PAINTING WORKSHOP WITH MAX GINSBURG - day three

On the third day, we had an all day pose.  In the first picture, I am working out the drawing.  After correcting a few errors, I completed the painting as can be seen in the second picture. I think I did pretty well with this.  I certainly learned the importance of slowing down and looking closely at the model and getting the proportions and angels right at the start - so much easier than trying to correct them later.  With this taken care of, I was able to go ahead and add color - warm and cool.  This is as far as I got that day.

PAINTING WORKSHOP WITH MAX GINSBURG - day two

On the second day of Max's excellent workshop, we had an assignment. It was to make two quick oil sketches that included the entire body - no cutting off the feet allowed.  After Max helped me correct the drawings, I think I did pretty well.  One thing I learned was to make the lower legs darker and more purplish by using a little alizarin crimson. Pale skin is difficult for me, but by concentrating on tone and big forms, I think I did ok.

PAINTING WORKSHOP WITH MAX GINSBURG - day one

I recently attended a six day workshop at the Long Island City studio of Max Ginsburg. On the first day, after watching Max's demonstration, we attempted two head studies. 

In the first one, I think that I failed to capture the model's thin and frail look. It is all a learning experience, though. I rubbed this one out.

My second attempt was much more successful, I think.  She was delicate and I think I got that on the second try.  I was learning something every minute that I was working with Max.

A WORKING ARTIST'S STUDIO

Here is a view of my studio. The photo makes it look much bigger than it is.  I offer this picture a counterpoint to the notion that a clean and orderly studio leads to greater creativity and productivity.  I notice that this idea is mostly promoted by people who call themselves artist advisors.  These people are organizers and writers - probably not visual artists.  If being neat and tidy works for them, then they should be that way.  But how can they know anything about what will work for another person.  If I ever do get around to cleaning up my studio, my next act is to start messing it up again.  I do concede however, that it would be nice to have my table top free of clutter so that I could do something on it.  Instead, I open up a folding table for a project.  Then I fold it up and put it away so that I cannot put any stuff on it.

ATLANTIC BEACHES - LOBSTER CLAW

When roaming the beaches of the Atlantic coast, I find that most of the things that have washed up are dead - relics of sea life. In these bits and fragments of once living matter I find an endless array of color and pattern that finds its way into my paintings.  This one is part of a series of "dead things on the " that has already reached over 65 in number.  most of them are 6"x6", but this one is 20"x20" - oil on canvas.

GAIA WALKS AMONG HER DEAD - STEP THREE

Now, I have added a lot more stuff to the ground in this painting.  Bones - trash - tires.  I need to use color and value to direct the viewers' interest to the hands and the tiny new plant that Mother Nature is placing into the scorched earth to restore a ruined world.

WHAT I SAW ON MY TRIP TO CALIFORNIA

I spent only one day on the beaches south of Monterey, but found there enough material to start a new series of of paintings based on life in the tide pools.  My Atlantic Beaches series was all about dead things on the beach (shells, dead jellyfish, lobster claws).  The Pacific Beaches series will be about live things on the beach (anemones, crabs, live jellyfish).  I can't wait to get started but will have to work it in between all of my other painting projects.

Gaia Walks Among Her Dead

Stage two. It is hard to see in this photo, but I am getting into pointillism with a lot of dots in the dirt. Now, Mother Nature has her plant, which she will use to start repopulating the scorched earth. I will be away from this painting for couple of week while it dries and I soak up some sun in the Southwest.

MOTHER NATURE WALKS AMONG HER DEAD

This is a sort of a first draft of a painting that I started working on when, somewhere, I heard the phrase, "Mother Nature walks among her dead".  The image seemed quite clear to me.  There would be a field of scorched earth, littered with dead - natural beings and human trash alike. The animals are there to suggest the dying earth and the trash is there to suggest that it is the fault of humanity.  As I work on this, I will make the ground browner and deader with more debris.  The key to it all, the most important part, will be that Mother Nature will have in her hands a tiny plant seedling.  I hope that this painting works out with the clear message that it is only Mother Nature who has the power to clean up the mess that we have made and repopulate the Earth with teeming life and diversity that belong here.  It will take a long time though.

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

At some point in the career of a painter, there comes a desire to do a selfie.  This is mine.  Sometimes, one lacks a model to paint.  Sometimes, as in this case, one is asked to attend a dinner party for artists to which each guest is expected to bring a self portrait.  So I did this one in two short sessions.  Not exactly alla prima, but almost.  I did it one day and touched it up a bit the second. It is kind of fun to do a self portrait, but revealing. I became acutely aware that I am not seventeen years old anymore. Oh, well.

FACEBOOK ART CHALLENGE - DAY FIVE

Day 5 - art challenge. Recently, my interest has been directed toward painting greatly enlarged views of tiny natural objects. This are pictures of the decaying autumn leaves of the floating pond plant, Water Shield. Too much fun. 

FACE BOOK FIVE DAY ART CHALLENGE - DAY 4

 TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL  - oil on canvas - 24"x30"

 THEY PASSED WITH NOSES IN THE AIR - oil on canvas  - 34"x30"

 COLLATERAL DAMAGE - oil on canvas - 40"x34"

 STATE AND MAIN - oil on canvas - 54"x40"

PERSEPHONE - SHE'S BACK  -  oil on canvas - 20"x24"


This group of paintings is from my Social Realism Series. The series deals with some of the ever present problems in our lives, including a new one - Global Warming.  The last one offers a bit of hope as Persephone emerges from the under world to bring Spring back to us.

Face book art challenge - Day three.

This is a group of portrait studies all done from life at the various painting groups that I attend. Some are years old, one I did two weeks ago. Learning to paint is always a work in progress. For every one of these these that turns out well, about ten are thrown away. 

2nd day of the faceebook art challenge

Day 2 art challenge.  Haying in Vermont and some landscapes done on a cross country trip about 8 years ago.

Face book five day artist's challenge. Day one

Day one of the 5 day art challenge. I am skipping over my long career as a ceramic artist and wood carver due to lack of photos. I'll go right to painting. These 6"x8" oil sketches were part of a project to do one painting a day for a year. This was about 10 years ago. I spent about half an hour on each one. (5 photos)

SOLO SHOW IN BARRE, VERMONT

I will be presenting works from my Autumn Pond Abstract series on the third floor of Studio Place Arts in Barre, VT at the same time as their Amore show downstairs.  Opening on January 24 from 3:30 - 5:30.  Come on up and see me there.

A Morning At the Art Students' League

I'm taking a five day workshop in alla prima portraiture at the Art Students' League in NYC.  Here is my first day's effort, although I worked on it for about another half hour.  Suddenly, painting is fun again.

SUPER CELL

The last picture in this series, at least for now, is Super Cell.  It has one of those huge rotating black clouds that engender tornadoes in the background.  In the foreground, a couple of "beautiful people" sit on a beach, wearing rose colored glasses, reading fashion magazines or obliviously listening to an iPod.  They are also oblivious to a child who does see the approaching storm cloud and tries to scream a warning that they can not hear.  The figures in this painting all come from photos that I cobbled together and put different hair and clothes on. It is consistent with the other paintings in the group in that someone sees that the world is a mess and someone else can not.  Or maybe they just choose not to see it.

oil on canvas - 30"x34"

SHOOT

Shoot.  I had a lot of names for this one but I finally settled on Shoot.  This was a concept driven piece.  I mean I had the idea and then tried to figure out how to execute that idea.  In my head there had been one or two adults sitting in easy chairs watching TV and drinking beer.  They would have been seen from behind with the TV in the distance with images of war on it.  In the foreground, boys would have been playing with guns.  I could never figure that out to my satisfaction but after using the stars and stripes in Collateral Damage, I thought of using them in Shoot as well.  I dispensed with the easy chairs and the grown ups and emphasized the TV.  The images of the boys came from a series of books that I have, each one featuring photos from one decade of the twentieth century.  These were from the fifties.  It is surprising in our culture how many pictures there are of kids with guns.  These two were playing with guns, but in a lot of the images the kids are using real guns, fighting in real wars.  This painting is slanted, I guess, toward a middle class American point of view, but I hope it implies those kids in the real wars and also the commonplaceness of brutality "as seen on TV" and also how it is romanticized in our culture. 

STATE AND MAIN

State and Main was a project long in the making.  Most of the time (a couple of years) was spent in thinking about it. I knew that I wanted a group of children playing in a street as if that street were a beach with the rising ocean waters rising up to them.  This time, it is the children who carry on as usual, as each generation does, while the adults suddenly become aware of their peril.  I tried out many arrangements for the city street and sky line and none of them seemed to work until it occurred to me to make the line of buildings curve as they might if they were falling into the sea. The characters in this picture came from many sources.  The little girl in pink started out as my granddaughter. Some of the others were came from my collection of black and white photography books.  Others were made up.  I thought that the iceberg floating in the distance was a nice touch, representing the melting ice caps. And the greenish sky gives the whole thing an ominous tone. Now that I have discovered the power of tiny white dots in representing foamy water, I might go back into this painting and add some.  54"x40"