Scott Noel's Painting Class

I had another great class this week with Scott, the best one yet, maybe it also had something to do with the fact I had a bit more sleep than usual...

Scott is my favorite teacher, he's demanding, dynamic, talented as hell and challenging. He's right there, like a keg of TNT every week, POW! BAM!

Scott revs you up and takes you to the mat at the same time. Its always my most challenging class and often I have the greatest feeling of absolute failure and frustration---though I probably learn the most.

This week Scott had us painting in the 4th floor elevator landing and racing the sun. He's really trying to force us think think quick, but think well--make good choices and plan, but to also be brutal and be willing to wipe out and change what we have done as the world changes before out canvases. He always brings plenty of books to cite examples of what he,s talking about--this week it was Antonio Lopez Garcia, the great Spanish, realist painter. You can see an movie of him on youtube of him battling the crowds and elements live as he works on one of his monster size landscapes.
Scotts wants us to see the big picture, the inside vs outside and to push our thinking and grouping of colors to create these domains of envelopes, of color. Its observational, but its also not literal, it very much a very demanding idea. Is this a cool or a warm? A warm cool? Do you need to push that color more into this group or that one?
Scott doesn't abandon you but he will ride and chide me a lot, which is good, I will flat out get him to paint on my painting to demonstrate a point--too me that is the best way to work--to see what he means literally. He did this on this painting by taking what I already had down with the male figure and basically just mashed it more together, unifying the model and the foreground shadow and then basically mashed the lights there together there as well. To little moves and it really united the two distinct areas. Working fast is where my years of doing storyboards and comics give me the upper hand with the drawing chops--that really helps when you have to block in fast so you can race the light.