Focused

This bad boy is a painting of my friend and incredibly skillful artist Lucas Bononi at the easel about to start work on a drawing.  It's 51 1/2" x 36" oil on paper on masonite.  It also garnered 1st place in the MFA figurative category for the Spring Show at my school (Academy of Art University).  I don't think I've put so much time into a painting as this one, and happily it shows.  I definitely learned a lot while doing this with regards to edges and technique, but mostly this was a lesson in patience for me :)

In Progress Paintings

I'm currently working steadily on three out of four mid-size paintings, the fourth hasn't had much work done except a light sketch.  The first painting is of my stepfather Helder drinking espresso and using a toothpick after dinner.  It's one of those scenes I grew up witnessing on a daily basis, and the kind of scenes I find myself attracted to the most when it comes to painting.  

The painting is 16" x 20" linen mounted on wood.  

The next two paintings are from a photo shoot I had last week with my good friend, model, and fellow artist Caitlin Albright. 

20" x 30" on linen

18" x 24" masonite

The colors on all three appear really strange when uploaded to blogger, so I'll have to figure this out.  I'll post color corrected shots of the paintings when they're further along.

New

Buy Now

Small 5" x 7" painting of model named Jess I worked with a while back.  Really liked this pose and always felt it would work really well as a smaller painting.

Bit late... but HI!

This semester I begin my thesis work in my directed study classes, so I'll be posting quite infrequently as I'll be in my studio most of the time.  These are some quick studies I did over the weekend after I worked on my assignments that I ended up loving even more than the homework.  So I think there's something to these and a number of people seem to think so, as does my prof Kevin Moore.  Let's see what happens.  Apologies for the crappy quality as they were taken with my phone.  Each one was no more than an hour and a half tops.

painted from life

In Kevin's class today we worked from the model but we were set up facing away from him.  This is a contemporary painting class and it is hands down the most fun studio class I've ever taken.  We essentially play and experiment without sacrificing the fundamentals.  So we had the model and were only allowed to observe and do sketches for our memory's benefit, but we had to leave any notes/sketches behind when we went to paint.  While painting we were not allowed to turn around and the same held true when we were observing; no turning back to compare the painting.  It was a helluva exercise in information retention but I turned out a painting I'm quite proud of, even got a damn good likeness.

I forced myself to exaggerate the colors and ended up working with mostly chromatic pigments plus white and transparent red oxide.  There's a lot more work I need to do to get my observational chops up, but considering this was done with mostly memory... not too bad.

Emily

Recently finished portrait delivered yesterday.  18 x 24 oil on linen.