Through the summer, too hot to sit out in the sun drawing… had in mind what more I could do with the street sketches. Or maybe less. I wasn’t satisfied with where they were going…or not going. Maybe I’ll play with some of them I did earlier… see what happens
Textures. Tone. It’s not the city as it is that I’m after… it’s the city as it is and something else. The city of imagination.
Here is the before.
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5.5″ x 6″ Black gesso, ink, water color, silver and aluminum metalpoint on prepared mat board.
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Color is beginning seep back into the world. 5″x 5″ Black gesso, ink, Metalpoint (Silver, gold and aluminum) on prepared matting board. Cityscape series
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Cityscape 4.75″ x 4.5″ Black gesso, ink, gold, copper and silverpoint on prepared matting board.
8″ x 10″ City Series. Black gesso, acrylic, gouache, ink on canvas. Black white and gray… for the last month or so I’ve been doing monotones. I don’t see, can’t process color when I’m depressed or more than normal levels of anxiety.
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32″ x 28″ Acrylic on canvas. Was working from one of my street sketches. The drawing and underpainting stayed true to the perspective. Then I was stuck. The natural direction was to develop it as a representational image. But that wasn’t at all what I wanted. I fussed with it for two weeks. This morning, the art show opening behind me, I went down to the basement and before I looked at it, I knew what was wrong: perspective. I had to flatten it, destroy the geometric depth. Extend the lines to vanishing points, extend them, let them define the space around the building, erasing the distinction between solid object and empty space. Take the graffiti from the wall of the building, and write it over the surface of the painting.
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Jacob Russell's Magic Names 