oh my damn!

I have all but disappeared off the face of the earth. SO much going on right now and not enough time to accomplish everything I want to do. This will be the first post of my current whereabouts and artistic doings so stay tuned. There's a lot I'm up to :) I'm starting a series of paintings depicting dancers and ultimately it will culminate into a narrative series... hopefully. It may take a few years but the initial idea and concept I have promises to be lead to exciting things. So this is a page from my sketchbook of some flamenco dancers. I may take all these to finish in drawing and then work them out in painting.



One of them may be for a client :)

This next drawing is just a quickie I did in Alex Piccirillo's class last Wednesday. Roughly 45 minutes or so. The portraiture class at Grand Central Academy has increased my drawing abilities significantly in a matter of a few weeks. Enjoy!

Follow the link... CLICK HERE

And hit like! The more people hit like through that link the more counts go towards my painting's popularity. I'm not looking to win the popularity contest, but if I can get as many hits before the end of the month it'll certainly feel nice to know people are actually looking and liking my work. I'm trying to get my stuff out there as much as I possibly can (and afford, entry fees are killin' me dawg!). Thank you to anyone who follows through and if not this month, let's make next month count :) The link is below, but for funsies I also made this post's title link to the page as well. I'm having fun with that :P

http://faso.com/boldbrush/painting/25581

CLICK HERE AFTER YOU READ (no really)

I participated in the Employee Art Fair this past weekend at the Montclair Art Museum, sold a drawing (it's always great when you sell work) and was able to socialize with a lot of my fellow artists outside of the work scene. This morning I received an email from one of the other artists who I'm happy to call a friend and coworker, Matha Kelshaw, with a link to the blog of someone who visited and who had only nice things to say about my work as well as three other artists. What a treat! Certainly made my day. The link is the title of this blog post, get it? :) And because I haven't posted a single drawing, painting, or even a scribble here is a recent drawing from life a couple weeks ago. Currently painting it.

Dorian's

Went to Dorian's open studio on saturday after months of not going. Have to say I'm incredibly happy with the outcome. Going back next weekend to finish it up. I'm putting some close-ups as well so all the painters can scrutinize every stroke I made. Have to say this was the most fun and successful painting I've done from life in years. Small world too. The model's name is Cecily and she used to live above my girlfriend in Union City. 16x20 oil on linen

Brand Spankin' New

Hello all. I am happy to say I have completed my largest painting yet. And while not that large in comparison to some really large realist paintings, this is big for me. It is 36" x 22" and I have plans to just keep painting larger. My posts will probably remain infrequent for some time to come as I finish up some portrait work, of which I plan to paint large :P Anyway, this is a painting of my friend and model Marisa who I have painted a bazillion times already. But according to her she has retired, if you will, from modeling. That or taking an extended break so she can find a big girl job. So I will not be painting her again for quite some time. I kind of liked this particular pose in evoking an emotional response in lieu of her leaving the modeling field. This is my homage to a muse. Enjoy! All criticism welcome and appreciated.

New

It's been a while. Not going to talk too much today. I have a lot on my mind that needs sorting but here is my latest portrait in colored pencil and watercolor. There was some watered down acrylic use in this one as well as Prismacolor Color Stix. I definitely want to play around with them some more. It's 20" x 30" and the model is my neighbor Monique. She modeled for my painting class with no prior experience and it turns out she was so damned good I had to use her myself. So she came over and i was shooting away getting some more formal, traditional portrait style shots. While looking at the pics i happened a glance at her while she was waiting and playing with her hair, lifting it and letting it drop slowly like a cascading waterfall. Needless to say the muse struck, and this is the result. I'll have the more formal portrait up as well soon. Enjoy until then.

Alex again

A while ago I posted the block in for this painting. I loved how it looked so much and after the advice from several friends I decided to leave it very painterly. All I did was finish the hands and do a few touch ups on the face. Enjoy :)

Danny

I probably have mentioned on my blog at some point in the past that my best friend passed away 5 years ago on March 7, 2006. It was a hellish time for myself, never mind the tumult of pain, anguish, and suffering his family felt. I had always wanted to create an image that would make me happy as an artist and at the same time memorialize Danny. Yesterday was the Danny Wust Scholarship Fund dinner where I presented his family with the portrait. He and I were fantasy and sci-fi geeks as kids and we spent countless hours playing out scenarios we imagined, always with his younger sister meeting some unfortunate doom because we couldn't save her in time. So without further wait, here is the final painting and a close up.



The painting is oils on paper on masonite and is 18 x 24. I did the drawing and mounted it in class as a demo to show them the Donato technique. For information on how to do, here's a link:
http://www.donatoart.com/technique/mounting/mounting.html

This next drawing was done at Dorian's open studio a couple weeks ago. The model donned an Alice outfit and it was an incredibly beautiful pose. I came ready with gessoed panel and paints so I can bang out a nice painting. For some bizarre reason the paint would not adhere to the surface properly and it was utter disaster. But this drawing came out beautiful, and so it wasn't a total failure.

Alex Piccirillo

Here is the finish of my portrait of Alex. Learned a lot with this technique and i want to explore it more as a means to an end as well as an underpainting. I don't think i have patience working so large with pencils, so I may be doing smaller images in the future. Nothing larger than 16 x 20. Covering large areas of the same color becomes really monotonous real fast, especially since with paint it takes all of 10 seconds to do. But for rendering the figure and getting really bright colors mixed in, it is really fascinating and easy to do. All in all this is probably the most exciting piece I've worked on in a long while, from a technical standpoint. So, enjoy the image :)

Not dead yet

I've been gone from the blog scene for some time now. Busy with work and portfolio and all that jazz. Here are two progress shots of my current pieces that I'm actually having fun working on, which is something I haven't had the pleasure of in quite a long time. The first one is for a class I'm taking at the Yard School called Realist Painting. I think I may have mentioned the technique before but Robert Kogge, our instructor, specializes in a unique method he developed over time using colored pencil and ink or watercolor washes. This is my third piece done in this technique and the first large scale one as well. It's 24" x 30" colored pencil and water color on canvas. You may recognize the sitter from a previous post when I documented my student's work. It's Alex Piccirillo, the master pastelist who was the original instructor of the class until health problems made it hard on him to teach both afternoons and evenings on the same day.



And here's a close up. It's a bit difficult to photograph work done this way, but it's not that bad. Colors are a tad off


And here's a surprisingly quick and thorough 5 hour block in I did on Sunday from the same photoshoot. This one really captures Alex, plus I just love oil paints :P