Representational Painting class

To keep with my proposed plan of updating the blog three times a week, here is my Wednesday post. Alex Piccirillo is an art instructor at the Yard School of Art where I work (part of the museum) and has been there since before the museum took it over. He is also a celebrated Master Pastelist and all around amazing individual. You can see some of his work here:http://www.gallery51.org/artists.php?artist_id=59

He's a self-proclaimed student of the Ashcan School, specializing in images of normal, everyday people doing what they do. Having been a trained boxer in his youth, he is also an authority on boxing history and creates powerful images using the subject matter.

Thats the man himself. I mention him because the class I teach was started by and taught by Alex for many years. Throughout the year he's had a series of surgeries to heal an open wound left over from an earlier procedure to remove ankle hardware. Him and I being good friends, he made sure I took over his spot. So without any more yapping, here are some images from last week's class. It was the last night with our lovely model Melinda. Hope you enjoy.






These were some shots of them working in progress. They're a very strong group, many have years of painting experience under their belt while a couple are young aspiring artists. Some take the class because they like making art for fun (don't we all) and it is their hobby, others want to further their skills and pursue it professionally. To those who have never painted or have very minimal painting experience I suggest using the Zorn palette. While it takes a thorough knowledge of color theory and painting in general to master using just the four colors, it eliminates the clutter of having too many colors to choose from forcing them to make calculated decisions about value and tones. Fellow artist and friend Aaron Miller has started a great blog where he posts information on the individual palettes of artists, living and long gone. Here is a link to his post on Zorn, which in turn has more links to info on the artist:
http://oilcolorpalettes.blogspot.com/2010/06/limited-palette-of-anders-zorn.html

And here are their finished images. Colleen did a painting but was away having fun at the Rose Frantzen workshop the previous week, so for her last day with this pose she decided to start a very nicely executed charcoal drawing. Ronnie, always pushing herself, finished her oil portrait and then did a smaller study (which we both decided in the end had more life and character). Unfortunately a few of the students were not available on that day to photograph their finished pieces.

Colleen


Ronnie



Emily


Hana


Jane


Karen


Sylvia