the New Style

I’ve been threatening to tell you about my new style of painting. The day has come to show you what I’ve done to this point. I built a new ‘rig’. I did not have a rig op apparatus before…just a table. The Rig is a work in progress. I’ve only just started using it this week. Applying the use of the rig to my work ended with a finished painting that I think is good. It’s just the first picture…and the working ergonomics are difficult, but evolving.

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We can start here. I started making my own modeling paste medium. In the past, I used paint right out of the tube. and lots of it. I wanted some creaminess…some structure. Here are the ingredients:

Next, I built the rig with pipes that I had sitting around…I tied my painting utensils to the pipes with a string and began using the radius to create strokes. I can change the arc angle by moving the string to different pipes and shorten the length too. The easel is relatively new too. In the photo below, you can see the unprimed wood, the light fixtures for filming and the pipe system.

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To give you a bit more insight into the studio…here’s a collage of the studio from different areas and states of doneness.

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So now that I have made one good painting on the rig, tons of questions came up while I was working . How to tie the sting more quickly? What utensils work best? What angles and arcs do I wish to make. How do I keep the paint organized while I am mixing colors…what utensils mix the colors more easily? What about straight edges? Do I need a pipe system on the bottom, on the sides? What size should the tools be relative to the size of the painting, is there a magic ratio? Millions of possibilities…but the mise has to fall into place so I can work without thinking too much.

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But I bet this all sounds like a bunch of bullshit. I can’t quite describe it to myself, let alone tell you about it. What follows is a fast motion video of the first session on the painting in question. The next two sessions were not recorded on purpose. Because I don’t like how fat I look (just kidding).