Sergeant Nimrod Burke
General Ulysses S. Grant
24″ x 12″
Acrylic on Canvas
2012
Part of The American Civil War Series

I’m sure most of you are familiar with Grant, but if Nimrod Burke looks unfamiliar, you can read more about him here.

Here are the first six paintings in a series of a dozen 12″ x 24″ portraits from the American Civil War era that I’m working on.

When I decided to embark on a series of portraits from the American Civil War, I really didn’t know that much about the history or the subjects of these paintings. I was drawn to the imagery. I wanted to paint the faces from this era, and I didn’t want to be bogged down by the political implications of the actions of these figures. I wasn’t going to just paint people who were on the politically correct side of the Civil War, or even people who were directly involved in this war. I simply wanted to make paintings of Americans from this time in history. There is something about the expressions on the faces of people from this era; they look angry, sad, scared, and beaten down. They also look resolved.

A lot of this, I realize, is due to the technology of this era. The astounding Mathew Brady took pretty much every portrait that is associated with this time, and I am certain that most–if not all–of the paintings in this series will be based on his work. Daguerreotype photography from this time utilized glass plates instead of film, and cameras relied on long exposures to capture enough light to produce an image. The subjects had to stay completely still for long periods of time, resulting in a portrait that is remarkably sharp yet ghost-like at the same time.

I find these images fascinating. I can’t stop staring at them. I read somewhere that many people from that period considered it impolite to stare at a daguerreotype portrait for long, and that makes perfect sense when I look at that image of General Sherman, or even the portrait of Brady himself. These photographs are unsettling, yet strangely compelling.

I’m not quite sure what the next six will be. I’m picking them out one or two at a time, as I go. I am contemplating painting this Brady portrait of Samuel Morse next, but then again I might have to throw myself in a volcano if I have to paint all the detail in that beard (oh but those medals would be fun). So if anyone out there wants to make a suggestion, I am wide open.

Mathew Brady and Sitting Bull in progress (4/12/12):

Click here if you’d rather see a PDF.

I had a big roll of canvas that was the perfect size for this backdrop, which is a whopping 107″ wide by 70″ tall:

detail:

in progress:

I can’t begin to say how much fun I had with this. The work went quickly and methodically, with a minimum of hair-pulling. I completed the entire thing in seven days.

I’m also going to be selling prints at the shows:

I did a limited edition of 50. Each print is 16″x20″, signed and numbered. If you want one, but can’t make the shows, email me and I will hook you up.

This may or may not be the end of a short series of paintings of plastic guns (see Gun #1 and Gun #2). I’d like to paint more, but I haven’t found any other cool-looking plastic guns to use as subjects. Guess it’s time to start hitting the 99-cent stores!

You can see the first one here… more to come!

I posted a photo of a painting in progress a few weeks ago on Facebook, and a couple of people responded with comments along the lines of, “It looks finished–what more needs to be done?” So I thought I’d post a set of before/after photos, and take this opportunity to illustrate a bit of this process.

In the photo below, I’ve taken the final, finished piece (on the right) and put it up next to what I’d consider the “second draft” (on the left):

(Click to see larger)

Clearly you can see that the painting on the left is very rough. The colors need to be smoothed out, and blended together properly:

Colors need to be corrected, and details (like the shadows) added:

Each step of this process has its own unique characteristics:

–The first draft is always fun because you get to see your painting emerge. On the other hand, you have to mix your paints and determine accurate colors for the piece at this stage. That process usually requires a lot of trial-and-error to get the colors just right; after all, these are the colors you are going to be using for the long-haul, and it would be difficult to change them halfway through the piece.

I also paint the background during the first draft; if the background has a gradient (like this piece does), then it requires quite a few coats of paint to get it blended just right. You don’t want to do this later because that blending can get messy and knock out some of the detail around the edges of the main subject.

–The second draft is the longest part of the process. This is the real meat of the work, where all the details get added or refined. It’s important to stay focused and work methodically at this stage; if I find myself jumping all over the place, I’ll begin to feel lost, and wonder how the hell I’m going to pull this thing off.

–The third draft can often last for weeks. This is not because I am working on it constantly, but because it requires a lot of time for my eyes and brain to rest. Keep in mind, at this point I have usually spent upwards of 50-60 hours (more, for a bigger piece) staring at this painting, so I need to walk away from it a lot so I can see it again. Inconsistencies in color, rough spots, missing white highlights–all of these things reveal themselves during this period, and I am so accustomed to staring at this canvas that I sometimes just don’t see them. It’s at this point that I am most interested in what I like to think of as painting with grace. I not only want to reproduce the image as accurately as possible, but I want to create a beautiful painting, where every stroke is rendered as gracefully as possible.

So, anyway, here’s the final, finished piece:

Gun #1
24″ x 36″
Acrylic on canvas

Some details:

Religious Bunny
36″ x 24″
Acrylic on canvas

I originally wanted to call this one, “I Believe In God”. Now THERE’S a nice high-fallutin’ artspeak name for a painting of a foil-covered chocolate Easter Bunny. But that was what I kept thinking about when I was working on it.

When I was a small child, I truly did believe that God, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny all lived together in a castle in the sky. These were looming figures. And these figures’ appearance had hinged solely on impressions I gained from the material surrounding me. Every holiday celebration was peppered with colorful, mass-produced candies and toys. You didn’t get a birthday cake; you got a cake with a plastic carousel on top of it. You didn’t get a Halloween cupcake, you got a cupcake with a smiling plastic pumpkin on it. And Easter was the greatest because everything seemed to feature images of a smiling cartoonish bunny, usually wearing some kind of corny outfit.

God was different. We didn’t have God in my house. We didn’t go to church, and my family was reticent about anything even remotely involved with religion. If any of us had the guts to ask my dad what religion we were, he’d say, “We’re NOTHING.” And that would be that.

So God was always vague. I knew from TV shows and movies that God was someone that people prayed to to make things happen. But I had no real concept what he might actually look like. I’d picture a faceless figure, huge, up in the clouds pointing down at the Earth to make things happen.

So this bunny, he could be looking skyward–he could be giving a knowing wink to his friend God in the clouds. This bunny, he believes in God. This bunny knows. He lives with him in the clouds.

It makes me believe in God just a little to see something so beautiful, so colorful, so detailed and nuanced in a figure that few people have ever bothered to look closely at. This–to me–is God at work. God is in the details, and every time he reveals these details to me, I think to myself, There’s God at work. He’s up in those clouds, he’s pointing down at me and saying stop for a goddamned moment and look. Look at the beauty in this world in even the smallest, most unlikely places. Look.

Bunny “Happy”
52″ x 32″
Acrylic on canvas

Not the best photo… I’ll replace it soon with a better one.