Painting Diary: end of September

September 25, 2025

Painting progress as of September 25. I’d say the grisaille is done, so I’m getting ready to move on to glazing. Still, I feel as though the lower right corner could use some work. Since it’s my first time trying this method, I’m hoping I can still build out the shape a littttle bit more in the color layers, and I feel pretty confident I can, so I guess we’ll see.

I’m not 100% on color palette yet. The original color sketch was cool oranges and greens, but I’m not leaning in that direction so much anymore. I’ve been really inspired by 60s mod and 70s Italian giallo films so maybe that candy palette could be fun, so long as I restrict my color selections for harmony’s sake. I guess I’d like primarily muted earth tones with one or two jewel “keys”.

Maybe black, orange, silver-blue, and fuschia? That would be the “giallo” palette. See this poster for “Don’t Torture a Duckling” for reference.

Here are some stills I found on FilmGrab, just skimming, seeing what catches my eye:

(Australia)

(The Case of the Scorpion’s Tale)

(Wanted)

(Goodbye Dragon Inn)

(In my Mother’s skin)

So, deep black shadows, purple, fuchsia and green for sure, provided there’s enough offset butter yellow, pale blue, and white to stop things from getting muddy. The black could be a blend of green and purple, sort of brown—it could be argued the blacks serve as the “warmth” in these images. There is orange, but the orange strikes me as a balancing measure against the vivid purples rather than a distinct character in the palette. Think I’m going to avoid red as much as I can. I want to keep things cool. Maybe the figures can be yellow and blue—I’d like to avoid making them Caucasian, I don’t want them to seem like they belong to Earth.

Have been drawn to artifice in general and thinking about my relationship to photography. I’ve never been a photographer, but have had a nagging feeling lately that I need to train that muscle. I think it’ll be important to have a more developed understanding on light and shadow. Am less interested in photography as a documentary media. But I keep saving editorial fashion photoshoots to my phone when they pop up on social media.

Look at Sydney sweeney here. One by Tyrone Lebon for Miu Miu, the other for Jacquemus x Nike. These are so cinematic, I find them so beautiful.

Sydney Sweeney in Jacquemus x Nike Images | Hypebae

My favorite class I took in college was about Documentary and Narrative Photography in art. It was the first time I felt able to access philosophical or theoretical ideas in art. Up to that point, I think I was basically an illustrator: I had imaginary images in my head, and I wanted to put them on paper. As a middle schooler I had OCs (ha ha ha), and honestly, I still do have characters or motifs I develop by drawing them over and over and over in my sketchbook. It’s a bit juvenile. But transcending reference images and building out a world from scratch (or from the third eye) is a tendency that comes out of loving comics, illustration, and cartooning. The more “rules” of description I had in my toolkit, and the less dependent on reference images I was, the more confident I felt. I still think that’s basically the core of my painting and drawing—you know, fantasy, imagination, and meticulous drafting.

Theory-brain was helpful in college for pitching my stuff to professors and curators. Of course, leaving art school groupthink behind, I feel more confident than ever that any artist worth my respect is a draftsman at heart. I think editorial photography has the same draftsperson impulse, because it’s all about wielding design fundamentals to describe a fantasy. Uh oh: “Worldbuilding”. I liked impressionism as a teen because each impressionist had a recognizable style, and knowing the impressionists felt like a way into art because it triggered the same list-making brain that I had from recognizing New Yorker cover artists or seeing illustrators from Tumblr (whose webcomics I had followed as a tween) debut their YA graphic novels in bookstores. Then from there I could collect facts to ID “styles” in art history. Like Hellenism is this. Baroque is that. Learning Western art feels like being reminded of something I’ve already known but forgotten.

Knowing this, I feel a little more confident in articulating myself. I don’t have to feel insecure that I’m not doing post-digital capitalist critique material-as-metaphor experimental sculpture or whatever. But it does bring out a little anxiety that what I make is childish.

Do I really think my art is childish? Basically, no, I mean, a child doesn’t and wouldn’t have the hand that I have. But it’s true you don’t often see contemporary artists making up people with funny faces. Or making small scale (printer-paper sized) work. It’s a reflexive habit, but is it so wrong? What’s preferable, to push out of my comfort zone, or accept where I’m at so I can make *something*, period? I keep telling myself I’ll work in a different size and then not doing anything until I finally start yet another 8.5x11” or 9x12” composition.

I think learning to wield color more strategically will help me feel more aesthetically mature. I default to rainbow palettes, but the pictures I save are usually muted. So, I guess it just comes down to a need for practice. Thankfully, the need to practice lasts a lifetime.

Starting to think about names for this painting. Not ready for naming yet, but stirring around some of the content, I see Adam and Eve, a fairy, architecture, a balding man biting his lip…this painting is based off a sketch I did on a plane back from SF in June 2024, which I turned into a developed sketch this August. Was looking at William Blake and thinking about rhythm in composition, added architectural motifs almost at random from a book of skyscraper photography I had on my shelf. Iteration and pulling from impulse=major. Hmm. I wanted the fairy-man to be very pathetic: at times he started to become marginally more handsome, so I would go back and exaggerate his face again each time I noticed dignity creeping in. I wanted him debased. To be utterly low. When I get frustrated about things I can’t control, I force myself to make the world I want via my drawings. A person who is too self-regarding and un-self-aware must become someone pitiable for me to get over it. And yet the drawing also still admits they have power: in the sketch, he seems like God, presiding over Adam and Eve (well, Adam and Steve). Emotionally, I depend heavily on the idea that frameworks are arbitrary, and perception is relative. We must face our fears but when we do our internal architecture crumples; a thinking person should be honest about that process and endure it so they can get where they need to go. I really am moved by house-as-mind metaphors. Or mind-as-house, what have you.

So, this is three figures, one big two small, two fused one separate…all aliens, different degrees of representation. All flanked by natural and architectural structures rising chaotically around them. The idea at heart (I guess) is taking a desire and building a universe around it but feeling the instability of the built world.

Wondering now if I’ve neglected the non-figurative elements. I need to fix up the smokestacks to the right.

Hm.

Oh and also

Just for fun: two Letterboxd lists I made for my personal edification

Giallo: https://letterboxd.com/esbit/list/giallo-and-giallo-ish-black-velvet-gloves/

Eurospy/60s mod detectives: https://letterboxd.com/esbit/list/trenchcoat-tango-spy-and-detective-stories/