March 13, 2025

We drew at the Edith Bunker in Albuquerque, with Monty Singer and Brian Gonzales.  This is the first time I have painted with oils on canvas for years.  I used a Zorn palette:

PAINTING MANIFESTING

I confess, I do everything to avoid drawing the actual figure.  

I like to draw what is outside the skin, while everyone else is fussing over "drawing the light."   

Instead of beginning with outside contours -- I like to draw the structure from inside the figure, feeling the bones first... not unlike the sculptures of Giacometti.  Then , fleshing them out later, so that people often feel that I'm drawing anatomy.  Moreover I like to draw what is on top of the skin -- thinking how water might run across the skin; or imagining how a brick or other weight attached to the body would feel.  One day I'd like to attach square sponges of various sizes to the forearms, calves and other parts of the model, to see the inertia that I'm trying to draw.

Often I feel that if I draw in the space outside the figure, I can interact and active the figure without drawing the light or details on the skin (is this sorta like what is going on in a fractal?). 

Motion and space are the most important to me, so I would like to draw the figure both a second before it got into the pose, and the second afterwards, when she got out of the pose. The surrealistic painter Roberto Matta describes this kind of space/motion.

After all, the immediate space outside the figure is part of the body -- what is a hand if it has no space in which to wiggle and move the fingers? 

Above all, I appreciate ambiguity, and would like to keep the figure and painting open to different images and interpretations, until the last stroke is applied.

So by avoiding the literal, and thinking like this, I am destined to make bad paintings forever.

Google AI Studio censored my painting, and would not finish it for me -- "Probability of unsafe content."

Google AI Studio

prompt: " Can you finish this painting for me?"

CAMERADACTYL

a new analog format

On Wednesday, March 12th, Ethan took my photo at Quelab with his new CAMERADACTYL set-up, which is like the old Polaroid process in that it develops the photos almost immediately.  Ethan 3D printed the whole system:

Ethan 

The  3D printed camera

Ethan transferring the film

from the camera to the cylinder container

Ethan putting the cylinder container with film

into the developing apparatus

Threading the film roll

into the final cleaning mode of the process

The 3D printed developing station

NEXT!

Later Ethan posted the photos in the front hall of Quelab:

Ethan also took my photo with the same equipment On January 15, 2025:

January 16, 2025