Green Moon Art

zooming in

2011-12-14T11:04:00.000-08:00

Two recent paintings of the figure where I focused in on about 1/4 of their bodies to look for "landscapes" within their forms.
(acrylic on canvas paper, 16x20)

touches of textiles

2011-09-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

Tara decided to emulate a pose from an Egon Schiele piece, where the model was wearing boots and was partially wrapped in fabric. This is one version of the model in that pose, although not the exact piece that was in the Schiele book:

And here is Tara recreating the pose:

.
And here is my interpretation of it:

I like that Tara took on this pose and incorporated some textiles to add to the "drama" of the scene.

Back to Basics

2011-09-17T10:39:00.000-07:00

Focusing in on a model's back, paying attention to muscles, bone, volume, light, shadow...

Acrylic on canvas, 16x20

Brown-eyed Girl

2011-07-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

This painting is hot off the presses and is going to be in The Soundry's member show (opening this weekend). The model had deep brown eyes and I tried to paint her playfully as Van Morrison's lyrics ran through my head.

acrylic on canvas, 16x20

back to charcoal

2011-02-09T13:27:00.000-08:00

i am going to mix it up some more with different media. i am in an acrylic rut. i feel like i need to do some more drawing. so here is a charcoal piece i did last night. there are some pastel highlights.

two for one

2011-02-02T14:15:00.000-08:00

at a recent session, we started with quick, 5-minute gesture drawings, and then a series of 30-minute poses. in this painting, one of the gesture drawings became the background - the shoulders and chest that you can see. on top of that i painted the model in her longer pose. i kind of like the outcome.

lights and darks

2010-12-16T09:33:00.000-08:00

a simple study of lights and darks. it was interesting to see light showing up in places i did not expect - such as beneath her breasts.

acrylic on canvas, 16x20

working fast

2010-11-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

the following 3 paint "sketches" were done in one evening using the same model. each piece took about 30-40 minutes. my goal was to complete 3 pieces having different looks and using different techniques. i am a pretty slow painter, so i used this method to get out of my comfort zone and to stretch myself a bit.

each is acrylic on canvas, 16x20.

working with the background

2010-09-24T08:15:00.000-07:00

i am still working with the process of preparing a random background one week, and then seeing how to work a live model into it the following week. this is the latest example. i had no idea what pose the model was going to hold, but when he sat down as he did, i immediately saw how the curve of his back fit into an existing curvy swirl in the background. the shape his legs made matched other swirls.

(acrylic on canvas, 16x20)

red white and blue bill

2010-06-02T07:33:00.000-07:00

i am continuing with the process of taking the previous week's palette and using it to make the background pattern for the following week. in this portrait, rose red and ultramarine blue comprised the background. so, i used those two colors in this week's palette as well. the entire work - the background and the portrait - are comprised of those two colors (plus pale yellow to make the red an orange, the complement of blue).

(acrylic on canvas, 16x20)

finding the person in the background

2010-05-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

i have recently begun to prepare canvases with random colors and patterns. generally, after a session i take the paint remaining on my palette and use it to mess up a new canvas. then, at the next session i take the prepared canvass and use it as a starting point. it is interesting because it presents challenges and opportunities. the challenge is in making the prepared canvas from a previous session work for the current session. it seems to be working out that i can sometimes "find" the figure or the right spot for the figure in the seeming randomness of the mess i previously made.

in the following example, i liked how the darker background areas would work to subdue both the model's face and his nether regions. also, his chest had the most light on it, which seemed to work well with the lighter yellow area behind it. on the right side of the canvas, there appears to be some motion or activity. i will see whether i leave it as is, or if i find a subject that would go well with that area.
[acrylic on canvas pad, 16x20]

the benefits of a model who does yoga

2010-05-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

a model we had recently at the Tuesday Night Group, who also does a lot of yoga, took on a pretty ambitious pose. she draped herself over a pile of pillows. even though supported, this is not an easy pose to hold for 30 minutes at a time. yet she did it - 3 times (with breaks in between). i decided not to paint the pillows, because l thought the arch of her body was pretty dramatic as-is. [acrylic on canvas pad, 16x20]

texture

2010-03-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

i started working on some different surfaces. for the piece below, i took some prepared pumice and mixed it with medium and paint and used it to rough up areas of the canvas. then at a figure session, i tried to find areas to fit the figure between the rough areas. i think the result is interesting and will continue to try this approach for a while.[acrylic and pumice on canvas, 24x36]

glimpses

2010-03-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

i am working on a "collage" painting of some images that have either been in my mind or have struck me. i am fitting them together in what i hope can be something interesting to look at, as well as tell a story. here are a few glimpses of different components of the painting.[oil on canvas]

salon at 52 o street

2010-01-29T09:26:00.000-08:00

our tuesday night group participated in studio gallery's first "salon". read more about it here:

http://dupontcirclearts.blogspot.com/2010/01/at-michelines-studio-talk-and.html

cardboard

2009-11-09T10:17:00.000-08:00

i have been working on cardboard recently. i was inspired to use cardboard when i saw a couple of pieces by Toulouse-Lautrec at the national gallery. i used cardboard from a large box that was going to be recycled - but reuse come before recycle in the trilogy, so it sounded like a good thing to do. i am really enjoying working on cardboard and the texture of the underlying ribs provides some nice results. here are some snapshots from a work in progress:

the canvas project and the atlanta airport

2009-09-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

I belong to an online art participation called the Art House Coop. One of their recent projects was called The Canvas Project. Every participant received a piece of paper with 5 random words on it, and 5 3"x3" canvas tiles. The goal was to create a visual encyclopedia of as many words as possible. The following is a photo of the tiles I submitted (my words, in order, are: desire, kindly, dawn, mind, want):

The Art House Coop people selected some of the tiles for mounting and display. They are currently on exhibit at the Atlanta airport:
www.flickr.com/photos/arthousecoop/sets/72157621898258767/

One of my tiles ("Kindly") was selected for the exhibit (in the J/K section, 3rd row, 4th one over - red heart on orange background):
www.flickr.com/photos/arthousecoop/3815895962/sizes/o/

If you are passing through the Atlanta airport in September, take a look!

poetic feedback at artomatic

2009-07-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

Artomatic 2009 ended a few weeks ago. I did my teardown last weekend. I enjoyed Artomatic immensely. I loved seeing all of the great, varied art. I loved meeting new friends.

I found that people visiting Artomatic loved to interact. Several installations invited user feedback (e.g., draw your own robot, write a haiku, comment on your own rat/mouse incident). I would love to think of a way to add interaction to my setup next year. However, one person seemed to have their own way to interact. I found a poem, printed and signed and taped to my wall. It seems that this person, going by the name Brash, had responded to various pieces throughout Artomatic with poetry. I was delighted!

Here is my piece that Brash responded to, followed by the poem:

Being and artist's model
Was sort of neat,
But I wish he hadn't
Fixated on my dirty feet.
© 2009 Brash

celebration of the figure

2009-07-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

I have a piece in MoCA's Celebration of the Figure VII show in Georgetown. Here is a write-up of opening night, which was July 10th, with a photograph of my piece called Walk:

artdc.org/forum/index.php?topic=12354.0

MoCA is a non-profit gallery that offers monthly themed shows involving up-and-coming artists. Information on the MoCA Gallery can be found here: mocadc.org

blue bill

2009-07-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

artomatic - a great weekend

2009-06-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

i had a great time at artomatic. i went opening night (last friday) and saturday. my family came on saturday and we really enjoyed it. so far i have seen floors 6-9, but not in their entirety. there is so much to see and a friend who was there (and has very good taste) said the he thinks the quality of art this year is better than ever.

all i know is that there is so much good art and that one could spend days walking around trying to see everything. in addition to having beer and wine bars, there is also food inside (i don't think they had food inside last year). hello Hard Times veggie chillie!

the show continues until july 5th, so get out there and check it out. hours and performance schedules can be found here: artomatic.org.

artomatic -- tonight is opening night!

2009-05-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

Here is a shot of my finished "installation":

I hope you can come by and see it. I will be there tonight and on Meet the Artist night on June 13, as well as various other times.

artomatic artist catalog

2009-05-26T08:09:00.001-07:00

Artomatic has put its 2009 artist catalog online. You can view it here (starting with my 6th floor "neighborhood"):

http://artomatic.org/catalog/neighborhood/6

Opening night is Friday, May 29th -- hope to see you there!

branding

2009-05-22T07:37:00.000-07:00

Sneak peek:

Artomatic 2009

2009-05-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

So I have been thinking about it and pondering it and finally decided to go for it -- I am going to have a space at Artomatic 2009. My little AOM profile is here.

I have been working with plain, unstretched canvas sheets for about the past year, so I decided at will exclusively show some of them at AOM. So, how to hang unstretched, unmounted, unframed canvas? Clothespins! (Well, sort of - but you'll have to come visit to see exactly how it is done.)

In keeping with the clothespin idea, I need to use clothesline. And if I am using clothesline, then I need to have poles. So, with that in mind, the following idea was born...

I looked at the bare wood:

Gave it a base coat:

Enlisted some child labor:

And added some details:

It is now ready for hanging, which I will do this weekend.

the soundry show

2009-02-25T08:22:00.001-08:00

First show at The Soundry.

the soundry

2008-11-14T16:28:00.000-08:00

there is a new cool studio/gallery/coffee shop opening up in vienna, virginia in december 2008. it is called the soundry. i will have studio space there and will have the following pieces hanging there in december (i like the series in this order because to me it shows a progression):

acrylics

2008-08-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

still trying to figure out acrylics. so far, i do not think they compare to oils and i hate how they dry soooooo quickly, but supposedly that is one of their advantages. one nice thing is that i did the following piece in about 45 minutes and was able to just throw it in the car and not worry about the seats getting paint on them.

this is detail of a model's arm, side, and leg. i liked the negative space that is created in the center. one good thing about the quick-drying of the acrylics was that i could do several glazes in a short period of time. however, a friend said that i am using the paint like water color (too thin and transparent) and that i should thicken it up. i'm going to work on that.

abstraction -- or my version of it

2008-08-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

i have been taking an abstract painting class for the past month at the torpedo factory in old town alexandria, va. i took the course for two reasons: 1) to learn how to think more loosely and more creatively; 2) to learn more about how to work with acrylics.

it seems that as i move from realism to abstraction, i have taken a path toward surrealism. it was not intentional, but now it seems logical, as it is so hard for me to let go of realism. here are a few examples of the stuff that has resulted from my classes:

still working on this guy

2008-08-07T04:02:00.000-07:00

a bit more color, a few more background images emerge:

walking man takes on a life of his own

2008-07-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

after glazing with more color, things started to emerge from the background. it was a similar experience i had with the mountain behind the eagles. so, i just enhances what seemed to be there already.

figure study with abstraction

2008-06-01T16:39:00.000-07:00

It is always challenging to paint a model in a short 3-hour session using oils. But I love a challenge. For this piece, I covered the canvas with a thinned layer of burnt umber. Then, just as when making a charcoal drawing, I began to remove paint from the highlighted areas, and added thicker paint to the darker areas. At the end of 3 hours I had the following monochrome piece:

One of the artists in the session commented that she liked the wood-grain type of pattern in the background. I realized that I did too. That is something nice about working side-by-side with other artists -- we share thoughts and ideas and it becomes very enriching. I used some "secret" techniques (LOL) to cause the white streaking, which I thought added drama to the piece.

At the session the following week. I planned to add color to the piece. Luckily, we had the same model that week (that is never a given). However, he assumed a seated rather than a standing pose. Another challenge! So, I used the feelings I got from his expression, positioning, and the light to help me to decide which colors to apply. The model (Emmanuel) emanates a warmth which I tried to capture by using mostly warm colors. I like how the lemon yellow communicates his glow. The result of adding color is here:

I kept my colors pretty pure on my pallet, but mixed them a bit on the canvas. Once I had added about as much color as I could without getting things muddy, I still had some time remaining, so I decided to incorporate Emmanuel's seated figure. As I was adding that, it almost felt like it was a shadow of him, rather than another figure.

We will have a different model this week, so I will no longer work on this piece at the O Street studio, but will continue to work on it in my own studio. I will add many more glazes of color. My goal is to get him to glow and burst from the canvas.

eagle spirits

2008-04-27T14:34:00.001-07:00

this painting began as a standard wildlife/landscape composition. however, as layers were added to it, something surreal began to emerge from the mountains. the following photos show this progression.

this painting is now in the show perspectivo: unexpected views of nature at the falls church arts gallery (virginia).

heads or tails - on the wall

2007-11-05T11:08:00.000-08:00

The Heads or Tails show opened on Friday (2 Nov). Here is "quiet" on the wall:

heads & tails - the final glaze

2007-10-31T06:13:00.000-07:00

Here she is! I glazed her body and the background twice since the last post (the interim glaze did not show enough of a difference to merit a posting). I also glazed the water with a weak layer of Payne's Gray. She'd now in a frame and I will deliver her to the Moca Gallery today.

Opening night is Friday, November 2, 2007 at the Moca Gallery.

heads & tails - color saturation glazes

2007-10-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

So I am running out of time! This painting needs to be in Georgetown (DC) on Wednesday. That means dry, framed, and labeled. But no worries -- after today, I probably only need to touch it one more time.

Today I focused on brining out the colors. So I glazed the background greenery with Sap Green and Prussian Blue, with a bit of Lemon Yellow for highlights. I glazed the area between the trees and the goddess with Lemon Yellow to make it look like she in lying in a well-lit clearing on the water. That will help make the bright highlights on her body make sense. I glazed the shadowed areas of her body with burnt umber. I touched up the rock with Prussian Blue and a purple made from Alizarin Crimson/Prussian Blue. Using the fat-over-lean principle I added more dark "highlights" to her hair (it is interesting how she still looks blond, but now most of her hair color is in the dark range -- the blond look is from the original Yellow Ochre that shows through as highlights). I also worked a bit more on her reflection, trying to get it to parallel her actual self more closely.

Notice how much more vibrant the color is after today's glaze. If I had more time, I would glaze her body several more times to make it "pop" out of the canvas. After the November show, I will continue to glaze her -- that is one of the great things about oils: more paint can always be added.

Total time today: 3 hours.

heads & tails - more glazing

2007-10-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

The glazing continues -- body, leaves, rock, reflection. The color becomes more alive with each added layer. Is it done yet? No -- but I am not sure if it will require one, two, or three more glazes. Stay tuned...

Total time today: 2.5 hours.

heads & tails - glazing

2007-10-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

Today I added another glaze to her body. I applied first glazes to the rock and background. The body colors were again a combination of Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber, and Prussian Blue. The rock and shadow below her body are the same colors, but with a heavier use of blue. The background was done first with Sap Green and then some Terra Verte was used in a few places.

Total time today was 2.5 hours. I spent the first 20 minutes just mixing the colors. Here is a shot of what my palette looked like:

heads & tails - beginning a painting

2007-10-12T12:56:00.000-07:00

For the Moca DC Gallery show "Heads and Tails" that begins November 1st, I decided to paint an image from a beautiful photograph. That photograph is here:

The first step, the underpainting, was done in raw umber. The entire canvas is covered in an umber mid-tone, which is then wiped away to reveal light areas and more concentrated umber is used for the dark areas. This underpainting took about three hours (note, the photograph is 8x10; the painting is 16x20):

Notice that I have changed the positioning of her body a bit, to allow her head to show (I did not want her to look like she was decapitated). Therefore, I brought her shoulders closer. My art teacher thought that it would better if there was water in the foreground instead of leaves, so I have tried to add that and to show a partial reflection of her.

After letting the underpainting dry for a week, I next glazed her body with a transparent mixture of Alizarin Crimson, Indian Yellow, and Prussian Blue. I used varying values of that mixture for the light and dark areas. I glazed her hair with a transparent mixture of Indian Yellow and Raw Sienna. I used the Indian Yellow to highlight leafy areas where the sun is brightly shining. I used a more blue version of the flesh color to capture the shadowed areas of the rock. The result was the first glaze, which took about two hours:

heads and tails - kicking around some ideas

2007-10-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

I am thinking about completing a piece for Moca DC Gallery's "Heads and Tails" themed show on November 1st. Here I am experimenting with positioning and color of a few photographs I have on hand.

a mother's love in spring

2007-10-04T15:46:00.001-07:00

This piece was inspired by a photograph in a wildlife magazine. I tried to capture the motion of the feisty, energetic polar bear cub as its mother mindfully watches (and seems to smile). I exhibited this piece at the Falls Church Arts show Lions and Tigers and Bears in June 2007 and at the Moca DC Gallery in August 2007.