Painting with Thor

First, there is no Wednesday Drawing not because I didn't go, but because I don't have anything worth showing. We started Dangerous Liaisons and I hate it.  It is the most boring and tedious book and I don't know how I am going to get through May drawing sessions.  I'll have to come up with alternate audio.

***********

I have all Thursdays off this month because I asked Thor Wickstrom if I could join him painting, and he said Thursdays are good.  I met him today.  It was a wonderful day and Thor is a great guy.  And a REALLY good painter.

We met on the Lower East Side in Tompkins Square park.

He's much better than I am, and that's not a knock against myself and I don't feel bad about it.  It's just a fact.  I have only been going out for 11 years and Thor has been going out for something like 35 years.
I like finding people who are better than I am and learning from them.  Osmosis-learning is a very real thing.

I worked 11x14 oil on my Yellowstone box:

Thor took some pictures of me.  It was still chilly enough that I wore a jacket, so I am wearing my Tent Smock over it which makes me look enormous.

**********
Painting Notes:

1. Viewfinding: Thor uses his cellphone to take a picture and he does his layout drawing from that.
I have a viewfinder thingy and I even use it sometimes.  I have also seen other people do the comp from a phone photo.  I think I'm going to start doing this because one of the things I love about Thor's paintings and dislike about mine is the wider angle.  My compositions are more zoomed in and I want to zoom out. It's much easier to get a wider angle from the phone, at least until I learn how to "see" it without.

2. Fake Cobalt Violet: Thor uses mostly Rembrandt paints but he has a huge tube of Winton Cobalt Violet.  Winton is student grade paint.  I looked at it on his palette and said it looks like manganese violet.  It is, in fact, a mix of manganese violet and ultramarine.  It's very transparent (moreso because it is student paint).  He uses it in his gray mixtures.  He has a HUGE tube of it so it must be pretty important.  I'm going to get some.  

I have both real cobalt violet ($$$$) and artist-grade manganese but he likes it because it is subtle.
Winton is super cheap so it's not a big deal to get some to try it.

3. Trees: There are no real formulas in painting. Sometimes you can do leaves first and add branches, sometimes it's branches first. But Thor did put his trunks and branches in first.  Then he layered the leaves on top, at least when I went over to look. 

4. Simplification: This is something we cannot hear enough as painters. It's really the key to many things.  Garin Baker talked a lot about it too. Thor really simplifies but it's not readily apparent because his paintings have a lot happening. This is definitely something I need to work on.

5. Buildings: As far as I could tell Thor layered spots of paint next to each other (windows/façade). But then went over it with façade for perspective lines.  Again, not a formula approach. I still need practice.

6. Pigeons: I have a new goal to get pigeons in my paintings.

7. Trash: I looked at Thor's painting at one point and mentioned it was a good call to leave out the huge trash bags at the corner.  He looked at them and thought it would be a good idea to add them in so he did.  What is NYC without trash?  I definitely need to put trash in my paintings, too.

8. Drawing: I have drawing issues....... but who doesn't? These types of paintings are heavily drawing-based combined with painting spots of color.... but the drawing holds it up.

9. Small brushes: In general larger brushes are the way to go. Thor used fairly small ones though.
Next time I paint with him I'm going to examine his brushes more.... but when I looked they were on the small side. He painted the below painting on a 12x12 canvas.  He's FAST! Oh my gosh it's ridiculous!
He even knocked out a second painting after he did this one! 

I'm pretty fast but....he's REALLY fast.  It comes with experience.

10: Favorite Gesso: We both have the same favorite gesso.... the good stuff from Jerry's. It literally says World's Greatest Gesso on the jar, so that explains everything.

********
The Lower East Side is still one of those little pockets of NYC where it is still a genuine NYC vibe.
Lots of local color kind of thing.  I am very at-home in that type of environment.   Everyone is local and a bit weird. Many, many people came over to say hi and a lot of them knew Thor.  Including a whole class of kindergarten and first graders with their teacher.  I also met a lady named Laurie who also knows Thor.  She was at Pratt in the 70s and we chatted for a while.  

Everyone was very nice.  But people will also come over and just start talking about literally anything, which is sometimes interesting, sometimes not, and sometimes makes no sense at all, like the guy who came over talking about carving alligator heads in trees.

I also got interviewed for a documentary some lady was doing.  I have no clue what it will be used for but she wanted a bad landlord story (I don't have one), a story about something spontaneous that worked out and something that didn't work out. Interestingly, this lady was also in Central Park that day  we were painting the geisha!