Sunday, October 30, 2011

Judge Parker

Sam does a little cross examining on Derek...

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Judge Parker

Can Sophie make it home in time....

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Fall Semester Week 9--over the Hump! Two-man Show!

Well we are now officially over the hump in school with this being the 9th week of classes. I am over a bit of a hump as well personally as I just turned 50 on Wednesday--so it was really a hump week!! I spent my birthday painting away at school, enjoying a nice cake and good time with my friends. I put the finishing touches on my painting above, entitled Market Street. It's the final painting I will have time to finish before I have to go to the framer and get the paintings I need framed for the Emerging artist show I have next month with my buddy David Golas at Home Fine Art in Mount Holly. Our show opens on November 1st, and the reception is on the 12th. You can see images from the card we had printed up below.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Judge Parker Pencils

I thought I'd scan and toss up some of the pencils from the past month of Sunday strips or so to feed the process junkies out there. I pencil tight where I want to nail the drawing but in general I find myself wanting to do more drawing when inking to keep it more spontaneous and fresh. my biggest regret on the strip is not being able to draw it bigger as I feel I could do an even better job, same with hiring models or shooting ref, but I just don't have the budget or time. My hats off to all the great of the past who did, I can see where it did help.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Fall Semester-Week 8 Vincent Desiderio and Juliette Aristides Workshops

This was a great week and busy week at school, it was a great week to be a student at PAFA and reminded me of why I am glad I chose this place--as we had with two great workshops by two of the academies former students who have gone one to be come two of the biggest figurative artists and painters working today, Juliette Aristides and Vincent Desiderio. I was once again one of the monitors for Vince's two-day workshop, the 4th of his workshops I've attended here at the school. While being a monitor might crimp my painting time in the workshop it gives me more off-peak one-on-one time with Vince before, after and during the lunch break. Vince comes twice a year to do these workshops and I think that says a lot about him as a person, even more than about him as an artist. Vince charges you up, feeds your head with so much good art-talk and history, theory and his enthusiasm just fills the room and everyone there like a vessel that overflows with art and goodness. In the big Art World where there is a lot of nastiness and ugliness, jealousy and outright crap and BS its great to get the perspective both figuratively and literally from an artist in the battle every day. He really invests in each person and relates to you almost as a pier, no big ego, no attitude--he wants us all to join him. He takes the Modernists to the mat, as he lectures and demos on the formal, theoretical, conceptual and the technical narrative of painting. He's brilliant, plain and simple, but it's an honest brilliance, a well crafted and well well thought out and historical brilliance. Here is a bit from one of his discussions during the workshop. "Great technique is on the brink of collapsing under the weight of it's own daring. Like starring at a man on a high wire--is he going to fall? And he doesn't fall. He feels painting has to be a fruit-full ground, free of the neo-cons of "contemporary figurative crap" or neo-cons who do "conceptual crap". Vince is a painter who wants to see into the future, the possibility of where painting can go.Whatever the color or temperature of your light mass is it's going to force your eye to see the shadow as it's opposite. Even though I have heard him speak on the subjects of tonality, perspective and seen him do the demo's it never get's boring, it's like a prayer or an affirmation to see this and him working again. I think because I have done the workshops before I can understand better and concentrate on other aspects and not feel overwhelmed. Vince started by giving is talk and then his demo. he talked about the history of painting and how artists came to solve the problems of staying active and current while still having traditional skills.
Vince did a chalk talk where he discussed the four zones of light in a painting.
The Model of Tonality 1. The incidence of reflection (highlight-which always has a shift to the cool) 2. The light mass. 3. The turning ( terminator) 4. The shadow (which are neutral and like mirrors and who's color can change depending on the light mass.)
He also talked about local color and chroma which is the color of the light and how we must know the difference as painters. When you observe the model keep this model in your head to help organize what you are seeing--which is form with a capital F and that takes over from the analogue of perspective.
Then Vince did his demo for the first day after we worked from the model. and shellaced our drawings using amber shellac to seal in the drawing. Working in what essentially is like a warm grisaille, though not exactly that he did a demo in which he really loaded in the shadows and then loaded in the light mass and worked away from the incidence of reflection across the form toward the shadow, just warming the color before the terminator as the form rolls into the shadow,
Here is the final demo where Vince worked over a drawing by one of the students . The lucky student got to keep the demo to boot!
The next day after another talk and reviewing peoples work Vince did another demo, this time drawing on a piece of museum board, it was fun to just watch him draw a figure out of his head in a similar pose to the one our model had taken. After he finished i took the drawing and shellaced it.
The final state of the demo. You can really see how he moves the temp of the light as he moves across the form into the shadow. if you really study his paintings you can see even after he adds more color he still works this way building the light mass so the paintings have a glow.
Marie Manski who was the other monitor during the workshop with Desiderio.
Here is my painting from the worshop. I never get to really finish it the way i want--its always more like a drill to try and employ what I'm learning.
Now while this was going on in the Hamilton Building, across the plaza in the HLB Building Juliette Aristides was doing her 2-day workshop which was running at the same time. My friend Lexi was the monitor form that workshop and she sent me the two photos of the demos Aristides was working on. I wish I could have taken booth but I'm sure she will come back. Friday evening before the workshop Aristidies she gave a talk and slide show about her work and took questions after wards from the crowd.
Lexi and Will looking at art before Aristides' talk.
Peter van Dyck and his wife carolyn Pyfrom talk with Aristides after her talk.
Here are two of her demos from the workshop.
So it was a busy, a bit hectic and exhausting week as well as my Birthday--I just turned 50 today--but age isn't anything but a number!

Monday, October 17, 2011

Judge Parker

Oh, oh, dhow down in the girl's locker room....

Sunday, October 09, 2011

Friday, October 07, 2011

Fall Semester-Week 6

This week was a good painting week for me. I finished up another commuter landscape and got a few more paintings underway. I worked from a really old and small low rez pic from my old cell phone. I remember really being struck by the great light in this picture--so that's what I went for, pushing the colors as well. I think I was warmed up from doing that plein air demo last week at the gallery and kept the painting energy rolling.
This is the block-in for the painting I'll be working on for the next 3 weeks in mt Life Painting class with Peter van Dyck. I got to set up this pose so I got something a lot more interesting going on than a guy sitting in a chair.
This was a one-shot painting done today in the class with Peter. The models pose was only for today--so this was just a mad dash in the three hour class to get stuff down as usual. It's really just a attempt to get the light and atmosphere which was changing every minute as the sun rose from behind the convention center. I was thinking a little about Zhaoming Wu's approach on this and i used a big flat brush on it to keep from being seduced by details...
This is a series of comps for my Super Sad paintings. I might do this quite large, actually stapling the canvas to the wall and using huge brushes or squeegies or who knows what. I want to play with more pushed compositions as well. So it was a good week and I plan on keeping the paint brush to the metal as I have only a few more weeks till my show in Jersey!

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Judge Parker

This week's JP Sunday, Randy doesn't seem too worried about his stalker....

Saturday, October 01, 2011

Gallery Plein Air Paint-out/Fall Semester Week 5

Today I went out to the new gallery I am in Parke Schaffer Fine Arts in Wayne, PA which is having an open gallery every Saturday in October where two artists come out and paint live in the gallery. Today it was David Grafton and myself in the gallery, David inside doing a landscape and myself, outside in the brisk fall weather. I sat in the sun, but the wind was blowing pretty good today so towards the end I was getting a bit chilly, or my hands were. I attracted many onlookers throughout the day as i painted in front of the gallery and my mom and dad stopped out as they are in town to see my brother and his wife who just made them grandparents and me an uncle last weekend. I tried to find a set-up that I knew I could paint and that would stay in good light for the afternoon and that if the light changed ( which it did) I could manage the change. It was sunny when I set up, but cloudy when I got going--but then about an hour before the whole thing came to an end the sun came back out so I had to make many, many adjustments and chase the fading sun--but that's what plien-air is all about!
This is a shot of the gallery with my buddy Will sitting with my parents as parke shows some work to a few perspective customers.
David Grafton doing his painting in the gallery
Will and my parents.
Here you can see my painting in a few stages of progress. I wanted to keep it simple and many of the cooler views would have put me into parking lot traffic, but eventually i had to paint the cars...
Cars are no harder than anything else to paint and actually they are easier than things like trees since their shapes are simpler. I love the reflective colors as well.
a nice shot of my mom and dad, it was fun to have them at the gallery as i painted and they enjoyed the process and the nice lunch Parke was so gracious to serve us.
In school news another week flew by and I missed one of my classes but I did put the final strokes to this painting I have been hacking at the past few weeks. Its so frustrating at times that the lighting conditions change so radically from session to session, dark and cloudy to bright and sunny, so if you are painting with the spotlight on the model, one session it's bright and warm--the next darker as the sun outside is blasting in. This week we are coming starting a new pose. meanwhile I am working on a few new paintings in school, a night painting from the 4th floor lobby and another train painting in the studio so i can have multiple paintings in progress.
I fixed a few things that were hard to see in the lobby but I really want to do this with my night vision, not from a photo.
Peter also had his cute dog Sasha in class as he uses her in the animal drawing class he teaches. We bonded over some extra turkey bacon I had for breakfast. I also started teaching my Illustration class in the After School Program and we had a good first class. If I get a chance I'll post some work from the class in the next few weeks. So as you can see--fall is in full swing--and the time is flying by.