canvas – but they were very very frustrating to actually make because it was so hard to actually move the paint around. \u00a0Perhaps I should just put this current canvas aside and go get some sheets of wood. \u00a0Sam mentioned to me recently that when we go to galleries most of the paintings are much smaller than mine… so maybe I’m trying way too hard. \u00a0She said that my work might not get shown (later) just simply because they’re too large. \u00a0Obviously size isn’t much of a problem with a solo show, but any solo show would be a long way down the road after a lot of group shows.<\/p>\n

Of course, all that is long after (and IF) I can actually develop a consistent style and competency. \u00a0Not even there yet, so I shouldn’t leap ahead…. \u00a0Very frustrating moving so slowly though. \u00a0I know I should have been doing this since I was eighteen years old. \u00a0I probably should have went to a “real” art school. \u00a0But, nothing I can do about all that now, I have to push forward and work with what I’ve got.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago Cindy asked me to paint her. \u00a0At the time I was thinking about trying to paint again. \u00a0I’ve gotten this inclination a few times since college, and every time my little experiments ended up looking like some kind of visual torture mechanism. \u00a0I would “quit” again for a year and then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1494"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1496,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions\/1496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}