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April 30th, 2010 Posted 3:14 pm
female nude, arms wrapped around knee
female nude, crouching on stool
More figure drawing with the open figure drawing studio in Frederick. The model was new, at least to me, but seemed to understand that modeling is more than just sitting still but about finding a pose that can challenge the artist. I found that small gestures this model made, like the arm wrapped hugging tightly around the shoulders or the way the foot bent backwards on the stool, made each pose unique. I started with these areas and slowly worked out from there.
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April 26th, 2010 Posted 2:27 pm
Signs of Civilization
This is a revision of a previous work (see February 12). I had painted over the original with large ‘x’ like shapes that looked like freeways. Mostly I did this out of frustration hoping that if I did any crazy thing that that something would come out of it. Of course it looked crappy. But I had kept a photo of it at an earlier stage and after a while thought it didn’t look so bad. So I just repainted it to match the original, making improvements where they seemed to make sense. Hope you like it
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April 18th, 2010 Posted 3:48 pm
Shadows on the Towpath
Just a small sketch done along the C& O Canal on a 10″ x 10″ square canvas executed mostly with palette knife. Its funny how all the trees lean inwards towards the canal to reach the light. I plan to do a lot more of these small canvases with simple compositions focusing mostly on color. They had a sale on this size canvases anyway.
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April 13th, 2010 Posted 2:23 pm
Forsythia in Bloom
The subject is a view from the backyard. Though most of the year the forsythia looks scraggly and doesn’t do I good job of blocking the view of the neighbor’s yard, they justify themselves in early spring when they explode with color. One very brilliant spring day I was impressed how blue the rest of the world looked through the brilliant yellow blooms. Spring is an odd time with strong contrasts, some places still look wintery and other places like summer is in full swing. I started this painting several years ago but left it unfinished but this time around it seemed to finish itself.
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April 4th, 2010 Posted 3:23 pm
"No U Turn"
A recent painting from a source photo of downtown Bethesda. I worked out the composition first using graphite powder on a large sheet of heavy paper, sealed it, then added several layers of acrylic paint using both modeling paste for texture and painting medium for glazing. Except for a few changes for the purpose of composition, the photograph was followed closely and portrays relatively accurately the view north on Wisconsin Avenue approaching East-West Highway. I like to think that the yellow building in the background is posing a dilemma to the viewer entering the painting, veer right towards the darkness or left towards the light? And from the signs posted it is clear there is no turning around.
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March 24th, 2010 Posted 9:57 am
Alas! Poor Yorrick
nude male, back view, head leaning against wall
I went back to figure drawing last night at the weekly drawing group that meets in Frederick, MD. Clayton Myer (www.claytonmyer.com) was the model. There was a plastic skull laying around the studio and we posed him in this contemplation of age and death. While we drew, Clayton regaled us with stories of his acting career and the time he played a boxer in an indie film.
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March 19th, 2010 Posted 3:07 pm
Steel Canyons
This is a rather large piece (40″ x 30″) that was based on a photograph which I used previously for a small sketch (see January 5th).I find these larger canvases a challenge to keep the whole thing holding together. With smaller canvases, I have a feel for the whole thing, maybe because you can see everything at the same time when working at arm’s length. But with a larger canvas, the work needs to be done piecemeal. In this case, I first worked on the buildings, then on the foreground, then on the sky, etc. but rarely worked on the piece as a whole. There a quite a few layers here as I tried to work out the kinks in the composition. Though the original photograph has a river in the foreground, during the painting process, the river dried out and a figure appeared, who seems to be looking up at the city spread out before him with amazement and some dismay. The painting seemed to demand a more illustrative approach in order to tell this story.
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February 25th, 2010 Posted 2:36 pm
autumn in a quaint new england town
Another attempt at abstraction..starting with blues and oranges and intersecting shapes, which led to a repetition of triangular shapes. Shortly after I took this photo, the painting coalesced into a small seaside new england town, replete with sailboats, a lighthouse, well maintained white clapboard houses and church with freshly painted blue roofs. And of course the requisite autumn foliage. I mean that I saw this in my mind but once I had that image there I couldn’t maintain the integrity of the work. At least as an abstract. And I didn’t really have enough information to paint representationally. And it sort of fell apart. But at least I have this photo. And maybe I can resurrect this stage again, which, though not finished, is sort of interesting.
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February 15th, 2010 Posted 2:34 pm
single file
And the orange guy just keeps on trucking, rain, sleet or, in this case, 4 ‘ walls of snow. (See February 3 entry)
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February 12th, 2010 Posted 2:00 pm
signs of a rudimentary civilization
Starting with a simple design of horizontal planes and intersecting lines and a few ideas for color, I began to randomly fill in with flat color just to see where it would lead. At some point it seemed that pink had to dominate. I got looser with the paint, using a palette knife. Purples and blue contrasted nicely with that. It seem like a pleasant design but looking a little flat. Something had to go in the foreground. A few quickly drawn black lines and daubed-in white and gray shapes and an ancient civilization seemed to sprout instantly off the rocky cliffs. I began to wonder, what was their means of sustenance? I had such a storyline built up around this that I don’t think I could finish the picture. I ended up painting much of what you see above with what looked like a huge freeway (not shown). More on this later.
