Drawings

Alexandra (the nude) is a helluva great model who I intend to use more frequently in the upcoming months (if funds allow). I'm actually working on a painting of her right now that will be done soonish. The portrait was from one of Dorian Vallejo's life drawing sessions about two months ago. It was a terrible evening where nothing came out right. I must have gone thru like 10 sheets of paper in the 6 hour period, all of them failures. So the last pose was really awesome. First try, crap. Discouraged I pulled out a second sheet of paper. Crap again. I all but gave up and tried again, I'm not giving up in the presence of one of my favorite artists. It was worth it! This was done in the last 20 minutes of the pose, but I captured her look, her mood, the subtlety and softness of her face, and to further boost my deflated ego Dorian sat on the floor staring at it for a good 5 minutes, thoroughly entranced. All in all, a very good night!

Looooong overdue

These are a collection of images i have created in the past 2 1/2 months or so. The drawings of the female model (Liz) and the loose painting of lady in the red shirt (Michelle) were all done at Dorian's house and his workshop, respectively. I included the finished White Rose self-portrait and a close up. Also a white pastel self-portrait done on an abstracted acrylic base. And a life drawing that I reworked for the sake of experimenting with washes and what not. Enjoy :)

Portraits

So I've been getting a lot of portrait commissions in the past week and am strongly considering going that route. In the coming months I'll be updating this blog with the pieces I complete for clients as well as personal works to add flare to what I can offer as a portrait artist. The first drawing is a self-portrait I did a couple weeks back that is currently hanging on the wall at work for the Faculty Drawing Show. Lots of leftover hulkish white roses from a wedding, a nice burgundy red shirt and voila. Second is a drawing of my boss's beautiful one-year old daughter Alexandra. Possibly one of the most difficult drawings I've ever done, but it was worth it in the end. And lastly is my best friend Meg who modeled for me before she moved into her brothers after staying with me for about two months. I took several shots of her in different poses, so they will provide me with art fodder for quite some time. This drawing on wood was actually really fun. Its 10x10 inches but I want to make it larger, possibly 20x20 or 30x30 even, again with the intention of adding it to a portraiture portfolio as something different to offer other than the traditional portrait. Hope you guys enjoy.

New works

So I've been keeping moderately busy with art. I began experimenting with copper as a ground. Its very interesting. Initially I prepared it using liquin impasto after sanding it down a bit for some tooth. I painted my brother Andy. It came out really nice and a lot of my fellow coworkers and artists thoroughly enjoyed it, even have a tentative commission! However... it was pretty much impossibly to add extra layers to finish the painting because any bit of solvent just completely destroyed the underlying paint layers. So I just, begrudgingly, scratched off the paint and prepared it the old fashioned way with denatured alcohol and garlic (i know, weird). This painting is last nights efforts on that ground and it feels so much better, oddly enough. I want to keep practicing. I think the painting got too tight for my towards the end and I lost some of the bravura that the first painting had, PLUS I really want to capitalize on the reflective surface and keep the shadows more transparent instead of as opaque as they are here. Otherwise, I'm happy with how this came out.

The skull is borrowed from work, its a real one too. Its almost done. The two drawings are just weekly head studies I do at the art school when I can sit in on a class here and there. The male head, Vinnie, was done in 30 minutes and I wish I could paint him, but alas I have to work :( The female head is the lovely Cheryl and I did her in 20 minutes. She's an evening model so I'll probably do a 3 hour oil sketch on wednesday. Thats all for now folks!

Art Dump 3

This is the last of the blog art dump. The skull is what I'm currently working on in my studio. Its an actual human skull I borrowed from work. There will probably be like two or three more paintings done in different angles. Primarily its being used to better my drawing/painting abilities from life, especially since I don't have a model readily available. After these I'll probably set up a still life and work on several in between hiring models. The second piece is a three hour painting I did yesterday of my model friend Marisa. I can't express how happy I am to have actually gotten a likeness in such a short time and I can honestly say that it was a huge milestone, breakthrough painting for me as far as life work is concerned. Last piece is a drawing from life done in a class I was originally taking at the museum but ended up teaching for the remainder of it's duration due to an emergency surgery had by the teacher, master pastelist Alex Picirrillo. Its the same model, Marisa, and its about 4 weeks (3 hour classes) of work. Its pretty much done and I'm really happy with it. I also used Wolff Carbon pencils for the first time, and I can honestly say I am not a fan. But this is my current work, all done within the last two weeks except for the drawing of Marisa. Enjoy!

Art Dump 2

So I decided to become an abstract artist. I'm dropping representational painting to do abstract works of art that will probably sell faster and for more money. Plus it comes from a deeper place in my soul, combining my love for texture and impasto oil painting and the... I'm just bullshiting you. I made these as a base for future paintings. They're backgrounds pretty much. Its also an exercise in seeing what shapes I can pull out of the abstractions on the surface, for when I have one of those pesky creative blocks you know? Doing these abstracts is actually very liberating and fun. Plus instead of throwing away perfectly good paint, it gets put to use in ways they wouldn't necessarily be used for in my regular paintings. Enjoy :)

Art Dump 1

Art Dump part one. No I haven't been lazy or too busy for work, just too busy to post online. First is a little snap shot of my studio space. Second is a small 8.5 x 11 oil on canvas board using a photo form deviantart that i'll have to link to eventually, just know its not my photo. Did it in a night. Third is a just a piece of canvas paper that I used to practice eyes and eventually just started playing with impasto strokes and doing wet in wet glazing. Very tricky, but really funny. The two color charts are based on Richard Schmid's instruction. The first one is the nicer looking one, using the photos of his own color charts to measure my own values against his. It looks darker, but it is pretty close, and I added some of the colors I use normally along with his own palette. The second one is my original palette that I did on my own without any reference it how it should look. And last was a 5 hour portrait painting from life that I did of the daughter of a family friend. Getting better at painting from life! Didn''t finish her eyes though, so she'll be sitting for me again. Part two coming up.

Persephone painting progress

So I failed in terms of taking progress shots of the painting in its acrylic stage. Got too fed up and impatient with the medium and just jumped into what felt comfortable, oils. I discovered that acrylics do make lovely random backgrounds though, and with a lot of water and splashes you can get some pretty interesting things going on. So here it is so far, still have much to do.

new! Persephone

New drawing I finished on monday. Doing something I've never tried before, hopefully it doesn't bomb completely! Attempting watered down acrylic a la Sam Weber and Eric Fortune. I was originally going to just do a face, but thats just boring. So I added some branch thingies in the back... meh still boring. Been reading a lot of greek/roman mythology lately and have always been fascinated by Persephone's abduction story. Voila! Story. Added the pomegranate plant in the foreground both as symbolism and to make it more interesting. Side note... I've never actually drawn every single leaf, petal, fruit, and branch of any plant i've ever painted before ever. This was a very time consuming, discipline instilling exercise for me.

For those who don't know the story, she was abducted by Hades, god of the underworld, to be his wife. She wasn't quite fond at first, but I can't imagine any woman being too happy about going by her daily routine picking flowers with some nymph friends when all of a sudden from a fiery chasm bursts Hades on his chariot and just takes her down to his kingdom in the underworld to be his wife. Needless to say her mum Demeter wasn't too happy, so she pretty much went on goddess duty strike and let the earths agriculture and plant life go to spoils for a year or so. The Olympians struck a deal with Hades to let her come back, he agreed on the condition that she not eat any food from down below as that would permanently bind her to him. By this time, having spent so much time with Hades, she actually kind of grew fond of him. Surely after a while one would expect some bond to form. And in all fairness, Hades isn't that bad of a guy. He got the shit end of the celestial lottery. Zeus and Poseidon got to be gods of cool shit like the sky and the oceans. Underworld requires a lot more work. While Zeus and Poseidon are out and about having sex with every other mortal woman, tossing lightning bolts and causing tsunamis for shits and giggles, Hades is busy doing his job dealing with all the pesky dead people. I digress. Persephone makes her way back to earth and on the way she feels a twang of hunger and sees before her some pomegranates. So she eats a bit o the seeds and voila! instant underworld queen! Demeters not too happy about that. But in the end, the two parties agree to keep Persephone for half a year each; Mom gets her in the spring and summer, Hades in the fall and winter. So when Persephone is up here with us we get flowers and sunshine and glorious spring rains and warmth. When she goes back to hubby, everything dies because mommy's sad.

So with that... enjoy. I'll post progress of the painting soon.

Portrait drawing

Shoulda posted this one a while ago, but this is a drawing of my cousin Lauren who sat for me several weeks ago. It was in the midst of drawing her from life that I realized Damn! I need to get better at drawing faces from life! So, sadly, this was finished with a photo. BUT I'm really happy with how the drawing came out anyway. I have a Rubens copy and muscle-overlay that I'll be finishing up by next week to post on here.