Another Auburn Local .... John Downs 1.2

 John Downs is a local contractor who actually dresses in cowboy attire every day. It's his thing and he is an authority on Wyatt Earpp , Wild Bill Hicock and Doc Holliday among others. He is also an avid Tea Party member and sure has a solid vision where he wants the country to be. He is very much a salt of the earth kinda guy and I am glad we are becoming friends.

 He posed for the first hour of this portrait and I finished it off after I took a photo ... mainly for the details.


oil on panel  11 x 14

______

 I can't ever pass up a good model and I am currently using him as a model for Moses as he encounters the burning bush. This image is an out take as the client does not like the idea of the cloak masking his face. I think it's more interesting and it is one of those times where I will paint this scene for myself after the job is finished. But as they say  .... you gotta give the client what they want.

Thursday Night at S12

 Well .... I treated myself to an open figure painting session at S12 on Thursday. Try as I might to get there early it was already packed at 10 to 6pm . But it was actually good, because I was forced to paint from a drawing horse and I found a nice angle that gave me an s-curve that I find always compelling to paint. I know its a bit cliche , but when its painted right , it really works for me.

 I really want to teach my students that you must take the time to look at your subject and SEE what the light is doing. In this case, the area of concentrated light was around the right breast area and the light became more diffused and redder as it moved away toward the feet and the head. I also pushed the viridian green in the shadow area and in fact the portion of the right arm that is in shade is actually the initial layin.

 I always paint the head after and hour or so in a 3 hour pose. That way the model's muscles have settled in to a comfort level where she does not move as much. Of  course that is the theory and some models move no matter what position they are in.

 The head was painted out of the background grey. And the gray was a combination of all the colors with a bias toward lavender to compliment the warm ochre of the flesh. See how that works? If you look closely you will see some of the background in the shadow portions of the face. There you go ... a little trade secret if you have read this far!

 Oil on contton duck. 18 x 24 . 2 1/2 hr.

The Art Race

"PJ"

 Well, I finally finished my contribution to this years Air Force Art Program. The unveiling of all the art will be in Dayton, Ohio at the National Museum of the United States Air Force on Oct . 22 . All art is donated . My contribution was a pose struck by one of Parajumpers in training at Kirtland AFB in Albuequerque New Mexico. These young airmen are considered the special forces of the Air Force. Their training is  as rigorous as the Navy Seals and Rangers. They are the rescue force that  secures and extracts downed airmen in hostile environments. Thus, they are trained to be dropped off at 15,000 feet if need be or climb sheer rock cliffs if that is required. Whatever the situation and condition , these brave angels will not leave their fellow airmen behind. They are the best of the best.

_______

Awhile back I was asked to show a better picture of a portrait commission I had painted. Here it is. Oil on Linen .

__________

 And here is a portrait sketch I painted back in January of my eldest son Isaac.... 11 x 14 oil on panel

_______

 I don't watch too much TV other than news and football but I saw something very interesting on the " Ovation " channel. Its a channel aimed at the Arts and they have a series going right now called the " ART Race " about 2 artists who must travel across the States in 40 days and they must survive by selling their Art. AT the end of the contest they will display their Art.  The artists, Ben and Kenny are starting at opposite coasts with $1. What's interesting to me is that one of the artists is a traditional  nerdy Plein Air painter and he sets up his french easel and paints the local scene and hopes to find interested parties. The other artist is a more athletic type and he creates on the spot so to speak and obviously uses some of his natural charm to attract buyers.  Ben is actually a fine plein air artist who learns that the $2000 he may get in New York for an 11 x 14 will bring much less in fly over country.  Definitely worth a watch. 5 stars .

_________  note .... Ovation updates their link so the ART RACE is no longer featured . However you can still see what the new series will be on this link.

Painting Iris.... 1 more added ... and on the easel now

 Some like the roses .... I like the Iris. Like roses , they come in all shapes and color combinations. New hybrids are introduced every year. This is a small 8 x 10 . They get no respect.

I'm doing okay but last week was pretty rough. Really rough. I went to the doctor and I asked him. Whats wrong with me? Every morning I get up and I don't feel so good. I keep looking in the mirror and I feel like throwing up. So what's wrong Doc? Doc says... I don't know , but your eye sight is perfect!

 Okay he sez .... let's examine you. Take off your clothes .... So I take off my clothes. He sez.... stick out your tongue and stand by the window .... so I sez .... Why do I have to stand by the window? He sez .... BECAUSE I DON'T LIKE MY NEIGHBOR!

a rodney joke ........ ;v)

Have a Nice Day!

 I'll be adding another iris to this post. It will be a deep purple iris....

_____ 

 Somebody said the other day ... you know when things are going bad in your marriage when your wife stops laughing at your jokes. Luckily... Jana still laughs at my jokes ... so ... as I tell my Boys .... the girl you marry better like your jokes ... if not ... you are in for a long one ......


______

 I've got until the end of the month to finish a painting for the Air Force Art Program. I've worked on this painting off and on for what seems like the whole year. Any way, a deadline is the mother of invention and action and I NEED to finish this painting today. I've decided to treat the background like camouflage.  The big presentation will be at Dayton Ohio this October so I plan to be there along with the painting and reunite with 2 of my favorite art buds.... Mick McGinty and " Big Norse" Chris Hopkins.

 in progress...........

Workshop Demo

 This 11 x 14 oil demo was painted in front of my Lincoln Hills workshop. Its a real fun group and they are enthusiastic learners. Today I taught them about pre mixing strings and keeping the palette simple. We are talking about a 3 hr set here.

 The colors used were Titanium White , Yellow Ochre , Cad Red Light , Cobalt Blue , Pthalo Blue , and a hint of Ivory Black. Try mixing Yellow Ochre with the black and a hint of the sky color and you'll see how the hills can still feel green but lay back in space where they should be.

 This is actually the first seascape that I have painted from a ground view. I feel kinda embarrased as there are so many good experienced seascape artists who are wave and water reflection wizards. Making the water feel wet and active is a real skill set.

 I had the class add a crashing wave as there was not a spraying wave in the photo reference.

_______

 Another demo.... this time I demoed painting an Iris . However , it just so happens that a client came into the Gallery and wanted 3 - 8 x 10 Iris Paintings. I thought this was a good time to show the process of painting a flower.

Colorize It! 1.2

 Now that I am set up in the Studio/Gallery occasionally someone walks in and asks if I could take an old photograph and use it to make a painting. I really enjoy helping people with their personal keepsake projects ... especially when the reference photo is real good. Often times that is not the case as old photos usually are yellow and frayed and there is always a crease right where the eye ball is located.... never fails ( that's probably why they want it painted! )  Hey ... I see a marketing angle here.... have your keepsake photos specially restored with a painting.

 Anyway , I get carried away with my natural hucksterisms , I usually start off with a small color sketch to get the colors I want. Since I am still in my Zorn Palette phase , I will use a limited palette to paint this Victorian Portrait.

 I am no rookie to colorizing photos. Many years ago, I had a client to hire me to colorize 50 Indian Chief Black and White photos. The reference was usually real bad but I had a blast adding color.

 The above is a sampling of some of the small paintings that I produced. Some I added more color than others. I researched the colors for the clothing and I was amazed how much blue the plains indians used in their lavishly designed couture.

 Getting back to the Victorian colorized painting, I have decided to include a deep azure blue background reminiscent of a Holbein. Hans Holbein loved to use rich colors for backgrounds for  portraits. The client wants color and I think having a deep brown would be too monochrome. Stop me if it looks too garish. As you can also see, the client wants the hand removed and only a head and shoulders interpretation.

 Let's see how this turns out.


_______

 Okay ... I have uploaded the finish. The client, who will be in today to see it , told me she had pale blue eyes and brown hair. That's about all I had to go on. So ... starting at 10 yesterday I painted this 11 x 14 in about 6 yours. I must admit I had Holbein and Durer in the back of my mind. They used garish bright colors for their backgrounds... mostly blues and greens. This is a little different for me but let's see what the client says. Several people came into  the gallery yesterday and they all seemed to like it. The finish is painted on panel that was gessoed 4 times and then palette applied on the last go round to smooth out the ares around the face. Its a little trick I use. I leave it a bit more rough around the perimeters.

____

Demo for the Workshop and a STAR IS BORN!

 Here is another 11 x 14 demo for the Workshop. The location is called " Bodega Head" by Bodega Bay .Frankly this is one of my first ever seascapes. There are so many good artists that have made a good career out of painting water and waves that I have left this area to those that really know the ebb and flow of the ocean. There is a real artform in getting water to feel wet , cold, dangerous , majestic , powerful and active etc..... I just enjoyed the shapes and I started to design and see pattern in the foamy water against the dark rock of the sea cliff.

 We used a very simple palette. Titanium White , Cad Red light , Cobalt Blue and Pythalo Blue with a hint of Yellow Ochre at the end. I demo 'ed how different degrees of these simple colors could give you a lot of depth and color. If you added yellow ochre too early the rocks would get to be green too quickly.

 One student kept coming up too me and asking what color I used for this rock and that rock and that water section and that sky. I even mixed the colors in front of them. I tried to explain that the VALUES were the key and that the colors had to be in proper degree and combination to satisfy the right value.

 Finally, I had to make the point with a joke... its kind of like this I said .... some foreigners walked into a Mexican Restaurant and asked the waiter ... Hey... what's a taco? He replied,. A taco is a tortilla with meat, beans , rice and cheese. They then asked...What's a burrito? He replied,. A burrito is a tortilla with meat, beans , rice and cheese. They then asked...What's a tostada? He replied,. A tostada is a tortilla with meat, beans , rice and cheese. They then asked...What's a enchilada? He replied,. An enchilada is a tortilla with meat, beans , rice and cheese.

 You see I said ... it's  just the same ingredients with a different degree of preparation!

-------

 

 A couple who had already purchased one of my paintings were walking around the gallery Saturday and they saw this small little oil painting on paper by the back wall. The wife said out loud... I WANT THAT PAINTING OF THE CAT  ... ITS WONDERFUL ! Who did it she said ? I told her my son had painted it in my art class for teenagers . She asked how much and I told her I would sell it to her for $20 and that it would make his day. In fact, I did not have enough time to frame or hang it during Auburn ArtWalk on Thursday and my son scolded me and told me to hang it during the show. I leaned it up next to a nice vase. I am so proud of him ... a small tear came to this man's face  ... a baptism of joy . ( my son has some severe learning disabilities )

 He's going to paint a whole bunch of cats for me now. His middle name is Diego  ... named after Diego Velasquez . His art nome de plume   will be DIEGO.

______

Ted .... finished

 I had a very busy week as it ended with Auburn Artwalk and some small sales. But what wore me out was dealing with some tempermental artists. I NOW SEE THE GALLERY'S SIDE OF THE STORY.

 Anyway... when I am burnt out and need to relax I paint a portrait just for the fun of it. I chose to finish the portrait I started of Ted with a little help from a cool bottle of Dos XX'S......

BLESSINGS......

Semi Chaos Revisited 1.2 more .... whata tha what tha

 Well, its been awhile but there has been a story between our last post and today. Like I said in my last post, I liked the colors and the mood at my buddies pool party and it inspired this little painting. At the end of the day, you gotta connect with the subject you are painting in some tangible way. Whether its the colors or the composition or the story....  the painting hopefully expresses something that you need to get out and show. Its part of you.

 The above image is the final and I will show the steps and the thinking behind arriving at the final painting.

 This was the starting point. The challenge in my mind was to organize the the people in the background. There was always constant movement so moving them around like chess pawns was no big deal.

 There were a few items that needed to be eliminated and others  that needed a new ground point. The gal holding the towel would be a great interest point at the highest contrast mass. Since my eye was going to travel in that area anyway, it seemed fitting to add a person that was interesting to me and that also added some color to contrast with the highly reflective aluminum corrugated wall.

 The layin starts with large masses of color and value. I am paying attention to the extreme warms and cools happening that makes this scene attractive to me.

 I like the yellow shirt of my buddy Eric as a nice warm to play off the purples and blues. Since there is so much blue a spot of yellow goes a long way and really stands out.

 Then, I add our friend " Boots " talking to Eric at the Pool Cantina. I love how her black blouse becomes a lavender as a result of the reflected light. In fact there is so much reflected light under the overhang. I also start to add some trace of the bright light shooting off the Cantina onto the wet inner tube.

 I now have 2 groupings that are working as sets. The 2 people at the Cantina and the group around the umbrella table. I have also switched the light on the side pool tiles  farther down towards the inner tube to get a a hightened sense of the light affecting that ZONE the most.

 Finally I add a figure in the lightest part of the painting and she balances the scene nicely.


--------------

 This is a demo that I painted for my Thursday Workshop. Its a scene from my buddies Bodega Bay Cabin deck. The foreground on the lower left was added to create the "S" curve.

______



blessings.....

Editing Chaos

 How do you make sense of a California Pool Party image like the one you see on the left? Well, you either toss the photo away or you teach yourself how to move things around and impose ORDER on a chaotic situation. Its Kinda like going into your kids room and shoving the mess into piles.

 So... what made Frank choose such an ugly photo to paint. Well, one man's boring composition is another mans goldmine. Believe me, I've seen other artists tackle scenes that I thought were dead ends and turn them into gold. Kinda like how God can redeem anyone, no matter how lost they are. That gives me hope and it gives me a sense of power over a simple painting. I mean ... it's only paint on canvas. How hard can that be? .... Don't answer that. ....

 I had about an hour or so yesterday as the day ended and I wanted to do a painting that looked chaotic and impose some design on it to demonstrate how any image can be salvaged ( within reason ) for my upcoming Friday Workshop in Lincoln. That class will focus on composition and design.

 I used an old discarded 9 x 12 canvas. That's the only reason there is a brown stain on the surface. I really liked the colors in this scene and I wanted to arrange the characters so that they would glow in the late afternoon light. I like the Cool  - Warm --- Cool arrangement and in the upcoming posts you will see how I will edit out some elements and move others around. I may bomb ... but there is no fear here. Dive on in ... the waters nice!

 Of course as I started to lay in the cool foreground I had some visitors come into the Gallery and this is about as far as I got yesterday. Its a good stopping point . You can see how messy I start and then I chisel away like a painting sculptor. I try to Make it fun.

_____

Also .... We now have the "famous" Tim Solliday's artwork in the Gallery. What does an 8 x 10 Solliday oil go for these days .... around $1300.

You won't find him on EBay anytime soon!

_____