The Hungry Brush

As many of you may already know, I have begun the process of eating raw vegetables. At first I looked for a juicer and found nothing that worked at the second hand store. So I decided, in spite of my doing Jumping Jacks right along with Jack LaLanne when I was a little boy watching KTVU Channel 2 in the Bay Area (San Jose), I decided to go with the whole food. I still look up to you Jack but I will forego juicing until I can learn it in greater detail.

Here he is on KTVU Channel 2 as I followed his regime from the ages of 4 and 5 until I was off to school and could no longer follow him.

Well, the whole of all of the vegetables I planned to eat whole. Right into my VitaMix!

I bought this VitaMix 2 Horsepower "Total Nutrition Center" in 1987 at the Santa Clara County Fair Grounds - and that after I paid toward it for a year and a half! And here in 2010, I use it all the time. As you can see from the photograph, lately I have been using it for the blending or rather, complete liquefaction of raw vegetables and some non-sweetened fruit juice.

This led to my losing weight, gaining muscle mass and energy, assisting to ease me out of an endocrine-failure based osteoporosis to osteopenia. And it did something else that was COMPLETELY unexpected!

It altered my Attitude about ... EVERYTHING.

The gift of life, my membership within nature, my predisposition to be happy as the Universe had designed me. And mostly, my understanding of JOY and Happiness by analyzing the faulty "If-Then" logic. Check out my blog from the beginning if you will.

I am now deriving joy out of the process rather than out of some unreliable outcome. Further, my goal of not judging others, leading with love and remaining humble to learn as a student does, has been far more achievable with this new attitude of appreciation.

Then I started SPROUTING! And this whole process of looking at life from the perspective of a seed or kernel blew me away. It infused excitement and joy as I took care of the new sprouts and then energy and nutrition as I ate them!

As you can see, my first batch of sprouts eventually began to grow leaves. I ate these with my raw vegetables anyway and it was a lovely success!

I am bit more organized now and a whole lot more confident. So this process of experiencing great joy from sprouting led to something I haven't done in years!

PAINTING!

I got my paints out again and started to paint what will be a gift. You know, I always knew I was too busy and didn't feel good enough to sit down and derive the kind of joy that I do from painting - and that I would not pick it up again until I was 'happier'.

And years passed.

Finally, as a Natural Consequence of my joy from raw vegetables and sprouting and contemplation upon the most exciting things about this life, in came the paints!

As with my first attempts at sprouting, I was battling fear and lack of confidence with painting. Don't get me wrong, I have been painting for years.

So, I asked myself what was the worst thing that could happen? The answer is: You will have to paint over it all and using it for grounding.

And so off I went.

EVE'S CABIN

Here is my first underpainting after I sketched out what I wanted.

The cabin in the foreground left with a pier and lake foreground right. The mountain is off-center left and trees along the horizon. Simple. My color wheel will be purples and violets with yellows, golds and peach.

Then I did my second whole subject underpainting.

I highlighted, mostly for myself where the main yellows and violets will go. The yellow highlights on the mountain and left side of the trees are just as a guide and if it comes through in the painting that will be perfect. 

With oils, creating layered effects is a lot harder than watercolors. You can't really "see through" the top layer of paint nor can you see the canvass through your paints. So the translucent quality can only be achieved through the suggestion of layering and perhaps some glazing.

So here is where the painting is as of the first day in November, 2010:

I took the liberty of taking a much brighter photograph so you can see what I am seeing in my head as I paint. Clearly, the sky is very defined and captures a lot of visual interest. The part of the mountain that is not covered in snow kind of shows here as well. That was pretty much as far as I want to go, leaving the bottom half of the painting for another time.

Here is what I did with the sky, which will have a bit of a violet glazing next:

This is the sky to the right of the mountain. The suggestion of a storm coming in and on the egress is what I wanted to achieve. So I want some bluish sky showing up to suggest the storm is not in full swing either way. I also was pretty heavy with some highlights from a setting sun as you can see. I used a peach-like color (titanium white - cadmium orange) and applied it with a thin brush.

The goal was to have the darker or bolder colors be applied with less control and more excitement and the lighter highlight colors applied with more control. I also attempted to suggest a wash of rain coming in and some puffy clouds too near the bottom.

Here is the sky on the left side of the mountain:

As you can see, I tried to apply a little visual interest with the bold colors and some dabbling of titanium white. The peach color can be seen in the presence of a wide blurb. The goal here was to suggest that night was approaching but the storm afar off is still raging.

When I paint in the trees, these highlights should present themselves behind the trees as blustering skies into the night.

You can also see the outline I painted for uncovered mountain side. These also were effective in giving more shape to the mountain.

Incidentally, I played a bit with some little trees which will be painted over in favor of more exact trees up the slope. That's something watercolor just simply would not allow without complaint. But as you can see, some of the first underpainting of the sky gobbed up a bit but that serves for a more interesting sky. I hope

WHAT'S NEXT?

Here is how I have planned this painting.

1. Under-paint the entire canvass
2. Under-paint the sky
3. Under-paint sky highlights and mountain
4. Violet / Purplish glazing in sky
5. Mountain details: trees, snow
6. Mountain mist
7. Trees
8. Pond
9. Cabin
10. Bushes and Ground

We will see. This is my "IF" in the "If I do this, then the following will happen" plan. And true to my new realization, the joy is in the "IF", that is, in the PROCESS. The outcome is almost incidental.

Hope you are inspired to paint. Because this is my expression, it is up to me how I will do what I want to do. You are in the same shoes - it's all about what pleases you in the process.

Have Fun!
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