Brian's Morning Newsletter

Tuesday March 9th 2010

Rain Dance by Tom Philllips

Good Morning
Yes, I worked on my native American Ghost dancer painting, but I am still struggling with just about everything, from shading to color. I had a feeling painting a person was going to challenge my beginners luck. It is still interesting and fun to learn, but I am working harder to wrangle workable attitudes about most aspects. Paintings like the one above are inspiring becasue I see that certain effects are not as complex as I make them out to be. I'm thinking about the feathers, I stared at my dancer for a long time yesterday. I see so much that needs attention, it is almost overwhelming. I mix up paints and touch up specific areas, stand back from the painting and sigh. Not that what I changed wasn't better looking, but it still doesn't have a positive light source . . . and and

I can't seem to create the depth I want, which may be because I am still focusing on the skin-tones, when instead I ought to be working on the source of the light and shadows. I'm not discouraged, but reality is beginning to press down on me. I desperately need one little break. Some small breakthrough that I can repeat, ya know like a fresh tool in my painters arsenal. Like: "Always use . . ." So I stare at other artists' work looking for anything I think I might be able to reproduce. I know my dancer needs a feather in his right hand, I haven't done it yet, because I finally got that hand to look remotely like a hand, unfortunately the angle of the hand is wrong for feather holding, I always dislike and avoid tearing things I like apart.

Yeah, I'm not in the best of moods. I hope it is just because I don't feel well, but it didn't help my demeanor to open a letter from Mike the other morning and have him repeatably call me an asshole, just for replying to all for a message about telemarketers and cell phones. What the hell is wrong with you Mike? If you are trying to bring me down it is working, so please stop, I am weary of your rudeness.

Anyway, looking at the ghost dancer, I can see that his left leg needs to have a calf and knee, and really even though the ankle is covered it is still too wide in comparison to the rest of the leg. I like the foot, but it keeps coming and going as I try to bring detail to the toes. The blue foot looks like a some kind of flipper deformation. I can't tell if it is harder to work with blue because of its intensity  and texture, or I'm having trouble because my model photograph is black and white.  I'll buy a new color cartridge for our printer today, that ought to help.

Again about the feathers, maybe you can see that my dancer really does need some color and detail in his headdress, but I can't get over the feeling that I have bigger fish to fry. First thing is to re-proportion the legs, decide where the light is coming from, create more texture with shadows, then I'll fool around with the feathers. I am feeling good about the flesh colored arm, somehow I got the slightest muscle tone in his arm, and I didn't mess it up as I attempted to get the color more realistic. Yeah, there are way too many opaque layers, but what the hey, this is a learning process, I can only hope each layer is better than the last, and if it did work can I remember what I did.

Okay, I better sum this up. Yesterday evening I shut the wind turbine down as the Spring wind had the batteries fully charged and I had all sorts of loads plugged in using up the generous energy. So, this morning before I leave for work, as Nell suggests I will put the crockpot on the inverter and use up the excess energy cooking dinner. If this works, and we don't know if it will because the crockpot may draw too much power, it'll be a big step forward, using the energy from the wind to feed us. I'll also put the Killawatt meter on the inverter to see how much power the roast takes to cook.

I keep meaning to finish installing the batteries we bought earlier this year, and now with the predictable strong Spring winds up here I better get moving on this project. Plus we are planning to have much more LED low wattage outdoor and decorative lighting for Tusas Campo this year. We have been looking at rope LED lights as well as outdoor LED flood lights
http://www.solarropelights.com/
I know I'm extreme when it comes to twinkling lights, but would a disco ball be fun?
Anyway that's that, wouldn't you say?
Brian Rodgers