2009 December archive at d.i.y.

Archive for December, 2009

Dec

n u d e s for the holidays..

By James Millikan 2 Comments

Categories: My art

i’m posting a dozen holiday nudes here, all but one drawn december 10 and 17, 2009 (the one on the right is from october)(i thought you’d like it because it’s so christmas-y!). most are watercolors; a few also are pencilled or inked. the three above are the largest: around 23 x 16 inches. all the rest are 15 x 11.

these drawings were made during poses lasting 10 to 20 minutes.

every one of these drawings is a square-cornered rectangle, i swear! any irregularities of shape are due to my crap-brained amateurishness in photography. the delicious raggedy edge is by design, tho, and that’s why i didn’t crop them. it’s the natural result of folding, breaking and tearing this heavy (300 lb) paper instead of [gasp!] cutting it.

click on any image to go to a page with double-size ENLARGEMENTS of them all. click on d.i.y. to come back here. knock three times on my kitchen door to receive a cup of tea and a big smile.

our model december 10 at times played most winsomely with a parasol, bringing to mind wonderful images of geishas as well as people strolling, walking, running in the rain with umbrellas. don’t you just wish you were doing that right this minute?!?

it wasn’t all china and rain. there were also universal themes; such as the mysterious fem, and the broken-hearted fem. i think.

our december 17 model was Michal, also a talented actress who played Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream not long ago – a fabulous part! she did get a bit puck-ish now and then, too, i’m glad to mention. the middle drawing of the top three is also Michal – or at least it’s a few of her….

these final drawings are done with india ink. i was really happy to return to that medium, which i had not used recently. my favorite instrument with the ink is a 6 or 7 inch long stick, about 5/8 inch thick, that i picked from my yard and whittled a bit. i love it’s rawness.

happy holidays to all, and to all a good night!

Dec

R.

By James Millikan 4 Comments

Categories: My art

This is a two-minute sketch of Rebecca

made Wednesday Dec 2. It is drawn with

a soft graphite stick (9B) on 24″ x 18″ newsprint.

The newsprint is in a pad that

has a rumpled quality from lying forgotten

in the back of a damp pickup truck.

I love this little sketch.

maybe it’s the fine ass.

I have a few other nice ones in that pad too, in spite of the rumpled thing.

But I’m probably not going to use it anymore: it’s like drawing lines across a plowed field.

It’s always a pleasure drawing Rebecca. She is one of the best models in the area.

Dec

jimi’s back country chili (serves 6)

By James Millikan Closed

Categories: Recipe

Jimi's Back Country Chili

Recipes: what are they? If you know how to cook what you want, you don’t need ‘em. If you need a guide, they can be good. Sometimes when something I cook works out well, I write down the recipe for it.

This one is from 2006. My family has a tradition of going to Bear Valley between Christmas and New Year’s to ski, snowboard, play board games. We also eat.

This recipe was originally for 12 servings: that was before some of us moved to New Zealand. I’ve made the chili again each year: it has become a little tradition of its own … it is also known affectionately as “road kill chili.”

This year I made it for a smaller group: 6.

Here’s that recipe.

[Prep: 30 minutes. Cook: 3 hours.]

1 lb beef (e.g., boneless chuck) in 1” cubes

½ lb ground beef, ½ lb ground pork

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

4-5 fresh garlic cloves, minced

1 fresh jalapeño, stemmed, seeded, minced

4 tablespoons New Mexico chili powder

1½ tablespoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 28-oz can peeled, diced tomatoes & juice

1 15-oz can chicken broth

1-2 teaspoons salt and black pepper, to taste

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

2 15-oz cans black beans

Season meat cubes with ½ teaspoon salt and fresh ground black pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a cast iron Dutch oven over medium high heat. Brown the beef cubes, stirring frequently, adding oil if needed.

Add ground meats, salt & pepper, and repeat process.

Add onion, garlic, jalapeño, ½ teaspoon salt; and, if needed, a

tablespoon olive oil. Cook over medium high heat, stirring often, until vegetables soften and lightly brown, 4-6 minutes.

Stir in: the chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, and salt to taste. Cook for one minute over medium high heat. Stir in diced tomatoes and chicken broth. Simmer covered for 1½ hours, adjust seasoning if needed, and uncover for one more hour, stirring occasionally.

Drain and rinse 2 cans black beans & add; cover. Simmer 20 minutes and serve with corn bread, rice, or saltine crackers.

YUM!

Dec

Work in progress 2 (dispatch from forestville..)

By James Millikan Closed

Categories: Art Questions and My art

New Painting

Phase two of work in progress

– and maybe the final (for this painting..)!

I like it! It’s what I wanted.

I love the yummy sensuousness of its details.

I love its dynamic central figure.

I find really attractive how the background figures are clearly distanced behind the central figure and yet are so strong and assertive in their own right. It is as though they were plucked straight from an eternal existence into this placement here, in the world made visible by this canvas.

I was VERY happy with the painting I did earlier in the week. Gradually, though, I came to feel that its right half was off a bit.

I wanted to make the swirl and the vertical more integrated. I thought of introducing some of the rich burnt umber of the swirl into the vertical.

What I actually did was the opposite: the yellow ochre mud of the vertical came to reside in the swirl.

The hand follows the heart; the head tries to keep up.

My main tool was a little square mat board scrap. Using it, I reshaped the right side to do three things:

• Integrate swirl with vertical
• Decrease black
• Sharpen blockiness of vertical

Here are the two versions side-by-side, for comparison. [Scroll down to the previous post (dec 9) for a larger pic of the first version.] (Subtle difference in color is due to lighting and my amateur photography, not to painting changes.)

First Version

New Version

Even after lapse of a few days, I’m happy with the changes made. MAYBE the painting is finished!

I like the sense of robust strength given to the vertical by the blocks, especially the large, scraped-off section at bottom right. It adds gravitas to the figure, giving it a solid support to rest on holding the uprights – as sturdy as large poles set in massive concrete.

The earlier version lacked this solidity. What its vertical had instead is the power of a rocketship blasting into takeoff. There was tremendous pure energy unleashed in the first version. This new, revised version, as it were, civilizes that power, turns rocket-take-off into a powerful construction, a natural edifice.

It’s the difference between action on the initial, mad impulse and the thoughtful return to tweak the results…

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

SPEAKING OF MOUNTAINS — something is happening to me, as an artist, about mountains. I see them in sharply delineated blocks set off by contrasting shadows cast in bright sunlight.

In New Zealand, I was obsessed with those images, visible to me daily across the bay. Like these:

Young Nicks Head II

Afternoon Light

Even in my brief Baja stay, this mountain muse haunted me. There was this:

Mountain (3)

On our way out

from the backcountry to the airport,

we passed through wonderful, dry,

rugged, mountainous territory

that screamed at me to come back

and paint it. And so I will!

I’m thinking that maybe I am

RELIVING THE BIRTH OF CUBISM!!??!!

Cezanne began it with mountains.

Braque and Picasso picked up on it from Cezanne

– as in this early Braque. Cezanne and Braque. Check ‘em out:

Mont St. Victoire

Grand Nu

Cubism went to some strange places; I don’t think I want to go there. I’m just saying.

Dec

work in progress

By James Millikan 2 Comments

Categories: My art

New Painting

YES!

I’m working again!

i’ve been paralyzed by having a clean and well-organized studio. what a curse that blessing can be!

i’ve done scarcely anything since new zealand; just a little taste in baja, and recent flailing with figure drawing.

this morning i simply HAD to paint in oils! and now that i’ve produced the image i had in mind, i just HAVE to post it on my blog, i’m so pleased.

of course it is completely impossible that i have any ability to judge this work at this point. it may not be complete. it may be awful and i’ll just want to burn it, later.

but right now, it’s mine baby, and i’m happy with it!

Dec

woman

By James Millikan Closed

Categories: My art

Woman

No, definitely I have not forgotten about or abandoned figure drawing. It’s still basic, and I improve my drawing abilities in general as well as for the figure by drawing the figure over and over again.

It really does make a difference.

Each figure is unique, presenting its own special challenges and offering possible rewards for them, for the lucky artist who rises to the challenge. The eye and the skills developed by tackling the hard parts underpin a growing facility to lay down line or color that transcends literalness to capture essence.

Hoohah!

This drawing I’ve posted here incorporates two or three views of the woman model. It also shifts between emphasis on color, line, and form. Those factors help the drawing stay true to the living reality of a woman, giving a sense of motion and change, in keeping with the essence of life — which is, improvisation.

The drawing dates from November this year.

Dec

shards

By James Millikan Closed

Categories: Art Theory, My art and Oddities

Shard # 1

Shard # 2

Shard # 3

Shard # 4

Shard # 5

Shard # 6

Shard # 7

Shard # 8

Shard # 9

Here are nine recent small paintings of mine.

They are “Shards” because they are broken pieces of a single, whole painting.

Why did I do this?

First, because I felt moved to do it. Most of my art is like that: feel first and think later. I have been drawn off and on for a while to use shattered materials in my art: ripped canvas, torn paper. It reflects a sense of the broken dystopia of the world we live in, which is superficially papered over by our relative wealth and privilege.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….And second, there seemed a good chance that each piece would make an intelligible whole by itself – which is the hope I cherish for our world and how I make my life.

Each piece by itself no longer dutifully carries out its task of making up part of a greater whole. You might say, it rebels and strikes out on its own in search of meaning.

Shorn of reference to the meaningful whole of the painting from which each is torn, the pieces go their merry way, mostly referring to little beyond themselves: small paintings with bad attitudes.

And yet some of them evoke echoes of a meaning beyond themselves, as though they were being dreamed by a being on another plane. i feel that way myself.

I find myself turning increasingly to such themes, though not exclusively.

I will NOT provide a picture of all the pieces put together as though it were a puzzle we’d solved. It is of no interest. Looked at from a distance, perhaps with eyes a bit squinted, it would appear to be a conventionally healthy solid whole residing in a stable world.

Bah! I spit upon it! It is nothing! Much better is the honesty of ripping it apart, tearing it to shreds, to reveal the underbelly!

Or, with or without the spit, it can be done the way I did it: I tore up the paper first; and then, laying the pieces back together again, I made a painting. Afterwards, when I picked them up again, they were shards.

All of the shards in this series are done in watercolor, pastels, and pencil on Arches 300 lb hot pressed archival paper.

No paper was injured or killed in making this art.

Dec

grom

By James Millikan Closed

Categories: Uncategorized

Emerging Talent

Rangi is my grandson, and i’m so proud of him i could burst! A great heart and a fine athlete. He’s ranked 4th in all of New Zealand in his age class (under 12), referred to in news releases as emerging talent. Well, he is! ♥ ♥

Here’s what they say about him:

“Above – Nine year old Gisborne surfer Rangi Moore competing at the Rip Curl GromSearch at Gisborne this weekend. Moore is a newcomer to the national competitive scene but starting at such a young age, he will be a rising star to watch in the future. Photo: Kiwi Surf Magazine” (Pic & text lifted from the mag)

d.i.y.

Archive for December, 2009

n u d e s for the holidays..

R.

jimi’s back country chili (serves 6)

Work in progress 2 (dispatch from forestville..)

work in progress

woman

shards

grom

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