Changing the Name

I added  ferocious crowd to the top right of the painting.  Its crowd that is cheering as if the Superbowl winning field goal kick is flying through the air. The crowd is a figment of the goalies imagination. In reality this is just an under 11 soccer game and he is lucky if half of the handful of people in the crowd are paying attention. To the child he is in the spot light. It is his chance to be a hero. I am not being sarcastic with this painting. I think it is very important for a child to take sports seriously because it is here where they learn important life skills, victory, and failure. Sports was my way of being a hero. This painting is about this imaginary mind space I would travel to you as a young boy in sports. It was like every weekend was Superbowl Sunday.
Anthony Papini
www.goingyellowgreen.com

Defensive Breakdown

The new painting I am working on is an action painting of everyday life. Everyday there are events going on that mean the world to people. I remember when I played soccer when I was young. Game day was like the Superbowl every weekend. That is what I am trying to show through these kids plying soccer. Yeah it's just an under 11 soccer match and there are thousands of them each weekend. But I wanted to paint it as a player sees the game, and to these kids it's a Big deal. I want to add glorify something that is often overlooked.

About birds in a tree

Well i have decided now not to go with the trash in the painting. It would take it in a direction I don't want this particular painting to go.
This painting's core is about coping with this concrete jungle. I have always enjoyed skateboarding, in fact I skate to work and to my studio. I was first interested in skateboarding because it was creative expression. Here you have all these things that were built for various reasons and with a skateboard you could use them in a completely different way than they were intended for. Sure I would of probably rather been running through the forest or fishing but I did not have that. I was born in Sacramento and I had to make my surroundings my playground. For me the street was my creative form of expression. In a way it is the same thing for the city birds in this painting, they have to make it work. There may be certain advantages for them by living above a freeway.  They would rather be in a wild forest some where but they are not. In a way I am facing reality in this painting. Like it or not we are must cope with modern life. City's, Garbage, Pee smell, Cancer and everything else that comes with what we have created. You can be for it against like it or hate it but you are part of it as the birds are.

Birds in a tree over a freeway

I started this painting about two months ago. I have gone back to work on it some more. This painting has been evolving before my eyes. It started out as simply just a freeway scene as I always do. But I went in a little thick on the first coat.  So I had to scrape some paint of. As a result there was a very smooth surface and a very ruff surface, As I began to pint the freeway I started looking at the ruff surface and I could see tree branches. I thought it would throw some branches in there as see what goes. After that I decided to add robins in the tree branches. So I have this moving freeway and birds living above it. We have this natural creature living above freeway of concrete. I thought of how sometimes there is nothing we can do but accept that we live above a freeway and move on.
Now the question is do I want to add trash in the trees. Like candy bar wrappers that the birds are using for nest material. This will change the meaning of the painting. Because now it wont just be beauty contrasting against ugly but beauty intertwined with ugly. Nature will be not just coping with this modern mess but using it.

My gut tells me to add the trash.

Shotwells

A note to myself in the future. When I look back at this painting years from know and ask myself how did I do it. My answer is effort, dedication and persistence. There is no formula for painting like this it just has to happen. I could never paint another one like it that is what I love about it. If I can't repeat it then sure as shit nobody else will be able to. There are no blueprints just raw feeling thrown on a canvas.

Painting Complete

 It is a painting about everyday life. A painting about the average person and a typical night out.

The Painting is Titled Shotwells, it is a painting that is meant to describe a bar from the eyes of a bar goer who has been enjoying some of the beverages. There is no higher meaning in this painting, I simply wanted to capture the essence of this place. Shotwell's is a bar in San Francisco, down the street from my art studio. It is  bar I like to go to with some of my studio mates to relax and play some pool and forget about the work week.

In the top right of the painting there is abstract lines that describe a thought of outside. It is as if a smoker is thinking of leaving to go get some air and have  smoke. Below that is a couple of guys  having a conversation while viewing the pool table. I let the layers of paint cover these guys a few times to make them bleed into the bar and just become a background thought.

Under those guys is a man shooting a pool stick with a lazy dog under him who does not move but is looking t the viewer bringing him into this painting. The dog is used to connect to the outside world.   The dog is also used to set a relaxed mood as he is relaxed. Behind the pool player is a man with his hands up as to not get hit with the stick. Below him is a girl with her bottle up taking a big sip of beer. She is enjoying it as the beer at Shotwell's is always good. The direction of the bottle in designed to draw your attention up to the pool stick which shoots you into the pool table.

The pool table is meant to look distorted as if the balls may roll of the table. I painted the balls quickly and loose  to keep your eyes from getting stuck on the table. My goal here is to keep your eye moving through the table. There is a big thick patch of red on the pool table. This color here is very important for balancing  the entire painting. It is the first thing your eye sees and it tells the viewer where to start looking so I can guide there eyes through the painting. It is like the red flag bull fighters flash at the bull.
To the left of the table are a couple of guys just relaxing waiting for there turn to shoot. They are in the most extreme foreground so they are painted loose and almost see through not important characters but again used to set the mood....just extras. They catch your eye but not long enough for you to care enough to get stuck on them.
You then travel  through a cluster of figures who almost combine to create one shape. I wanted this group of people to look at home in the bar.  Perhaps the are waiting to order or they are just letting the bright  lights hypnotize them. If this wee a painting of a zoo they would be the animals in the cage that look like they belong as  they are right at home in there surroundings. They the are bar animals, I almost added a monkey above them but he did not make the cut.

Your eye then travels  to the meat of the painting the bar. The bartender is  my studio mate,  I had her pose for  picture then  that I painted her in. She had the idea of holding her hand up as if she was pulling a tap. So I created the bar around her. The people at the bar are just relaxing having in juicy conversation. The girl is meant to catch your eye. I did this by her placement as she is facing the viewer. The man behind her with a light shirt which boxes her out also making her stand out. She is not meant to acknowledge the viewer as the dog but the viewer is meant to acknowledge her.

I tried to paint the effects of alcohol. Some things are in focus some things are blurry. Your eye has trouble staying in one place it wants to keep moving as if you have no control over it.

The whole painting is a simple story leading  the viewer on  a colorful journey into everyday life

Almost there

I was  able to give this painting CPR and I have brought it back to life. The colors are really are coming together. Added some new subject matter to draw the eye through the painting. On interesting thing is starting to happen is the pool table is starting to get tweaked out and distorted. Not only at the pool table but all over the painting. It looks as a scene through the eyes of an intoxicated person.

I am getting close to completion.  I don't think I am going to risk this painting any more. Time to take her home.

I took it to the edge and almost lost it.

I have overglazed before and I will overglaze again. Heavy glazing is embed in my painting style. I glazed this painting so deep that it was almost at the point of no return. People coming into look t my painting said things like oh what happened. Did you start over? People often don't understand the way I paint. In college I got these comments all the time. Even Art teachers did not know why I was glazing so deep. I remember on my final critique my senior year I had been working on the Red Room. The night before this final I had done a purple glaze over the painting, the entire thing. In critique I got reamed, Why did you do a purple glaze. Why would you do this right before critique ? Why purple. It was such a good painting before you layered purple over it. I herd it all. I knew what I was doing and I knew why I chose purple because it was a glaze that bridged the gap between the yellow and blue without turning green. I went on to finish this painting I was awarded a scholarship and the painting was and still is one of my strongest paintings ever. If I would of quite early yeah it would of been a good painting but not a great painting. I am over painting good paintings from now on I only paint masterpieces. This means that I am going to paint a lot of crap painting in the process. That means a lot of wasted hours at the studio,money and time when it dos not work out. I am ok with that.

This painting that I am working on I almost lost tonight. But I think I brought it to the edge and now if I can tackle this beast it will be my greatest creation ever. Or it may end up torn up on the street outside my studio....we will see.

OK final decent

I'm almost there, I have taken many risk and they have all worked out. Most of them better than I thought they would. I just got to bring this thing home now!

f*CK SH*T

The problem with working the way I do is that I am re creating the same painting over and over. Layering deeper and deeper allowing the previous layer show through. At one stage you get a painting to a certain point and you really like it. But then I must move on and bury it and start over. I have been painting this way for at least six years and I started this painting knowing that this is how I was going to construct it. However it is never easy to take something that is working and break it. I know what I did with the painting was right so I will have to push on. I will pull this bar scene back out of these layers.

Ok I have worked on it for another three hours. Added a dog the bar tender who is my studio mate and an idea for a space in the top right corner. It will be for a thought that looks right outside the bar.. The walls will just disappear in that area. Almost like a smoker thinking of leaving the bar to get some crisp air.

Update

Now tonight I worked for about three more hours on the bar painting and it is really coming together which believe it or not is  a bad thing. Th painting is still far from finished. I could finish it right now and it would be a strong painting. The thing is I am not going for a strong painting I am going for a  masterpiece. This means I am going to have to put my strong painting in jeopardy in pursuit of my greatest painting ever.

Painting in Progress

I have been working on a Bar Scene Painting for the last two weeks. It has been full of ups and downs and that is the way these involved paintings go.  One day it is the best painting ever then one day I want to throw it out the window and give up. I think the best paintings the masterpieces must go through this struggle. It is this struggle that makes it work.  It should be hard .