Robert

Drawing from today's open studio.  About 2 1/2 hours of work, give or take.  Haven't worked from a male model in ages, except for when I get a half hour here or there to draw in class.  It was nice to sit and work at my own pace.  If we get him back anytime soon I want to finish this up a bit from life, but I took some photos to continue working from.  My gestures and 5 minutes turned out fairly nice too, but Robert's poses are more or less all the same and I know I've posted some of those gestures on here in the past.

Y'know... stuff.

Except for one thesis paper, I'm done with semester two of grad school.  This is what I did on my first no-homework day.

That handsome fellow up there is me.  Started this one a month and change ago as a demo for my young teens who were doing self portraits.  I've blocked everything in for the most part and proportions are there, just have to fix that weird eye on the right.  I'll be finishing this one tomorrow or friday.

This is a drawing started Monday night at my last life drawing class.  It ended with a good sized group and we all ate pizza, drank coke, and ate banana bread courtesy of Becky (Thank You!)  Our model was Tina, who is fabulous and allows us to take pictures.  So after I put the brush down last night I worked on this a bit from some reference.

That manly man up there is a terra cotta statue from the Bernini exhibit at the Met.  It's by a contemporary of Bernini's named Antonio Raggi and is based on one of Bernini's drawings of the "sea Deity with Dolphin. " Started it today and will probably head over again next week to finish it up.  There are so many amazing sketches and models by the man himself that it is overwhelming.  Beautiful stuff over there.

While waiting for a friend to arrive for dinner I sketched the same dude from my imagination to see how much I remember.  This is actually something I used to do often after drawing from life or making master copies, it works out your artistic muscle memory :)

Manly Manliness... Poinsettia!

This is my high key painting assignment for class.  For the purposes of the assignment specs, this is done but I'm going to touch it up a bit more tomorrow because I'm quite fond of this set up.  The paint is too tacky to get any good detail work on the petals and some ripples and folds need to be accentuated a bit more.  The base of the flower where it touches the soil needs more contrast as well.  Once all that is accomplished I'll post a finished, sexier version.

This was painted on Arches Oil Paper, which has turned out to be a DELIGHTFUL surface to work on.  I suggest it to anyone interested in playing with different paint surfaces.

Gouache Pish Posh

This semester I was subjected to the fear and terror of learning a very foreign, unforgiving, and completely counter-intuitive new medium: gouache.  I had only ever used gouache once before, and it was before I even understood that paint can in fact enhance a drawing.  So for this color theory class our medium of choice was gouache... and man was it difficult.  My early assignments look like an undergrad freshman made em, but I'm rather proud of my recent string of paintings.  The majority of what we produced were color charts and studies to understand light and temperature, but when we actually painted things, results were not so bad.  Here are some of my favorite ones:

The color isn't good in some of these as we have to mail the pages in for mid-term and finals.  The landscape assignment allowed for a freer, more painterly application which worked better for me.  Having tremors doesn't really make painting in tiny geometric shapes and patterns, like for the portraits, very comfortable and I'd find myself with wicked wrist cramps after three hours.  But yes, here is some of my progress.  I'm working on my final now which is a mandala.  I'll post that next week or so.

Limes are fun to paint

Because my blog has basically been ignored and unloved like an unwanted bastard child of Winterfell, I'm making it up by posting another painting from class.  This was project 2 and also one of the most fun still life paintings I've ever worked on.  As my post title suggests, that lime was very fun to work on.  Initially it went bad and turned an acidy yellow brown on me whilst I slaved away at those damned ellipses, but once I bought and sliced a new one it was delightful to paint :)

On the easel and on the wall...

After fighting off the ravenous hordes of undead flesh eating vermin; journeying across various planes of existence to stop my unknown arch nemesis who only wishes to thwart my daily plans; looking in the face of a disheartened young woman who has experienced inexplicable horrors that she keeps to herself; and finally ending on a high note as I felt the cool wind in my hair as I flew up into the air as the first person to fly with non-ass burning rocket propulsion (think about the real-world consequences of wearing a jet-pack)... I woke up from a really wicked nap to start writing this blog entry before I had to teach my last class in Rahway.

First painting is Project 4 for my still-life class.  It's blocked in and ready to be tackled head-on with gusto and bravura.

Check out my sweet palette!

Second is a small drawing I did of a model I had the pleasure of working with about a month and change ago, Jessica.

Lastly is a painting I have on the wall of the same model.  It's being painted on Claessen's C13 linen, or as I like to think of it "the preferred painting surface of God, Buddha, Thor, Zoroaster, and Wizard Mickey Mouse."

This painting has a ways to go, but it's about halfway done now.  There's a couple other painting ideas I'll be working on after this semester is over.  Until then, I leave you with a blue chicken