From time to time Kline looked throught these telephone-book drawings, which were stacked by the hundreds in a corner. Selecting one that he felt wold work as a painting, he pasted it to a piece of cardboard. Then, either tacking the drawing beside a canvas or holding it, he followed it closely, painting directly.Here's one of his:
Here's my first perfect Kline:
And another one -- an example of a drawing that Kline might have rotated around looking for the best view:
In these two I started adding color. Many people think Kline only worked in black and white, but nearly all of his paintings have some color in them. In the late 40s, and again before his death in 62, he used a lot of color (we'll get there later):
Now I'm getting a little more comfortable with the process, and getting messier, too. This is a good thing:
Finally, in this one I didn't even notice the "sun" up in the corner streaming goodness down on the rest of the phone book, because I drew this the other way around. I don't think Kline cared what he was drawing on, but maybe it subtly influenced what he was thinking anyway:
I did a bunch more, but let's not go nuts here. I want to do some collaging of them next. A lot of his are Frankensteins (like the one above). He preferred to work at night, which I used to prefer as well, however... His roommate used to get up to go to work at 7:00 am and find him painting away, having been up all night. He used strong ceiling lights aimed at his painting wall -- he painted on unstretched canvas, only getting it stretched for a show. He also painted on board, cardboard, paper -- just about anything. He used cheap inks and paints until he started showing regularly and his dealer put a firm halt to it.
That's it for now. Still haven't prowled the net looking for Kline stuff. Will post my bibliography on the side in a bit.