12 small paintings 8.17.15

In anticipation of some shows I have coming up I'm doing series of small paintings. The twelve on this post are all 5"X 7". They are acrylic, charcoal, chalk and oil pastel and some have ink.

First, here is how they were started with swooshes of black gesso with a big, round brush. I used letter forms to get me going with some composition idea. 

I worked on 6 at a time on two panels.

This is the start of laying in color with acrylics, the underpaintings...

And the finished pieces. Not a lot of the letter forms remain.

2 paintings (set of twins) 8.11.15

Oh my goodness I struggled to make these work. Spent so much time just staring at them, waiting for some inspiration/indication of what to do next. They both went through many stages. 

This is the first time I've thought that the reproduction on the computer actually looks better than the original. That's for this first one, which really gave me a lot of trouble. Small, the dimensional character (thank-you for that word, Fran) stands out.

Both paintings are 14"X 20", worked on at the same time, side-by-side (twins), done with acrylic, black and white charcoal, chalk and oil pastel, some collage.

Part of the struggle may have been the challenge I gave myself to focus on texture and not rely too much on the landscape. These architectural forms have been showing up. Can't say why, exactly. May be, still, my reliance on something tangible, afraid of going into pure, amorphous texture. But I like those forms, so it's okay for now.

5 paintings 8.5.15

Each painting is more or less 8" X 12". All done with acrylic, charcoal and some pastel. Worked with lots of layers and surface buildup. Many other paintings semi-hidden under each one!

Two paintings 8 3 15

A set of twins, worked on side-by-side. Both 14"X 20". Acrylic, charcoal, ink and some collage with different papers and leaves. 

The stripes are from pieces of tape applied over a painted and then re-gessoed surface. I scraped paint over the tape with a plaster spreader, black on the top one and gold on the bottom one, making an interesting texture.  

I took the tape off to reveal the previous colors and added more details with charcoal and paint. There are pieces of leaves on both, but you can see that detail better in this one, upper left corner.