Since this blog is about the process of art making and being a father it makes sense that I write about the hurdles and not pretend this is always smooth sailing. I left instagram recently because I was reaching no one there and I was not seeing any art at all. It seemed mostly like an advertisement for people getting injured. I don’t like laughing at people getting hurt, so I’m happy to move on. If anyone tells you that you need to be on social media, then they are lying. You don’t. If you want to be, then go for it, but it’s not for me.

But I have had sick kids for a while, then I got sick, and the woman who watches my youngest daughter a couple mornings a week got injured, and it has just generally been a rough time going for me regarding space and time to work on anything seriously. I have done some work on some things, but none of it has been moving my submissions for the fellowship application in the right direction. But all of the paintings ought to be dry by now, so I can get back into them. I did get some sketches done and have a good idea for another one of the paintings for the children and war series that I will be able to start this week.

I keep thinking I am better, and then I run or bike and then start coughing like mad when I finish up, so I am just going to hold off on serious exercise for at least one more day, and I will hope that tomorrow I can at least dip my toes back in to my normal schedule.

The paintings need to be done and photographed by January 9th to meet the deadline for the submission, but I am pretty sure I can make that happen. Even if they are not all 100 percent the way I want them to be, and even if some of them end up being done in something other than oil.

Today I was able to get all the girls to school and paint for about 2.5 hours. I had done some sketches of young girls in a ballet class standing near one another and looking at something. I wasn’t sure what it would be until this morning when I sat down to paint.

This is the charcoal sketch I did this a.m. prior to getting to work. I decided on a patriot missile battery firing a missile as the point of their focus. I tried to keep it loose so that I can fool around with gestural, impressionistic lines when it came time to do the painting.

Here is the 16x20 canvas after I did a light wash of burnt sienna (acrylic) over the white canvas. I drew directly on top of this with a charcoal pencil.

And here is where I landed after 2.5 hours. It’s still wet so there is some glare of course, and I’m sure that some of the poses of the girls will change a bit. Skin tones are very gray currently. And I need the background to be much darker than it is so that the highlights in the tutus and the missile fire are super vibrant. I used a cheap payne’s gray and it has terrible coverage. I think it is “master’s touch” paint, and I don’t mean to say that you have to spend maximum money on all your paint, but this I would avoid Payne’s Gray in Master’s Touch. I just need to use mine up or else I’ll feel like a wasteful piece of garbage.

The story here is that I take my daughter to her ballet lessons on saturdays sometimes and when I do I see all the little kids (boys and girls; although here it feels better to have all girls in the painting), staring around at times looking at their instructors. So that was fresh in my head and then I had a conversation this weekend about when I was in Saudi Arabia back in 2003 and I had to fix a patriot missile comm circuit.

The girls in the painting are not intended to be in a combat zone. As with the rest of the paintings I’m doing in this series, these girls are learning and training in ballet while at once there are these terrifying/awesome things that destroy and protect. None of these are anti-war or pro-war. All I am trying to do is capture an honest experience that neither blames nor praises anyone.

The more I work on these, the more I feel like I’m gonna need a palette cleanse when I finish up. I may just do some big landscapes to try and add some beauty around the house. But when I do those I will make sure I don’t waste any time painting with master’s touch payne’s gray.

I made quite a bit more progress on this one. The picture is glossy because the paint is still so wet, but for the most part I am happy with the progress here. Once it dries I’ll make some changes to the patriot missile battery and then take a look at an actual missile to get it looking a bit more like an actual missile. The positions of each of the dancers is closer to what I wanted them to be, but I will take a look at the girl on the far right when it dries so I can see what, if anything, I might be able to do with her gesturally that might add some more energy to the painting overall. Some of the tutus are a bit too high or too low probably, but I will handle that when I come back in with some shadows on the girls’ backs, and then I think the final real step will be highliting the front where the missile is firing out of from the battery.