Precision: Step 1
Let me begin by saying that Bryan Larsen has in his studio the most impressive easel I have ever seen. It’s quite nice.
Now granted, despite the fact that I make my living as an artist, I do not lay any claim to being all-knowing when it comes to easels. And I’m far from having anything remotely resembling a finger on the pulse of modern easel technology, if there is such a thing. I tend to buy an easel, and if I like it I use it without actively looking for better alternatives. The same is not so for chicken fried steaks, but that’s a story for another day. The point is that, as far as I know, they’re building easels in the Netherlands that are capable of following an artist around the studio, asking whether or not he feels well, and perhaps offering a slate of helpful remedies if he is, in fact, feeling a bit down at the news of some ill happening or other. His mother might be ailing. Who is to say? A dog bite. Lots of things happen. But regardless of all of that, Mr. Larsen has, given the somewhat limited breadth of my own knowledge regarding the wide world of commercially available easels, won my personal award for Best Easel Ever. He is not aware of the honor as I write this, but he will soon come to know it when his blue ribbon arrives in the mail. Ask him next time you have the chance if he received such a prize and then we’ll discuss whether or not I’m just pulling your leg. It’s that impressive.
My own easels are not half as sexy as Mr. Larsen’s. I know this to be true because I’ve never scored any sort of social points based purely on the grandeur and impressiveness of them. Mr. Larsen has, the evidence of which is the very fact that I am now writing of the shining brilliance of said easel and attempting, probably unsuccessfully at that, to avoid showing any signs of envy. “Easel envy” is not a formal condition that I’m aware of, but I tell you with the utmost sincerity that the damn thing has *pedals*; four of them. I wouldn’t be surprised to drop into his studio unannounced one day and see him driving the thing around in circles, navigating door frames and singing a little song of delight as he went along his merry way. And his delight would be very well merited if I do say so myself. If he installed a good siren on the thing, he’d be the idol of every boy in town.
That aside, I’m certainly happy to be back in the Artist’s Studio here at Quent Cordair Fine Art, deplorably inept old clunker of an easel that I work with and all. I really do need to upgrade, is what I’ve been thinking for a long time. I’m pretty sure I had plans to import a very fantastic easel in months past, but it wouldn’t do any of us any good for me to go into that here. I think it worked on gas hydraulics, actually; an electronic brain of sorts. I should really try to remember where I wrote that down. With my luck, I jotted it on a nearby canvas and it got painted on and turned into something pretty. Now that I think about it, that’s most likely exactly what happened. This has been the case more than a few times. I missed my own mother’s birthday this year for the same reason and I’m fairly certain that I ended up living in Texas because I brushed over a note that was supposed to remind me of a very important reason for why I absolutely *must not* leave Scottsdale at any cost. I can only hope that in the future, when the conservation lab is doing a routine x-ray of one of my paintings to discover the deep dark secrets of an artistic mind that was once very prone to going off on terrible tangents, they will find my note to myself scrawled under the paint layer and say to themselves, “Now look here, what’s this? Good lord, this is a direct reference to the Easel Magnum 3000, all the way back in 2007! Our greatest artists have been using those things for 7 generations and this ‘Denys’ person was trying to order one while they were still in the early stages of development! Capitol! We must posthumously elect him Genius Of The Universe at once. All in favor, say ‘ay’.” And yes, I’m aware that I’m probably allowing this to go too far. Ah well. More than likely they will just unearth the scrawled name of a restaurant in Arizona that serves a platinum-quality chicken fried steak.
And so here we are, ready to begin a new project that I’m calling Precision, which will hopefully prove that when I’m holding a paint brush I’m capable of being far less oblique than when I have a keyboard under my fingers. I’ll get into the nuts and bolts of the subject soon enough, but for now please enjoy the accompanying sketched composition as it appears on the primed canvas. As I’m sure we’ve all seen many sketches before, I don’t think there is too much for me to ramble on about this time. And for that I’m sure we’re all very grateful. I’ll be back for more in the near future, and I hope you, whoever “you” may be out there in electronic data land, will join me. Until then, thank you for tuning in and goodbye for now.
Tags: Damon Denys, Precision
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:08 am
Yes, it’s all true. Even the part about the ribbon. Thanks, by the way. The only other way an Artist can get a ribbon is by gluing feathers and barbed wire to a utility cart, setting it on fire, and entering it in the state fair.
Looking forward to the development of your new painting. Looks promising as always, even if it does have to grow up on some sort of bamboo-catgut-adobe “easel”.
Bryan Larsen
P.S. I dictated this comment to my easel while it was treating me to a nice deep-tissue massage and soothing my nerves with a little harp music. I understand there is an upgrade which will also pour the perfect beer.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Are you saying that if I enter my easel into the state fair I’ll be a shoe-in for the grand prize? Perfect! That way, I wouldn’t have to do any real work at all.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Do you use models or anything like that for the initial sketch? Thank you.
-Tom
November 28th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Hi Thomas. I actually tend to vary my methods from subject to subject, depending on my resources and the demands of what I’m painting. This painting has been a little unusual in that I did the compositional designing right on the canvas, as opposed to making a drawing on paper first. I do like to make a sketch first and then transfer that sketch to the canvas, but as I said, my methods do vary.
Since the model for this subject is a friend who lives 14 hours away from me, I only had him around for a short time while I was trying to decide on the basic design for the painting. As a result, the composition itself was created with the model at hand, but the actual painting has had to be done from a variety of sources, including photos that I have altered on Photoshop to suit my needs.
Probably the wine and apple are the only things that I can paint from life on this one, and even then I’ll be changing the bottle’s labels and cork to suit my own needs. The buildings are based on drawings for an architect’s building proposal, and the rest of the background I’m just inventing. The Spanish tile design, for example, I created right on the canvas in charcoal without making any initial sketches. I pretty much knew what I wanted right from the beginning anyway, so to go to the trouble to design the tiles on paper first would have just taken extra time.