leo carillo beach

I went with John Kilduff to Leo Carillo Beach in Malibu for some plein air painting today. Man was it windy, my easel almost blew over twice! But it was a perfect day anyway, sunny, clear, and cool. oil on canvas, 24 by 36

teaching painting

Here's a few of the works I did today for the advanced sketching for illustration class I'm substitute teaching at Art Center. We had two models in the center of the room with strong directional lighting and I decided to invent some background like they're in a restaurant. Two waitresses taking a break? In another restaurant? Who knows but I had fun drawing a couple varying compositions and doing a painting study. It's oil on paper and a limited palette: white, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, mars violet, and paynes grey. I'm primarily concerned with the lights and darks when I'm using a limited palette, but with this particular palette the painter is able to get very close to naturalistic color.

my friend John's 20 minute portrait

I went down to San Diego for my dear friend John Herrmann (visit his blog here). He turned 41 today, or as his cake said, the 1st anniversary of his 40th birthday. I've known John as long as I can remember, and for the majority of that time I've known he's had with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. It's never stopped his desire to live and enjoy life and learn. I'm honored to know him, and it was a pleasure to paint his 20 minute portrait, and celebrate his 41st birthday with his family and friends. Happy Birthday John! oil on panel, 12 by 9.

4th and broadway

I was downtown for the ArtWalk yesterday, the fun starts about 8, but I went down early to get in some urban landscape. Here's an 18 by 24 from the corner of 4th and Broadway. It was a fun to be out, plein air is always an adventure. The wildest thing that happened was some crazy guy came up and started to make incoherent conversation, then he took some brushes and started to paint on my painting. I usually don't mind, like I'll let kids paint on my painting if they want to because I know I can just scrape it off and fix it later. So whatever, this guy is writing 'loco' in bright green and saying paint this, paint that, but then he grabbed a big blob of cadmium yellow, pushed it on the canvas a little bit, and then wiped it all over his face and down his neck. He looked really scary. Then he wandered off and into a beef bowl restaurant. I hope he got some soap on his face! oil on canvas

moby dick

It's a long story. I'm filling in for another teacher at Art Center who suddenly had to take the term off. An option for one of the previous teacher's assignments was to paint an image inspired by Moby Dick. So in class I decided it might be instructive to come up with an original composition. Like any designed painting, there are two elements to the composition: the line drawing or linear arrangement of the design, and the value arrangement or distribution of lights and darks in the painting. So here's what I came up with based on my brief reading (the night before class) of the synopsis of the story filtered through my love for Tintoretto and N.C. Wyeth. Of course I chose a moment of high drama! Fanatics of Moby Dick will probably find my painting completely ludicrous since I'm so uninformed on the story, but I tried... If I were to really paint a composition inspired by Moby Dick, this is how I would start it. The value study was done 90% with white, burnt umber, and ultramarine blue, with a tiny bit of yellow ochre and burnt sienna. From this point, if I wanted to be more realistic I would hire models and start drawing and taking pics... drawing 11 by 17, oil sketch on paper 8 by 12

Matador Beach

Kilduff and I could not resist going back to Malibu today, the weather is too perfect. So here's another view of Matador Beach on a larger canvas. It's a challenging light, I'm not sure if I got it exactly as I felt it, but this painting feels pretty close. oil on canvas, 24 by 30

vegas

I was at the Hive gallery last night for the July show and since I wanted to do some painting there but didn't want to paint portraits, I brought this piece and slapped some more color on it, adjusting the composition here and there. I think it's improved and I'm happy with the color and feeling for the lighting. oil on linen, 40 by 28