multi-colored “grisaille”

I accidentally bought more white paint than I need.  And now I’ve decided that my mistake was a boon.  I’m adding lots of white to all the colors in the underpainting and producing a kind of multicolored grisaille when I do a lay-in on the koi paintings.  The lighter colors are kind of pretty in their own right:  I’m wondering if sometime I should do a few “grisaille” koi paintings.  But for now these tints form the substrate for a full colored painting that will go on top.

The grisaille is exceedingly useful.  First off, it is very forgiving.  Let’s say that a koi has to be nudged over a little from this spot to that one.  Because the principle colors of these pictures – blue and orange – are optically opposite, over-painting between the colors gets tricky.  But a grisaille takes the edge off painting with opposites.  If the paints are still wet when I make the changes, then the areas where they unavoidably mix just turn to nice shades of pale grey.  And once it’s all dried, ’tis an easy matter to paint over a pale orange with a full blue, or paint a full orange over a pale blue, and not have the oppositions of color impose their tyrannies.

Of course, if you like the tyranny, there’s always still the option of letting blue and orange go to war — later on – if that’s what rocks your mind.  Either way, the delicacy of the initial pale colors lets all kinds of possibilities erupt — anything from the most delicate diplomacy to full-scale color war.  Meanwhile, the koi seem to enjoy this adventure in paleness.  They like it so much that they’re thinking of turning themselves into metaphors.

Above is one of the little scribbly drawings I make to put myself in koi painting mood.

Some of my past koi paintings and drawing are assembled HERE.   Some of these works have also prompted my discovery of whimsical and philosophical ideas, some of those are available HERE.

Before the Koi was the Fish Whistle

Actually I think it’s a whale — it’s a whistle in the shape of a whale.   And if I ever locate it, I’m going to paint it again.  File that under “house-keeping” and add another tick to the long “to do” list. 

I made this painting a long time ago.  I had set up the still life aiming to compose large sections of bright color that didn’t necessarily go together.  My goal was to harmonize colors that were not coordinated, that were color uncoordinated.  I figured that if I got the life-likeness of the things, the harmony that they get from simply existing in the same light and atmosphere might be caught.  It’s a bit of Cezanne’s philosophy only I didn’t know it back then.

Meanwhile, I was painting something that swims in the water and swishes its tail though technically does not represent a fish.  I don’t really see the harm, however, in calling a whale a fish when it is so fish-like.  Anyway, this was proto-koi — an early whispering of the theme that has since occupied much of my thought. 

For the record the whistle is shaped like a whale, but is not designed for calling a whale.  One could try it, though, and see if having whistled on it, a whale comes.  If I ever locate the whale whistle again, after I paint it, I might try this other idea too.  And I’ll be sure and let everyone know if it fetches me a whale.

What the fish can teach you

We are living in a time when life itself is possible only if one frees oneself of every burden, like a swimmer in a stormy sea.   

  – Peter Paul Rubens letter to Jan Gaspar Gevaerts

Keeping the Koi in Line

Sometimes before I start a picture, or in odd moments between sessions of work, I do quick line drawings of the koi.  They are like the imaginary bees that frightened my childhood sleep, huge bees that were invisible, paradoxically invisible given how vividly I kept seeing them, a circumstance which was occasioned by the black contours that outlined them as they flew around my room.  Well, the linear koi are much pleasanter images.  And they do not sting.

These quick drawings are like tunings of an instrument, or are like a runner’s bending to stretch muscles.  They warm up my mind.  They go back to the beginning in an easy way.  No pressure, no worries, just lines.

If Ingres had done koi, like me

If Ingres had done koi like me, think how happy the koi would be.

But he didn’t.  He only did another very inferior kind of fish.  So we’ll just have to imagine, won’t we?  Or else I will have to learn to draw like Ingres!

That’s Ingres above, and me below — of course!

The Koi Poetic

Australian poet and blogger friend Gabrielle Bryden has written a poem about my koi and remembers our mutual friend the late Paul Squires in whose poetry magic got caught using words.  I feel very honored to have my koi swim in a poem, and when I tell the koi they will be splashing.  Read it, experience it,  here.

Don’t Pet the Fish

At the arboretum where I photograph the real koi, you’re not allowed to touch them.  They have a slime coat that is vulnerable to injury if millions of hands reach out to pet them, day after day, season after season.  Nobody told the koi, these koi who are always hungry no matter how much food they’ve eaten, and they are remarkably outgoing and indiscriminate in their affections.  I must look exactly like all the other humans to them, especially the ones with the bags of food, so they come up to the surface and are very available for petting.

Not that I pet them.  I never pet them.  There’s a sign right there telling you not to pet them.  I obey the sign, but it’s perfectly obvious that the koi cannot read.

However, I can pet my own fish anytime I want.  Mine have a wax coat.  It’s vulnerable to smudging, but I’m careful not to smudge my fish.

Studying

I have been making studies of some of the central fish in the picture that I’ve been thinking about lately.  I try to get at them again and again.  I want to learn my fish.  They are a fish concerto that I must practice.

Some of the studies, like these above, are medium size.  Others are small fry.

And sometimes they are just lines.

I’m a very studious student of the fish.  People will go to great lengths to catch fish, and I am no exception for the pictured fish are not less wily than their living counterparts.

Koi in the Deep Blue

I like the deep blue of the fishes’s water.  Their blue world connects me to many delightful memories of pretending to be a fish myself during an unusually long childhood, and it recalls me to innumerable occasions of looking neck craned into the sky, and not the least it reconnects me to my admiration for art hero Claude Monet, whose water lilies have been part of many an artist’s desire to paint.

How many kinds of blue can there be?  And how does one comprehend the marvelous planes of the water as it moves?  The waters spread out like a sheet ….

Me and Delacroix, getting inspired

I had a yen to drawing something large, and to do the koi in a more expressive way.  I’ve been reading Delacroix’s Journal again and discover that as I read certain images come to mind — in this case not his images, but my own.  Ideas for things to do, motifs from my own past that find encouragement from Delacroix’s enthusiasm for boldness and invention.  There’s always some longings and hankerings that go right back to the heart of why you started doing art in the first place.   Today at the secret bunker studio, I decided to let myself indulge my bold mood with a new koi drawing. 

I just started it, but even in the first stage I saw that the fish were growing.  These are going to be some much bigger fish.  While I was away doing landscape, these guys were getting big!