Last week I took this commissioned oil painting up to Mount Vernon and hung it in Dave’s beautiful house overlooking the Skagit Valley. The frame I made fit right in with the decor and the painting looked like it was made for the place……. well it was!
I haven’t been painting with oils much in the last couple years. The watercolors took me on a journey. Many months after my show in Mount Vernon, Dave Oneill gave me a call about doing a painting for his dinning room. He had seen the show and had some ideas for a commission. After going back and forth a bit with his vision I came up with a few ideas in rough sketch form.
Dave wanted it pretty large, 5 x 3 ft painting, so instead of a watercolor I recommended an oil on canvas.
I transferred my sketch and did a thin “imprematura” underpainting. This seals the gesso ground so the oils don’t suck in as bad and it provides some color coming through the layers that will be added on top.
Next comes the block-in, to get the darks, mids and lights all established and really start to understand how I’m going to paint this scene. At this stage I start to make the planes or shapes, sit in front or back of each other.
The painting starts to come together at this point as I listen to a CD of the high school kids from Maui.
After a couple weeks of painting it was almost done. I really had fun painting those crazy, electric splashes around the salmon. I’ll let this dry thoroughly for a few days, oil it out with a very thin rub of Galkyd thinned with Galkin to even out a few sunken in areas. After that is completely dry, I’ll put on a final varnish, mount it in a frame I made and take it to it’s new home.
I needed to make a video for my song CutUp as part of my promotion for the new album 3PlusOne. But nothing was happening in the idea department. What to do! I took a clue from my song title and cut up some old, textured, sumi ink paintings. I drew a few new dancing characters and put on some color with watercolors. These were loaded those into Affinity Photo to clear out the backgrounds. I took the images into Apple Motion to do the animation and assembled the final video in Final Cut Pro. Each step adds its own character. The mix of hand-made analog images manipulated with digital tools is cool. It’s like what we do in music. Sometimes you just have to get started and let the flow take you where it wants to go. From those elements I created a one minute rough idea for a longer animation. The story doesn’t really go anywhere yet and the animation could be developed, but it’s a good start.
I’m trying to share some of my creative process in the hopes it will inspire others to try something a little different.
I found myself in a half-asleep state, warm in my bed, a vivid image formed in my head. A boat adorned with intricate Celtic dragons on its bow and stern was ablaze, drifting helplessly in a turbulent sea. The flames licked at the ornate detailing, casting an glow over the waters.
Beneath the surface, dark, shadowy hands emerged from the depths, reaching out to tug at the vessel, as if they were determined to drag it into the abyss. Above, on a weathered dock, a man stumbled out to gaze at the burning boat, while hands from the deep pulled the craft down into the dark unknown.
See an animated short I made of this on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC67QhCuWTKn5Jko4GGrL6AA @samalbrightvideo
Here is the first song on my new album, scheduled to come out early 2025. 3PlusOne is a latin inspired instrumental with a good, mid-tempo groove and a great guitar solo at the end by Al Kaatz. It feels like a sunny day dancing out on a grassy field. I play the main melody on electric and acoustic mandolin, Kelly VanCamp on drums and Walt Singleman on electric bass and David Parker on accordion.
Listen to this and many other songs on BandCamp: https://samalbright.bandcamp.com
This is a collaboration with Leah Vic Shelton. I created the basic music bed and Leah wrote the lyrics to fit, then I fleshed out the production.
I’ve been putting up some songs on BandCamp. Here’s an instrumental from the Space Flower album called Tangerine.
I’m putting up some of my past music on BandCamp in preparation for the release of a new project to be finished up later this summer. So I need all of my friends to follow me on BandCamp. This is an instrumental from the 2nd Better Day album, Changing Water. I’m on mandolin and accordion, Billy Mac on bass and Bob Bayles on fiddle and harp.
I got a little painting in during our stay in Tepoztlan, Mexico. Beautiful classic Mexican town surrounded by rugged mountains and even an ancient pyramid.
This is a watercolor of the morning light looking from our balcony.
Bumpy cobble stone streets and amazing wall textures mixing adobe bricks, stones and stucco. I especially appreciate the little broken tiles inserted between the adobe bricks.
After transferring many of the analog tapes from the Velvetone studio I realized that I could now put out my album Space Flower to an entire world of people that have never heard it. The mixes sounded great and I didn’t need to change them, just a bit of limiting and cut a touch of low end and they were ready to go. Tunecore distributed the 11 song on the album to all the music platforms and after almost 20 years Space Flower is available.
For Spotify go here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4WEOQDWotG6OzEv12MREEM
Apple Music or iTunes use this link: http://itunes.apple.com/album/id/1714587788