Portrait Class

I was just now looking at my blog since who-knows-when and just now realized that I have more photos of paintings from my portrait class I never posted.

This first painting was done the third week.  I think this was one of my favorites.

The next week was this one...much softer and more blended. 





Landscape Painting with Charles Philip Brooks (Oct 4 and 5, 2014)

The art teacher I have been studying with (Melinda Borysevicz) took some time off for the summer.  This coincided with Paul and I spending almost all of our free time working on the house we bought.  Finally, the house is pretty much done, and we were able to move in.  Melinda invited artist Charles Philip Brooks in to teach a landscape class. 

In the morning, we headed out to Fort Pulaski, which is has large open areas of marsh.  I chose to do a "big sky" painting. 

I'm really pleased with how this turned out.
In the afternoon, we headed to the beach on Tybee Island to paint the ocean...

Painting a constantly-moving body of water is a real challenge, and the net result is a painting that depicts the essence of the thing, not the actual thing itself.  An awesome experience of really LOOKING at something and seeing that there is so much more to it than just a blue patch. 

I learned so much in this class, and really enjoyed it.  I have discovered that plein aire painting with oil paint is so much easier than the acrylics I was using before.  For these outings, I used my 9x12 Guerilla Painter box.  It's a nice rig, but heavy.  Fortunately, I was able to use my roller bag on most of the ground we had to cover.  The others in the class worked with French easels, and some of them had some issues with their equipment.  It seems like there is no such thing as perfect plein aire painting equipment.  I plan to continue to evaluate ways to lighten the load to make transport of the equipment less of a hassle.

Portrait Class, Weeks 4-6

For the last 3 classes, we worked on a single portrait.  This is the first weeks efforts, roughed in with just burnt sienna.

The second week, I more fully resolved the shadows with burnt sienna, and then worked on the varying tones in the light with gray tones.  Also worked on the hair.

The third and final week.  Got some real skin tone in there and more fully resolved details.  I don't consider it a "finished" painting.  There are some aspects of it that are still a little rough, but I think it came out pretty well overall.  Not too bad for a beginner, if I may say so myself.  For some reason, this final version looks much more colorful on my computer screen than it does in real life.

Portrait Class Week 3: 4/30/14

I decided to focus all my efforts on the painting this week, rather than trying to do a painting and a drawing.  No time to do much with the hair rather than just sketch in the shape of it, but my proportions are better. 

Portrait Class 4/15/14

My first portrait class.  I have drawn portraits before with charcoal, but this was my first time to paint a portrait.  First we warmed up with a drawing, practicing a loose blocking in of the facial features.

Then the exact same thing with the paint.  This is oil paint.

Considering it was just a 2.5 hour class and we had a demo in there and all, I'm quite pleased with both my drawing and painting.

Art Class 4/2/14

Color study in oil.  We had about an hour and 45 minutes to turn out a painting.  The goal was to do most of the mixing on the canvas, not on the palette.  The teacher is pushing lots of painting starts.  There isn't time to get hung up on fussy details.  I'm not crazy about how the lemon came out, but I think the sugar bowl came out pretty well.

Art Class 3/27/14

Spring classes started up again this week.  I have two weeks to attend before my new job starts on 4/7. 

Below is my very first oil painting.  White egg on a white sheet of drawing paper, put a spot light on it.  I got the oil paints a couple of years ago (right after we moved to Pennsylvania) and I finally decided to try them out.  Acrylics dry way too fast outdoors for plein air painting, so I figured I would give the oils a shot.  I really like the oil paint.  There are all kinds of things to mix into oil paint to make it do this or that.  This is just out of the tube.  It was such a joy to blend the paint to get the nice soft edges without the paint drying.

Art Class in Savannah

Working on a still life drawing.  It's really starting to look like something now.

Nancy Barch Workshop Aug 19-21, 2013

So, before leaving Delaware, I squeaked in one more 3-day workshop with Nancy Barch.  I find it interesting to note that from workshop to workshop, my approach and thought processes have changed from the first workshop I took with Nancy.  I am trying to become more process oriented and less concerned about outcomes.

My favorites from the workshop were built on top of older unfinished paintings.

Pat Dews Workshop June 10-14

For the longest time, I have been a huge fan of Pat Dews.  Way back when I first started painting, I got of one of her books, and she quickly became one of my first art "heroes".  Pat works in mixed media.  Watercolor, ink, acrylics and collage.  The supply list for this class was 2 pages long.  We worked full sheet for all paintings (22"x30"), so even the paper took up a lot of space.  Here is a photo of all the art supplies I took with me for the trip.

The following are photos of work in progress and painting "starts".  We started a lot of paintings.  I didn't finish most of them.  This first one was created with acrylic inks.

This next painting below is what Pat calls an "altered surface".  It was started from a failed painting I had kicking around from about 7 years ago.  Previously, I would have chopped the painting up and made cards out of it.  Pat showed us new ways to salvage lousy paintings and turn them into something new and interesting.  The original painting shows through most readily in the grey patches.  The original was bright orange and turquoise.  I washed over it with some grey to tone it down a little before laying out a new design on top of it.  It is interesting that a painting is more visually interesting and complex when it has some kind of under-painting, even if very little of it is obvious at the end.  This is the magic of the "altered surface" (building a painting on top of an old one) rather than using a new sheet of paper. This one is well on its way, but still needs some work.

 Painting below created with acrylic ink.  There are things about it I really like, but it's not finished.  Part of me likes the off balanced look of it, but hmmm...it really needs to have colors worked through from left to right and that big open space on the lower left really shouldn't stay that way.

This painting start was done with acrylics, and white spaces preserved by laying down collage pieces, which were painted over, and then removed.

Below is the finished painting from the painting start above.  Inspired by one of the photos Pat brought with her, taken at a shipyard.

Here we all are at the end of a very busy week.  Some amazing talent in this room!  Most of the students were fairly local.  Two ladies traveled all the way from Canada for this class.  Pat is right there, front and center in the bright pink (paint covered) shirt.  She is a fantastic teacher, and I highly recommend her workshops!