The Draftsman

This one is my baby.  Oil on paper on masonite, 48"x24"  Of all the paintings I have done thus far, I am proudest of this one for several reasons.  Compositionally I consider this piece to be my most successful.  The reference was shot from a bird's eye perspective and this allowed me to create a feeling of movement that evokes that voyeuristic mood, but is also visually exciting.  I'm a big fan of cropping elements in a painting and not following any traditional formulas for composing.  When I was designing this painting several friends and instructors felt the other option I had drawn was a better painting because it was more comfortably suited to the format and everything was in there, sitting nicely in the picture plane.  That was all the feedback I needed to say "F--k this!" and so I went with this composition. 

Composition aside, I played around with paint handling a lot more in this piece.  There is a great deal of brush work and palette knifing that interact with each other.  In many areas it may not work, but as a whole I really think this is my stand out painting and one that is leading to bigger and better things.  This is also a pretty personal piece.  While it isn't exactly a self-portrait, it is a truer depiction of who I am than any self-portrait I've done before. 

That's all for now, but stay tuned!

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.

Some drawings

Hi all.  It's been a while since I've posted anything new.  In the spirit of keeping this short so I can go play with paint the first drawing is the preliminary for a "white" painting.  The model's name is Emily and has become something of a muse for me, so there will likely be a number of pieces of her this summer before I go to San Francisco.  

This next drawing is a quick self portrait I did from life on plate finish bristol, a surface I haven't worked on in years.  The smoothness is really nice and I certainly miss it except for those instances where the graphite stains the paper where there's an oil smudge or too much erasing.  Other than that, methinks I'm in love.