Face Off Update

 

Wow!  What a fun weekend in Charleston I had.  Thank you to Principle Gallery Charleston for hosting such a great event and giving me an excuse to play in your fair city.  Here are a few images from the event and then a quick timelapse video of my painting from that night.

Face Off Artists: me, Terry Strickland, & Rachel Constantine

 

   

 

My finished painting of Nicole, 3 hours later.

 

Insects

Throughout my career there have been a few subjects that I continually am drawn to paint.  Of course the figure is my main love, but then too I am nearly equally drawn to nature.  I've had an on going series of paintings of dead birds that was started while still in college, though my fascination with birds likely started at a much younger age.  My childhood best friend's father was the director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Nearly every weekend was spent on some bird count our nature hunt.  But right now, I seem to have reconnected with insects.  Here are a few small, recent, little buggers for your viewing pleasure.

Cicada Killer, oil on panel, 5" x 5"

Progress Shots of Bumblebee:

Bumblebee, oil on panel, 5" x 5"

I have one more insect related painting that I just completed.  The paint has dried dull in some areas and needs varnish to even it out.  So until I can get a good final image, here are just a few progress snapshots of my painting titled Orchestrate Change which features a cocoon, likely of a Polyphemus Moth .

 

  

Orchestrate Change, oil on panel, 6" x 18"

The Skeptic

The Skeptic, oil on linen on panel, 20" x 16", 2012

Perhaps this is a better photo?

ONLINE STORE!

Hello folks.  I am happy to announce I have opened my very first online store.  This shop will feature original oil studies that were done exclusively from life.  Because they are usually small and quick, I can offer these paintings at a much more affordable price point.  Please check out my first three offerings by clicking the following:

 Alia Fine Art - ONLINE STORE!

I am very grateful to those who continue to support me in my artistic endeavors.  Thank you!

As always, if you are interested in larger and more finished works, please contact either Sullivan Goss - An American Gallery in Santa Barbara, CA or Loft Galeria in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

I Believe The Skeptic is fini

Well, I wanted to write a post about my finished self portrait titled The Skeptic.  You know, give you some behind the scene thoughts that brewed while working on this painting.  But no matter how many different ways I try - I suck at taking photos of my own work.  There is always a pesky glare, bad exposure or it just is slightly out of focus.  There is also the annoyance that every single computer screen I see the work on has it's own color cast.  I know that all artists have to deal with that last problem.  I know that we all trust that you, dear readers, know that the painting is much better in person..  At this point I am just SO frustrated.  I miss my old 35mm Canon AE1 (but not those slides we artists used to have to take of our work).  Alas, I will continue to try to figure out the overabundance of settings on this damn digital camera! 

Here are a few of my most recent attempts at photographing The Skeptic.  On this computer they seem to be dark and have very inaccurate color, but maybe on your's these photos look amazing... one can dream. grrr

 The Skeptic, oil on panel, 20" x 16"

The Skeptic, oil on panel, 20" x 16"

 

Self as Skeptic

Last week, after spending many hours on the large painting of my son, I wanted to take a little breather so I started a new self portrait.  It is a relief to work smaller and once again from life.  As you can imagine, I am not able to get my five year old son to hold still as a model, so I've been struggling with the limitations of photo reference.  This self portrait is a huge relief in that sense, though I do have a mad crick in my neck.

 open underpainting of 

The Skeptic, oil on panel, 20" x 16"

The day after I started this self portrait, I had the pleasure (for the second time) to see the beautiful Rembrandt in America exhibition at the NCMA with some lovely friends.  This exhibit boasts nearly 50 portraits by both Rembrandt and "the school of Rembrandt".  There are some truly remarkable paintings to feast on, such as the following self portrait painted in 1659 (which is on loan from the National Gallery of Art).  The exhibition continues at the NCMA thru January 22, 2012 and then travels to the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

It certainly is a humbling experience to compare my efforts in paint to that of the master Rembrandt!  But it also serves as a great source of inspiration to see how he layered so much paint and completely controls the viewers focus with not only the variation of paint applications, but great mastery of value relationships.  Here are a few more progress shots of my humble attempt.  It is still not complete and unfortunately, photographing a wet painting is nearly futile... my apologies for the poor photo quality.

work in progress 

detail of first pass of color

The Skeptic (in progress), oil on panel, 20" x 16"

 

Daniel Sprick

This past week I had the ultimate pleasure of spending time in Philadelphia with my very good friends Diane Feissel, Rachel Constantine and fellow NC artist Susan Lyon.  We were all enrolled in a workshop at the esteemed Studio Incamminati taught by the incredible Colorado artist Daniel Sprick.  There have been several posts on facebook and on the other artist's blogs about this workshop (Philly artist William Sentman did two great posts on the workshop which you can read by clicking: Day 1 or Day 2 and Diane Feissel did a great post titled Sprick).

Here are some photos of the experience with a few captions. 

Painting at Rachel's beautiful studio on Thursday before the weekend workshop.

(left to right: Sue Lyon, Diane Feissel, Daniel Sprick & Rachel Constantine off camera to left)

 Saturday, Day 1. Drawing

Daniel's final drawing demo.

Daniel starts another drawing demo from the model.

Daniel's final figure drawing demo.

My drawing of model Ron.

Day 2. Painting!

Susan Lyon taking Daniel's seat.

Daniel Sprick's palette.

Daniel's final painting demo (detail below)

My painting from the workshop.

Many thanks to Rachel and Diane for your amazing hospitality; to Daniel for the wonderful experience; to Studio Incamminati for hosting this great workshop and also a huge thank you to the lovely Lea Colie Wight for lending me your spare drawing board and paper.  Philly is full of amazing people!! 

Summer Figure Drawing

Here are a few quick sketch figure drawings from this summer.  None of the poses were longer than 20 minutes.

Progress of Failure

(detail) Horseshoe Crabs on Sill, oil on panel, 8" x 12"

I have several figurative paintings going on at the moment, all at different stages - but it has been too hard a shift for me to jump right back into these big painting projects after "coming down" from my Southern Weeds exhibition.  I needed something to clear my head and to be able to paint directly from observation.  Walking around my house searching for something interesting to set up for a small still life painting, I found a few dried horseshoe crabs that my nephews had sent me from Florida.  They know how much I enjoy nature and they had saved these little gifts from the sea for their crazy Auntie.  I had thought that this was going to be a quick painting that would sort of cleanse my palette, so I could get back to my more serious works.  Instead this little still life became a bit of a frustration and struggle.  I will share with you the progress of this little failure.  I should say that though I view this painting as less than successful, I am grateful for the lessons learned for having gone through the process.   

This was my set up.  My studio is normally in my garage, which is neither heated nor cooled, so with temperatures in the mid 90's I found our dining room a much more temperate environment to paint.  We have a nice view of some woods in our backyard that I thought would be an interesting juxtaposition for these sea creatures.  The first problem with this choice was that although the view is good, being a south-west facing window, the light changed very rapidly.  I basically only had 2 hours of painting time each day, before an immense glare (on our very dirty windows) totally obstructed the view and even changed the light on my little horseshoe crabs.

Failure two was not working out the composition well before plugging away at the painting.  I was so excited and eager to just get into paint.  I had wanted to do a horizontal image, but didn't have a good sized panel to start on - so instead of taking the time to run to the store to get the proper size, I used what I all ready had -which happened to be a 12" x 12" square.

Here you can see in the forrest on the top half of the window the shadows are moving diagonally up - but then as the time went on the shadows changed so on the bottom half the shadows lay diagonally down... Which one to pick?

Here you can see me trying to make sense of why I needed all that grass in the bottom portion of the composition.  I was considering putting some land creature (bunny, robin, squirrel) frolicking in the grass, but I thought that would detract from what was supposed to be the real focus of the painting - the horseshoe crabs.

Horseshoe Crabs on Sill, oil on panel, 8" x 12" 

In the end, I took a drastic measure - I broke out the table saw and cut her up!  Its sort of scary how empowering the hum of a power tool is.  Really, I know this is a cheap way of trying to solve some of the problems I set up for myself.  In the end though, I do believe it is a better composition.  And from the struggles of working this one out, I have learned much about working with nature and its fleeting light, and taking the time to plan in the beginning.  Without having to fight yourself and the problems you create early on, you can more easily get to the joy of painting.