The Rielly Method

I took a quick break from huge imploding, multi-deadlines to venture over the Burlington, NJ Monday to take in a lecture by Neilson Carlin on the Reilly Method at the The Herman T. Costello Lyceum Hall Center for The Arts.
The Herman T. Costello Lyceum Hall Center for The Arts.

Frank Reilly was a noted teacher and illustrator who taught at the Art Students League and the lecture by Carlin was on Reilly's now famous 6 step figure drawing process, which broke down into very simple but accurate steps a process in constructing the figure, from life or imagination.

Here is another link to a book on the Frank Reilly method from a former student. I have the book and its pretty decent, it not only demonstrates the figure drawing method but also the Reilly teachings on painting, palettes, etc.

Neilson learned the Reilly system under figure painter Michael Aviano who studied with Reilly at the Art Students League, and the lecture was really very good and entertaining. The event run by Shawn who also runs other classes at the Herman T. Costello Lyceum Hall Center for The Arts was a lot of fun and well attended. You can get more info at The Herman T. Costello Lyceum Hall Center for The Arts
432 High St.
Burlington, NJ 08016
609.239.0029 or email them at: education@burlingtonLyceum.com


These are some of Carlin's drawings he brought along. The funny thing for me was I recognized two of the models right off as they were regular models for me when I taught at DCAD. After a while you become so familiar and intimate with certain models figures that you can really tell them just from elbows an half torsos!



Neilson also run his own school as well as working full time a a painter. The event was a lot of fun and my buddy and studio mate Dave met me there. I plan on attending more of their figure drawing sessions as time allows. The figure at the top is one of the two quick drawings I did starting with the Reilly system. It's in colored pencil ( because I forgot my charcoal pencils) on newsprint and took about 15 minutes or so.

Phillustration 2010

Last weekend was the reception for the 2010 Phillustration show at the Philadelphia Sketch Club. I'm posing in front of one of my entries, one of my Supersad paintings. This year I entered three pieces and had them all accepted. I entered the Super sad paintings, the Robin Hood piece I did this spring and one of my SEPTA paintings. Two of my friends from PAFA also entered and had their pieces accepted. They had some pretty heavy hitters enter the show this year like Boris and Julie Bell, Charles Santore and Richard Williams of Mad fame. This show was much, much stronger overall this year which is good.

Last weekend I attended the opening reception and hob-knobbed a bit and saw a few familiar faces. The show was orchestrated by Rich Harrington who is a great guy and teaches over at Moore College. Rich is a funny guy and was a great MC. All of the student winners got free art supplies provided by Dick Blick. There was wine, cheese and lots of good spirits all around, I look forward to next years show which I hear might be moved to the fall.

The Host with the most, Rich Harrington

This Week's Judge Parker Sunday

Go read this Sunday's strip Here.

WIZARD WORLD 2010

I hit WW Philly for a short stint today and I am busy this weekend so I will make a more complete blog later in this week after deadlines. So just a tip of the hat and a wag of the hammer till then....

NEW STUDIO!

Yesterday I moved into my new studio at PAFAright in the heart of center city Philly a few blocks from City Hall and it was a wonderful day. I'd been looking forward to this for a long time.
My buddy Dave was there to help me shlep my stuff in and the Parking Gods smiled upon me as I didn't get a ticket while I pas parked outside loading in my gear. I am in a south facing, gang studio on the fourth floor with large windows. I am sharing the studio with a few of my best friends and DPC buddies--so what could be better!

I've had a studio for decades but this is the first time I've ever had a studio just for painting. There is still a lot of things I need for the place, but the seed is potted and the place is growing already. I found a few items left behind by fellow students like the pink chair to ad on the first day. I hauled in one of my extra drawing tables and a folding table and an extra easel. PAFA gives you one, the green one, but I brought in the easel I got at Dick Blick last year. Dave already found a coffee maker somebody also left, so already the most important piece of equipment has been procured!
And to get the ball rolling I did this quick little painting the first day, just the christen the studio and kind of bless the spot if you will, put my stamp on it the first day by creating something. I painted my hat and spoon and a bit of my iphone . I had a little 5 x 7 Blick camvas for doing these quick little spots.


The studio has great views of the historic Furness building and I snapped these shots as the sun set on my first day in my new digs. I plan on being in the studio painting at least 4 days a week, allowing for my work schedule with my commercial jobs.

Tim the Model

While cleaning up a pile of paper and drawings I came across this drawing I did sometime last year of,Tim, one of our models at PAFA. Its in prismacolor pencil on a sheet of Marvel Comics 2 ply bristol. I think I did this after the portrait painting class I took with Al Gury last summer, Tim was one of our models there.

New Studio----it's coming

Tomorrow I will get my keys....and I'll be moving in this week to my new studio at school.

This Week's Judge Parker Sunday

This Week's JP Sunday --click here

Cast Drawing

Today I did this drawing of one of the casts in PAFA's great Cast Hall in the Historic Landmark Building, designed by Frank Furness. I did it as sort of a demo for a TV crew from the one of the local Public Televison stations, Channel 39, out of the Lehigh Valley which is up Allentown way for their piece on the school. The crew was in to do a piece on the school, the museum and its use as a teaching facility and Al Gury asked me to come in to do a drawing as the crew wanted to see a student at work.

One of the great things about PAFA is having that awesome collection of casts to draw, paint or sculpt from, Another student, Chris was doing a sculpture of another one of the casts and the reporter interviewed us as we both work. I was honored to have Al ask me to represent the school in this spot. I had to be miked up and the camera man placed the camera around me in several spots to get me drawing. They even had the shots of Al giving me some feedback on my drawing and also on Chris's sculpture. man those lights were hot and the place was already a bit humid as it was around 90 in the city today. I came in early to get something going so when the crew came over there would be enough work under way. Its weird drawing with hot TV lights on yer head, but I have been on radio and TV before and I think having taught a lot removes any butterflies. The whole crew was really nice and if they use me I'll post the link when the interview or the piece on the school runs.
This is in Charcoal on Rives BFK paper

Interior Painting Workshop with Peter Van Dyke

This week I took the week-long intensive workshop, Interior painting with Peter Van Dyke, a young and super-talented painter who's a graduate of the Florence Academy. Peter's been teaching a few years at PAFA, often the cast drawing classes and animal drawing and I had Peter for animal drawing last semester. Peter's a funny guy, very laid back--yet very knowlegable and intense about drawing and painting. A few friends at school took his painting interiors class last semester and they spoke very highly of the class and Peter--and more importantly I like their paintings. Since I need an extra painting class for credit I signed on early. It honestly was a big crunch for me to do the workshop with the amount of freelance work I have in the studio--but sometimes you just bite the bullet and don't sleep much of a week or so to get something you want done. the painting at the top was my final painting in the class and the one I am happiest with.
This was the first painting I the workshop, I worked on it for a day and a half and then moved on to the one below. I really tired to unify each space, each tonal space, the inside and the outside and their temperature envelopes , warm/cool, but also the different between the two rooms.
This was the second painting I did in the afternoon after I finished up the first painting of the yellow chair. The sun moved quick and this was maybe 90 minutes-2 hours tops and i had to stop as the light changed with the sunset.
Friday we had a Dirty Palette Club meeting at school during the class, I figured why not kill two birds with one brush. The yellow chair again made a great subject with it's horrid, yet alluring yellow covering...I'll be updating the DPC blog later.



Peter's painting philosophy is to try and group areas of your painting together--to keep it as simple as possible, and then within those groupings to build contrasts and values changes, reunifying areas and an interdependency of those relationships. That as long as you can look at it, love--you can paint it. What are you choosing to do with the tone range? The energy of the touch, how you apply the paint should resonate with the whole painting. Simple, but simple isn't easy and requires you to think and sometimes to be brutal and mash thing together to reunify them after you've painted them in. I think I learned a few things and was happiest with my final painting, I think I caught the essence of what Peter was trying to teach us, and they way artists like Sargent and Zorn, two of my favorite artists worked.
Here is where Peter's stopped his painting demo, and below you can see how fast and direct he goes, working big and loose and never being afraid to unify or reunify areas together.
Peter uses a view finder to get his composition set up.
And then he blocks in pretty quick, always thinking of the big masses. Later if he feels something is off he will go back in with a pencil and redraw into the painting to replace or correct angles, etc.


Peter worked all over trying to keep the areas of value and the envelopes of color and value strong at this stage. It was a great class and I highly recommend both taking a class with Peter if you can but also checking out his work on-line, at his website at the John Pence galleryand the Eleanor Ettinger Gallery.

Interiors Workshop

This week i am taking a one-week intensive workshop painting Interiors with Peter Van Dyke at school. I needed an extra painting credit and I had hear a lot of good things about this class from fellow students so i decided to sign up. So far its been quite enjoyable and I did this little painting. It's basically done except for maybe a few touches and then I'll move onto another painting tomorrow. The class runs till Saturday and when I'm done I'll go into more detail about the class and Peter's thoughts on painting.

1 Million Hits!

I just noted that I passed my millionth hit on my blog sometime this week...wow!! I know many site, like porn and news sites do that in a day probably--but my little blog is all grown up now. hurray for me!

Low Tide Delaware River

Yesterday the Dirty Palette Club had our second weekly meeting of the summer at a nice park along the Delaware River in Philly. This time it was just me and the gals as the other male members were busy or away. It was a nice day, hot, but I found a great spot under a nice tree and got to relax the old mental muscle from the stress of the weekly commercial grind in my studio.

I picked up a few landscape proportioned panels at the last sale at Dick Blick and tried out one of them. I packed a pic-nic lunch and just enjoyed painting as the tide rolled out and the ships rolled past.

Now its back into the studio for another long weeks drawing session. This is 10 x 20 in oil.

27th Street Park Plien Air

Thursday I went out and spent a few hours in a local park with the Dirty Palette Club to kick off our summer painting session. It was really a wonderful day full of that silvery philadelphia light. this was a great little park on 27th street , the Markward Recreation Center. There was a lot of great views but you know the time is a wasting when you paint out doors so you need to get to work quick. I looked about and found a view I felt with good depth and contrast and where the shadows would work to make an interesting contrast and shape and went at it.

I had an old canvas that somebody left at school and had pre-primed which still left it chunky in spots, which added an extra sense of texture in spots which I think worked. I loaded a bunch more pictures up over on the official Dirty Palette Blog

Here is my rough into set the composition.

It was great to de-stress from all the commercial work for a few hours to release the brain drain of the past few weeks. I look forward to going back to this spot and doing a lot more painting in general in a few weeks when the commercial work slows a bit.

JUDGE PARKER PROCESS

Here is this week's Sunday strip and the rough for it. I ended up changing the first panel to get a wider shot of the room for the set-up. I do my roughs small then blow them up on my copy machine and draw the final page on my lightbox, using the enlarged layout underneath. I'm constantly adjusting things as I do my pencils and pencil only tight enough to get the drawing where i need it to go to ink.
This week's strip have a nice opportunity to do a cool long shot in the last panel, and get some blacks spotted to make it more dynamic.

Semester Done!

The final class drawing in Sidney Goodman's class, Sidney loves these crazy set-ups!


Cue Alice Cooper--Schools out!

My second year as a student in the Certificate Program at The Pennsylvania Academy has finally come to an end. I am now halfway through my journey to my certificate degree and then my next step to my MFA.

It feels great to be done, really, I couldn't wait for it to be done so I can move into my painting studio in preparation to my third year--and a summer full of painting. Looking back at this year I feel both proud and a sense of urgency, the desire to push on and over the next hill and mountain. I feel I grew a lot as a painter this year and I am hungry, famished to dig into this summer and paint as much as possible--too re-apply myself to the series of paintings like the commuter paintings and the Super-sad paintings as well as new ideas.
The final one shot drawing in Al Gury's class, about an hours work.

I feel I still need to work on my observational skills and to get better at drawing in service of the ideals of form and light. Also during the year you have to juggle so much else while a sudent/professional artist/ and teacher i ned to catch my breath a bit. I was happiest with the last big pastel drawing and really want to keep at that over the summer as I think its a great but very demanding medium. One thing I will not miss is drawing from teachers set-ups or hauling all my shit around with only what at times seemed the smallest locker in the world for storage. I enjoy all of my classes to a degree, and my teachers are swell, but I just want to do my own ideas now--the idea of drawing another person on a box just makes my teeth grind.

Overall the semester was really a big save for me, it started out with the real possibility of me not even being able to get back after the meltdown of a commercial project--the Martian Comic, which really tossed a hand grenade into my life, but through family and friends I was really able to get past maybe the darkest financial part of my adult life. The classes I really wanted didn't happens but I made the best of it.

I think the school is going through a big change as well with the BFA program, and not all to the good which is unfortunate, but my job is to keep focused and drain every drop I can get out of my time there.

My friends, my DPC crew also make my experience there fantastic and I think without them it would have been really, really tough in spots, having a great group of motivated-like-minded artists and friends is essential I think-, not just in school, but in life.

So with the sun setting on year year two and the new moon about to rise i look forward to mooning everybody in my third year!

week 15 Done!

Wekk that's it, all she wrote, next week is crit week, which means maybe we draw a bit and have an hour crit in each class--but the spring sememster is really done. While many friends in the BFA nash, moan and tearr at themselves getting ready for the ASE, i can look forward to a few brews and a BBQ.

These are the last two pieces I've been working on this semester and I am basically finished with the painting but have one more class to "pick-at-it". The pastel, which I am calling "sleepers' was finished yesterday, I stayed after class to finish up the skeleton. Monday is the day we drop off our paintings and drawings for Spring prizes at the school. I have many pieces I will be entering this year from my last several months of drawing and painting and who knows, one might even make it in--though I don't hold my breath over these things as it all depends on who judges what.

This semester was frankly a bit mixed bag for me at school. Due to a financial crisis I ended up taking less classes than intended, but I think what that did was allow me to concentrate more on each piece of work as I had no liberal arts classes to take. I also feel I was able to build on what I started last summer but doing the plein-air and commuter paintings as well as the Super Sad paintings. In short, I feel I could focus more on what I wanted to bring to the canvas and not feel like I was serving the teacher or assignment--I reversed that i think to make it all serve me--which is as it should be. For the first time in my life I will also be renting a studio for just painting and separating my work spaces--and head spaces. I'll be renting a group studio with friends at school, my Dirty Palette amigos and amiga.

I can safely say I am so gaoddamed ready to be in my third year and my studio doing what I really want as a painter and look forward to the summer to spin it up and get my "paint on".

Susan MacDowell Eakins--final

Here is the final painting--or I should say the state of the painting as I left it when the clock signaled the end if the session and the two-day competition.

Congrats to the winners. It was a mad rush it seemed but thems the breaks at the end. We got free pizza as the judges Carolyn Pyfrom and Peter Van Dyke went in and choose the winners and honorable mentions. It was fun and I don't really dig what i did in the end as much, but it's way better than my painting last year. I should have changed things up more, maybe been less literal as my spot didn't have the best view of elements in the background---but I'll do this next year for sure.

Susan MacDowell Eakins

Here is a slightly doctored pic from my cell phone of the first pass of my painting during the two-day Susan MacDowell Eakins painting contest I'm in this weekend at school. We have two models and two rooms with 15 painters in each room who paint the model from a position chosen by lottery.

I'll post more tomorrow including the winner...

Week 13 Done!

Two weeks left till we roll out to the summer hours and I can't wait. As much as I enjoy being in school I am soooooo looking forward to this summer and not being on as much of a grind.

I'm posting my second pass at the large pastel drawing I have going on in Life Drawing and a quicker, one session drawing from life drawing with Sidney Goodman this morning. I was much happier with this quicker study done in pastel on Ingres paper.

It seems this semester I had a lot more male models than any previous semester which was a different challenge in some aspects.i think the male models were less graceful that the females and this makes doing an interesting drawing a bit more of a challenge at times. I'd want more dynamic poses than dudes standing or sitting.

I plan on working more from private models this summer and trying some more interesting poses.