Some notes on these sky studies of late:
1. I don't know why I started doing these, but I'll do them as long as I find them engaging, and then move on to something different. (And then if the urge returns, I'll do more skies.) I try to follow these desires. Whenever I go in the studio and try to force subject matter or medium, it always fails. (I'm slooowly getting better at realizing this. Why it seems necessary to relearn this lesson continually, I don't know. Stubborn brain?)
1a. The translation from: in person --> camera --> iPhoto --> Photoshop
-->blogger realllllly makes them lose something, these sky studies perhaps more than any other pastels I've put up. In person, they are soft, yet have a certain clarity that never comes across on screen. Endless frustration, endless hours wrestling with the technology (pixels, image size, sharpening, color adjustment, raw-format editing...ad nauseum). You'll just have to take my word on it. Or else send Casey's photographer wife.
2.. The few times I've tried using a photo reference, results are poor and I have to give up.
3. These skies don't come from my memory per se (you assign me too much credit, Loriann), but rather I just approach the paper with an "anything goes" attitude, no particular shapes in mind. I then tend to work in one of two ways:
a) grab whatever color is calling to me, and rub it on the paper. Then another color, and make some marks with it too. Then perhaps a third color, and at that point, stop, take a good look and start making some conscious decisions about form, value, composition, and color harmony. My paintings seem to go best when I am able to let go and let them begin to tell me what direction they want to take.
b) propose a challenge to myself before I start, e.g.: can I make an electric-orange sky? can I make a pink cloud in a turquoise sky? can I do a high-value-only sky? or a low-values-only sky? can I make green clouds? yellow clouds? gray yet colorful clouds?.......and have it all look somehow believable, or feasible.
4. I don't consider these realism, nor wholly abstract. One thing that's extremely interesting to me is that, without any visible terra firma reference at all (e.g., no painted or drawn tree tops, horizon line, mountain ridge, etc.), and in spite of them in tangible reality existing merely as smudges and marks of color, people see them as skies and clouds. Why? I'm fascinated by how our brain interprets things to fulfill its own agenda.
You can see from his facial bone structure that Rumi is becoming quite the handsome young man. (Yes, he still adores being in the dishwasher.)
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