vitruvian einstein

currently working on a science-themed painting. not sure where it is going, but Einstein and Da Vinci are its beginnings.

recent figurative works

here are some recent figurative pieces i have completed. (i am working on a few other things and will post those in a couple of weeks.)

also, tonight at Blue Studios Underground we are having an opening reception for our Open Studios weekend. come on over to Crystal City and join us for happy hour (2100 Crystal Drive, Arlington, Virginia 22202).

stand your ground

an inspiring model makes things happen.

love the twist

a great model who has not visited the Tuesday Night Group for a year or so is Tara. she always seems to do an amazing pose and often it is because of a twist she makes that puts tension in her body. here are paintings from two different session she did for us in july:

both are acrylic on canvas paper, 16x20

emerging

For this one, I started with a busier background than usual. It took me a while to figure out how much of the figure to use, and where it should go. The model was lying down, but from the angle I thought it could look like she was running or walking. The dark green lines in the lower left quarter of the canvas looked to me like high grasses or splashes of mud. I like how this one came out. 

figures and faces

a couple more recent paintings:

study in back

finding a landscape in a model's back:

pillow talk

before and after

A little study in before and after.

zooming in

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

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.

Brown-eyed Girl

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

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

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.

acrylics

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.

figure study with abstraction

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.

heads or tails - on the wall

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

heads & tails - more glazing

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

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

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: