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Painting! I had not really ever thought of that, nor, had I
done any of that. So I figured that I'd better start practicing in a hurry
and see where I stood in the world of painting and understand if I could do a
nice job on this statue. With the statue at this stage, doing a hack job
on the painting wasn't an option.
My approach was to buy a bunch of acrylic paints and some brushes
and just paint. I quickly found out that I really enjoyed it and I was
amazed to find out that it isn't that hard! I got 1000 times better
results than I thought I would, right out of the chute. My first painting
ever, took about 2 hours, no more. It was loosely from a photo that I
liked of New Jersey native and Washington Senator, Goose Goslin. I think
one of the reasons I did so well and enjoyed it so much is because I had almost
zero expectations. I've come to find out that expectations destroy
paintings, almost without fail. With a carving, your expectations drive
you to work harder to make the outcome what you imagined. In painting, the
big expectations will frustrate you. You still have to work hard at times
and stick to your work, but it's a different kind of thing altogether.
The Goose Goslin painting is the middle one. Very simple.
Only three or four colors. It was one of the most amazing experiences of
my life. I just didn't think I could do that. Now I'm not saying it
should hang in the Lourve, but it was just so darned much fun that night to see
it come to be. The Joe Wood one on the right was not so great--too much
Elvis on the black velvet. The Cobb one had some zip on the left. I
don't know where any of them got to, but they sure served their purpose.
And they gave rise to one of my all time favorite works which I
did that same first week:
That's Babe Ruth painted on the back of a ceiling tile.
It's from a rare photograph of Ruth MISSING the ball. He did swing and
miss at times for sure. And he did it with such flair as he swung such a
huge bat so hard. I loved the look on his face most of all. It's a
look of shock and of slight pain, as if it literally hurts to swing that hard
and miss! And although I hate modern art and all its phoniness, I had a
great time painting in the "ether" that Ruth is in. I pictured it as
energy and thoughts. The energy of the field, the game, the other players,
the coaches and fans and writers. Everyone is trained on the famous man
and he is trained on his own bat. I pictured that all that energy would
look like heat haze, picking up colors from the air and the ground; the dirt and
the grass. I even showed a cooling flow off of his now "cool" bat. I
flew through the painting and did the whole thing in not more than 3 hours.
I managed to remain non-uptight and relaxed and stuck to my original vision of
the ether around Ruth missing the ball. I love it. Could you sell
this? I doubt it. It looks amateurish for sure but to me, it is a
Monet.
I probably wasted more time fooling with the painting but I was
having a ball! It was a phenomenal thing for me to "discover" that I could
do this and that frankly, it isn't that hard. I've had arguments and
discussions with people over this very thing and someone I respect and who has
taught me a lot and supported me, told me, "...Brian, a million people can paint
and paint pretty well, but you can sculpt and that's not so easy". So he
thinks it's easy too. Look, it's not as hard as you think to paint--have
you TRIED? That's the beauty of this; it got me to TRY. And that's
all it took.
Here I've whitewashed the face--just painted it white so that I
can see how the light hits it. It's hard sometimes to see good depth in
raw wood so I coated him white and got a better assurance that I had what I
thought I had.
From there on out, it was seal and paint and pintstripe.
The hands are not done in this shot and the dark markings are wood burner lines.
The face is painted a solid, brushed on flesh color. You need a base coat
before airbrushing anyway and mostly, you're just dying to get closer to that
finished look any way you can. It makes it just a bit easier to squint and
"see" the finished figure.
Pin striping was, and still is, a nightmare. I have
developed a technique on Mickey Mantle that I still use but on the first Babe, I
was just making things up. I had a stamp made at an office supply store
and I stamped the stripes on. Then I didn't like that so I repainted him
completely and ordered a new stamp and did it all over again. No matter
what method you use, each stripe has to be done by hand, inch by inch.
There is no other way. I have had arguments with people who insist that I
could roll them on with a pizza wheel or some other thing and it makes me laugh.
I'm actually DOING the thing and they have thought about it for perhaps 30
seconds and yet they are telling you that you are wrong! I love it.
Those people are everywhere: try not to let them waste too much of your time.
