painting from live long-pose session

i have been working on two projects this last week none of which involve placing paint on paper. the first is the calendar that i make each year for gifts to friends and relatives. this year i decided to use the theme of my show at the pumphouse which starts the first of the year, namely, "these are people i'll remember."

the second is actually getting ready for the show by mounting, matting, and framing the paintings that i will hang. i chose 17 from which i will have to choose somewhere from 12-15 to actually hang in the gallery. i have all of the one's that i am going to do mounted and matted. i ordered the frames yesterday and they should arrive by the end of the week. the last bit will be obtaining the glazing. i am going to use acrylic to save weight and cost.

2 1/2 hour pose

so, the only painting i have done recently was at the long pose session at the vitamin studio a week or so ago. here is the effort from that 2.5 hour stint. i didn't like it at the time, but it has grown on me. i'm not sure it is, nor ever will be,  a finished painting but a pretty decent job for a live model session.

finishing up and preparing for show

penultimate step

"a bitter northerly howls across the bog" 15"X20"

i finally was able to finish up the painting of a woman working out in the weather. her face was just about done and only a few little touches remained. none of these worth talking about. i picked up a habit of adding some dabs of warm around the eyes from charles reid and did that here on the medial canthae and along upper lids. i think it was cadmium red light. other than that it was really just finishing the coat, her hair, and the background. the coat was ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson permanent, burnt sienna applied with my largest round (#26). i wanted some lost edges near the bottom and kept the value lighter in areas where it met the background. the background i wanted to read cold. i chose cerulean blue, raw sienna, and the alizarin crimson permanent but in most areas tending to the cool gray. this, too, painted with the #26 round cosmotop. the hair blowing around is the really only thing in the painting that reads, "windy". so i made it flow out to the left.  i tried painting in the darker strands and shadow areas, but this was just too tedious for me so i did resort to my scratching into damp paint technique. i put down a darker wash of raw sienna and mineral violet and let it dry until the sheen came off the surface and then scraped in some lighter strand and areas mainly moving out to the left. i think that worked okay. here is the final product and one intermediary step.

i also attended the long pose session at the vitamin studio last thursday and painted a draped figure in a relaxed pose. i had a devil of a time getting her eyes as dadrk as they actually were. i finally decided that wasn't going to ahppen without making a mess so i stopped where you see it. i also had some trouble with the drawing trying to get the foreshortening of her legs correct. all in all these are learning experiences and i don't even try to get something finished. sometimes i fall into it, but these times are few and far between.

"dark-eyed girl with rosy cheeks" 16"X17"

there will be a bit of a hiatus in the painting as i must get ready for my first solo show at the pumphouse regional arts center in january and february. i have picked out about 20 paintings that i will now mount, mat, and frame. from those i will have to pick 12-15 to show as the space will allow about that many. i will share the final contenders when i have them ready for hanging. have a great thanksgiving.

two down....one to go

"let me count the ways"  14"X16"

i finished (or close enough that anything else would be superfluous overworking) two paintings this morning. the first was, "let me count the ways" and the second the portrait of my oldest and probably best friend, "bookman dan." here they are. no commentary as i have to run but please enjoy.

"bookman dan" 11"X14"

the last painting in this series is the heavily clad working woman out at the bogs in a howling northerly wind. i will get some done on this this afternoon after i get from our strength class (i am getting, like, so totally buff.........sort of).

too many irons in the fire

i did finish the couple painting by adding some texture on the bench and decided on the lower edge of the painting and "ripped" the painting off just below the guy's forward knee. i won't re-post it as there will not be any really observable differences from the last post a week or so ago.

anyone folowing this blog will know that i started a painting of my friend dan's ever smiling face and have almost finished it. i ahven't sone anything on it in the last week but i do have it hung on the wall of the studio and i think that i ahve decided on the rest of the background, and the minimal tweeks to his face. hopefully i will get to this before this week is over.

the painting of the lovely smiling face of my wife joan is likewise put up for daily perusal, and i vow to complete it before next weekend as well. i usually have trouble with portrait type of paintings of people i know and i am working very slowly and carefully considering each brush stroke at this point to avoid the dreaded overworking.

"a biting wind howls in from the north"

to make all this worse is that i went ahead and started a painting of a cranberry bog worker having a miserably cold day. we were out at the nearby cranberry bogs watching some of the harvesting a few weekends ago. it was bitterly cold for that time of year and considering it had been 80 degrees the day before. the temperature hovered in the high 30's and the 30 mph north wind was filling the air with a mist coming off the roiled water surfaces. the workers were not having a good time, and the observers were mainly huddled in the warming hut drinking hot cider. none-the-less i did get some shots of the process and the bogs. when i got home i found i had a great shot of one of the workers all  bundled up in several layers of hoodies, and parkas and looking entirely miserable. i cropped the original and decided on a painting. i just had to start it this week after i found the image. here is the result so far. sorry, no intermediary steps. the whole thing was a bit spontaneous and i worked right through for about 3 hours with out a break. so, one more thing to finish.



at some point i will have to stop making art and start mounting, matting and framing for the show that is to hang the first of january 2013.

long pose life drawing/painting session and just a little more

this will be a brief post. i didn't do much in the studio yesterday as i know that i was going to try getting to the vitamin studio at night for the bimonthly 3-hour posing session with a draped model.

version 1.0

version 1.1

so on the painting "let me count the ways" i picked out some midtones and darks to start defining the hair and augmented the background colors. this background consists of a window that reflects the clear blue sky, some window frames elements, a post supporting the porch roof around which the figure is peeking, and the bottom end of the sign directing one to "boothill". here are two photos of different stages of the work today. all was done either with a #16 or #26 round brush. i also started to define some of the hair. namely, some strands along her *left* front wave and the darker areas around her ears where it curls under. just a word here about this. as the majority of the hair will be a light yellowish cast i elected to darken these areas and cool them off with a wash of mineral violet and a little raw sienna. darkening a yellow is hard for me (and i suspect a lot of painters in watercolor) so this is a bit of an experiment. i think its going to work out.

"elena"

after working for about an hour i packed things up and headed out to the vitamin studio for the life session. we had a great model with a dark blouse. she assumed a relaxed pose leaning against her hand supported by a pedestal. the only fly in the ointment was that seemed to compromise her median nerve at the wrist and gave her a temporary "carpal tunnel" syndrome. it shook out after a minute's rest.

earlier in the day i had been looking at some paintings by richard schmid and i think this one from yesterday emulated his style somewhat. if you wish, looking over his paintings on his website (www.richardschmid.com) or just using a search engine to obtain some images of his will give you an idea of what i mean. it was unintentional but shows how we (read, i) can be influenced by our observations. i like his style and i sort of unconsciously copied it here. i need to carve out some bulk on her *left* arm as it is too wide but otherwise i think that i will leave this alone.