Painting Mastercopies

It seemed about time I actually posted some photos of the paintings I've been working on.  Doing copies of paintings from people who are better than you is great way to learn.  These are my versions of works by Xenia Hausner, Henry Yan, and Gregory Manchess in that order. 

First Quarter Project

Start of 1st Quarter Project

The quarter is flying by so its time to start crunching on our personal projects.  I started this 4 days ago.

 

Upcoming Show

My work is going to be shown at the West Seattle Real Estate Associates Office next month.  The opening will be on Thursday November 10th 6-9 pm and the show will stay up through the month.  Hope you can make it.

Seattle Real Estate Associates Office
4535 44th Ave SW
Seattle Wa 98116

Word of the Week

Freak (word was initially Star Wars...)

quick JL sketches

I was watching Justice League reboots pop up on the DresdenCodak blog and got inspired. 

Some LifeRoom Studies

For the past few weeks I've been working very slowly on a Xenia Hausner mastercopy and have spent way too much time on the word of the week assignments.  A million things to do and no time to do it. So when in doubt, here's some liferoom drawings from this quarter...

I've been experimenting with different techniques.  My norm thus far has been vine or willow on newsprint for shorter poses and hard charcoal pencils and a stump on strathmore charcoal paper for sustained poses.  Now I'm changing it up.  I saw a youtube demo where an artist drew a portrait, wiped it out, then redrew another version over the ghost image and repeated the process, slowly building up value as he did.  This is my attempt at that.  For portraits, it a fast way to go because all the the subtle values happen on the own instead of needing to stump my way over everything.

 This is my standard stump + hard charcoal pencil on Strathmore

Here's my attempt at Henry Yan's method, vine/compressed/med charcoal pencil on newsprint.  His thing all boils down to just being really good, working really fast, and line quality.  He's my idol so the plan is to keep working like this for awhile.

Word of the Week

Fire (i don't know how to use photoshop so the color balance is off.  my bad)

Word of the Week

SuperHero
(where the good captain kicks Satan out of Wallstreet)

Oil Paint!

The following is the beginning of me learning how to use oil paints!  Well, it turns out it's hard, and there are a lot of colors out there...and thinners.  It's complicated, and very easy to bite off more than I'm able to handle.  Sooo, I'm doing lots of basic exercises and will most likely keep doing them until I become comfortable with the medium.  I'm definitely learning a lot with each one, but the road is long.
 

Word of the Week

Nature

Word of the Week

Mechanics

CJ feat. Chancy

I finished this awhile ago but forgot to put the finished version online until now.  It won 2nd place in the Best of Gage Figure category!  Best of Gage turned out great.  Besides this I sold my first piece.  One of the chickens!  After that we had a show up on the second floor of the 619 building in July which was a lot of fun.  RIP 619, you were a great venue and will be missed.

Year Two Go!

After a very non-productive summer, I'm finally back in the studio.  The plan for this year is to continue the big stuff for projects, start to paint, and keep the liferoom going.  To get back in the swing of things here's a cast and the first word of the week: portal.

Sculpture

This is from an anatomy sculpting class last quarter.  It met once a week during which we attempted to sculpt Sarah - cool lady.  The following is my 1st and only sculpture so far.  Turns out that if you know how to draw a person, sculpting them isn't too bad.  Basically i hit a wall of my anatomical knowledge.  I'll try this again when i have my anatomy more on lock.  Regardless, I'm super proud of how this turned out.  On a less fun note, the clay we used was only meant to be temporary so it cracked like hell when it dried.  My mother spackled it back together.  It worked but it color-wise, now it looks a tad silly.

random images

I took a bunch of pictures of stuff from the year.  Here's my favorites

 this was a study for the raccoon image from 1st quarter but i like it more than the final one

SHOWS!

In the essence of being a hugely successful artist about to take the world by storm, or maybe just actually sell something, I've got some shows coming up! 

COLLECTIVE WORK June 3 - June 27
Street Bean Espresso, 2702 3rd Avenue, Seattle
Reception Friday June 3 7:00pm-9:00pm

Something sometime in July at the 619 Building
I dont have any information on this one yet.

BEST OF GAGE
Gage Academy 1501 10th Ave. East, #101
Event Friday June 17 6:00pm-9:00pm
http://www.gageacademy.org/events/?page=current&type=16

Third Quarter

It's been awhile since my last update, so once again I'm not sure where to start.  I went into this quarter with grand ambitions of doing 3 more 8'x4' drawings and starting to focus on three tone charcoal drawings but back in the land of reality, that didn't really happen.  I hit a huge hitch in the beginning of the quarter in that i ran out of paper and boards for the big projects.  I proceeded to get jerked around by Utrech (promising deliveries and having what i needed, and then not) so by the time i actually got my act together, I lost a fair amount of my momentum.  Because of my delay, the three big projects got widdled down to one, and by the time i got my materials together i was so stressed about this that my three-tones didn't go anywhere.  That being said, the one big one became a little bit more ambitious because im including a background in it.  We have three weeks left in the quarter I'm aiming to be done with it by the end of this week.  This one is featuring CJ and Chancy.  Thanks guys.

Besides my big project, we've been doing a fair amount of anatomy studies.  These are incredibly helpful.  No pain, no gain.  I have a few more of these but i need to photograph them.  The paper is all rolly, but I'll put them up when im less busy.

This one is from last quarter, but it's in my camera so here it is.

Liferoom is continuing, and I im super proud of myself.  The big lesson i have to teach myself is patience.  Here are my two favorites of the quarter, one because its actually a finished drawing, and the other because im super proud of the likeness i got to the model, despite the proportion fail.

Ta Dah!

All done!

Liferoom

Liferoom is another huge part of what we do in the Atelier program (3 hours a day).  The same model will pose for us for the week.  Occasionally there will be two models, but that's pretty rare.  The models will either hold one pose for a whole week or divide the week in half with two poses.  They go for 20 minute intervals.  We start every liferoom session out with five 1-minute gestures, one 5-minute, and, one 10.  Recently we've been doing memory drawings where easels are in a different room then the model so we have to remember the pose, walk in the other room and then draw it.  It's helpful, but doesn't look as good.  Here's some of my more recent not-memory drawings...

 

At the moment I'm noticing a significant increase in the speed in which I'm able to crank these guys out.  While when I first joined the Atelier, it would take me a full week to do things not nearly as successful, these guys are taking me about 6 hours.

Events!

There's a few things going on right now and yours truly has some stuff up in all of them.  First off is the Fifth Annual Self-Portrait Competition at Gage.  This one's already up and comes down on April 15th.  Prizes have already been awarded.  2nd Place went to Stephan!

Coming soon is an Atelier show at the Phinney Neighborhood Association. April 8 - April 25
Artists' Reception: Friday, April 8, 7:00pm-9:00pm.  This one includes work from all the Gage Ateliers.

Also, there is the "From Pencil to Paint" show at Gage.  April 18 - May 13.  This one is just our Atelier.  I'm planning to enter the my two big pieces, and I'm working on finishing up the bird piece now. 

For all of you who aren't familiar with Gage, events tend to take place on the top floor.  There is a gallery at the end of the hall, but the walls tend to always be covered with month-long exhibits.  Also, our studios are here and as long as somebody is around you can check those out.  So if you're ever on Broadway and want to see art, you should drop by.

Second Quarter Personal Project Continued

When I first explained to Mark about the idea and scope of the totem pole, I was told that I would have a 50% chance of pulling it off.  Beyond that, because it was on such a massive scale, instead of doing to typical 3+ pieces for a personal project, I was initially told that I should do only one.  The problem is that I did pull it off and I did it with time to spare.  After finishing the totem pole I was informed that if I could crank out 3-12 more of these guys I would have a legit solo show.  Because I was able to complete one of these in under a quarter, my plan was to try and crank out two more next quarter so I started bumbling along with #2 just so I would have a jump on the 3rd quarter.  I never intended to finish anything for awhile.  Enter Mark's swift kick in the ass.

 

As you can see this one is not done, but it's close.  I need to finish the legs/shoes back of the woodpecker, pump some values, and put in a background.  My plan is to finish it up for the 2nd quarter Atelier show on I believe April 15th.

 The basic idea was the last one was people > nature, this is nature > people.  Disconnect and varying relationship between people and nature will be the themes running through this series.  Yes I am aware that I'm a total hippy.  I'm rolling around a bunch of ideas for whats next.  Because I seem to be working my way through using everyone in Atelier as models, the plan at the moment is to draw CJ with a stone cold expression holding a small dog for one and Stefan riding an ostrich and being really happy about it for another.  I'm open for more suggestions.