Friday and Technique

Friday you used to mean so much more when I worked for the man, but now it is like any other day and that is a bit sad. I have to say that it is harder and harder to keep getting up at seven with Ali because I am not driving or commuting anywhere, but if I didn’t that would be a bad routine to start. I just got done making my list of “Things To Do”, and every time I start with like four things on this list and it ends up being like 14. Most of the time it is a lot of stupid little items that I put on the list to make me feel accomplished, but still those things add up to a lot of time. The studio is of top importance today, and calling Tom Reed but he may have gone to the SGC conference because it was in Chicago. He usually hates conferences, but maybe he went to see and hang out with his Chicago friends, but I will call Island Press and see if he is there.

I started painting finally on the new painting. I am getting slow at taping and cutting out my stenciling of areas. I work like an idiot and most artists would probably say “What the hell are you doing Bryan Kite?” and I would respond that it is cheap in the sense and it works for me. This is my process of airbrushing and painting. I first draw out all my items on tracing paper (I like to have them for other things just in case) and then copy them onto Xerox transparency sheets because they are far cheaper than stiff acetate, but a little harder to work with. I than cut out the tracings so I can have the negative area for stencil, but I do hold onto the positive in case I need more over spray at the end. I do this process so that the stencil will leak a bit (overspray) onto the background of the painting creating a bit of a halo. I than airbrush the stencils, and than begin the process of masking taping over the images I just made. I use the cheapest masking tape there is that actually has a rubber based adhesive because it is fairly transparent. The problem here is do not leave this tape on your painting for a long period (72hrs) because that adhesive begins to bond otherwise it peels off pretty nicely. I than draw with a sharpie over the masking tape because I can just barely see through the tape. I than very carefully use my x-acto blade to cut out the positive areas and peel that away. I than tape over all exposed areas of the background preferring to use a better quality tape here, but not always depending on what I have available or how broke I am feeling. I am than ready to paint (I shall insert a picture here in a bit for everyone) and I first put down highlights using white, and than some darks with blacks just to start pulling the three-dimensional form out of the flat shapes. I than pause and begin to decide what color combinations everything will be because this will help me when I am laying down the color. I than move to begin laying down the most delicate of the colors first such as yellow or orange, and move down the line to colors that the least corruptible. I keep doing this building up color in many layers and developing dimensions through tints of the colors, until it is ready to be untapped. This is the best part because it always looks different once the background is revealed again, and than I add lines with a liner brush to make certain areas pop out.

I will add photos to document some o f my explanations, but that will be later today.
Thanks,
Bryan