School in the Woods

I'm going to add another painting today as it is related to the previous in the "Florida Tech" series. This painting is of the reproduction of the first school house built in Melbourne, Florida. This little red school house sits among the palms and live oaks of the 'wetlands' gardens at Florida Tech. Beautiful area visited - well - by the likes of me for one. It is a favorite of mine, a relatively quiet place of native Florida plants and trails that meander throughout. It is low lying ground and hense refered to as 'wetlands'. A good number of birds and other animals call this area home.
8" x 10" oil on canvas

Standing Tall

"Standing Tall" I have done a number of paintings, yes, another series of paintings - this go-around of the campus of Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. As I understand it, this wonderful clock tower is a gift of the Chinese to Florida Tech. It stands proudly next to "Panther Plaza" on the main campus here in Florida.
8" x 10" oil on canvas.

Palm Burst

Living in Florida there are a lot of palm trees, Sago, Queen, lots of palms. It's easy to over look them or beyond them. When I started this one it was just another study just so I could keep painting every day - but part way through it just struck me as pretty and graceful as fireworks in the sky - hence - Palm burst. The support color I made red and some shows through, I like it.

8 x 10" oil/canvas

More *Live* Drawings

I love these live drawings and I promise not to inflict too many of them on your sensibilities in the future. I simply don't know what will come of any one of them - one may start with great promise only to fail in my opinion, while another may succeed beyond expectation. No re-draws or extended time to capture - just get it down now.
These drawings are from a number of locations, a jazz band, a batter, catcher and umpire in women's softball, a woman at a Winter Park, Florida outside restaurant.

Fools Rush In...

Oil/panel 8" x 12"
This may seem a departure from my usual painting. However, this is only different for my blog content, I have an entire collection on my web site for 'primitive metaphors' as I call them. I try to paint everyday to support my knowledge and increase my skills in visual art - I also attempt to create personal art that for me takes more effort - or certainly 'different' efforts in order to accomplish. This painting is, however related to "Beauty and the Beast", displayed earlier in the blog. Content art is just hard work, but when finished tends to give me a heightened sense of achievement. It can also be an excellent area for experimentation where I can 'let it fly' without a thought for any acceptance but my own. Works for me.

*Live* Drawing

I really love the challenge of *Live drawing* versus *Life drawing*, which I am involved as well. I draw a distinction between the two because I strongly feel they are two distinct modes of expression. Life drawing includes - involves the model, which without, any work I do depends. My drawings are only as good or bad as the comfort level, competence of the model which I truely depend. Here with *Life drawing* I am simply observing and trying to record sketches of people in the everyday mode. Just being themselves. My wife claims that I observe so intensely and so focused that I am bound to be confronted - can't say that I have ever been... So, I hang with her or anyone whom knows me just for such an occasion. 

Introspection

Continuing the figurative series is one based on one of my life studies drawings. These are really tough for me as my drawings are predominately line drawings, but memory has served me well so far. Caucasian people have  a narrow range of color, meaning for me a lack of color and a narrow range of tone which is the difficulty for me - and more difficult to capture accurately on film for the web...

I have enjoyed these larger pieces, however they take longer to accomplish -so please be patient with me at times.

Oil on canvas 24 x 36"

A Maudlin Moment, plus roses

"A Maudlin Moment, plus roses"

16 x 16" oil/canvas

I have been busy in the studio this last two weeks. Maybe the determination to add a few more paintings to the previous year - or, better, maybe a precursor to an active year in 2009. Regardless, it feels good to be in the studio so much. I have started another series of paintings, this time figures and portraits. I do feel there is a big difference between to two, however I, for convenience have 'lumped' the two together.

I have posted the preliminary drawing along with the finished painting. I had intended to take more pictures of the progress, however that didn't happen. So, at least you can get an idea of how I start off a new piece. I used an over-all tone or wash  of cadmium red medium and then started drawing with asphaltum with  Liguin . I like the asphaltum as it is a warm color, I think gaining in popularity - certainly for me with figurative work. It is a very warm brown. The Liguin, is a dryer so that I can get on with the painting very quickly after finishing the drawing. I do a fairly detailed line drawing and fill in the principle shadow areas before I start with color. I decided early on that I wanted to have a purple based background, so I went ahead and blocked that in. From there it was a large mix of flesh color and off I went. For various parts of the body I use in combinations, some more, some less in order to adjust the tones and values with color: Titanium White, cad yellow lt, yellow ochre, cad red med., transparent brown, viridian. In order to create some of the indistinct edges I worked the flesh tones with the purple surrounding. I ended up dividing the 'large' flesh color into three main tones, light, medium, and dark, then further adjusted the values as needed.

The single rose pedal beside the figure was an afterthought. This is based on a life drawing session where in the painting I added the roses for interest. The single pedal gives the painting a certain emotional touch - don't you think?

'Beauty and the Beast' 14x18" oil/canvas

I still have some minor changes that I want to make - however, I am basically pleased with this piece, and I am ready to move on to the next. The name: 'Beauty and the Beast' and the figure pose I wanted to invoke (lead) the topic to - well for me a 'King Kong' type pose along with the theme of that story. Not exactly new, but it works for me. What maybe you expected symbols such as horses or apples or ...? Maybe I could name or sub-title this 'extraordinary lengths to acquire perceived beauty'. I think I will leave it as is. 

'Beauty and the Beast' preliminary drawing

Here is a preliminary drawing that I have had in the back of my mind for awhile now. It is what I might refer to as a content piece as it is not quite representational as many of my daily painting projects are. I don't mean to say that I am completing a painting a day - no - those people are amazing in their dedication, diligence and abilities. I mean that I paint every day and then other times less. I like the idea of adding language and other symbols to my paintings, sort of updating the symbols to a current collection. Certainly there are many symbolic additions to paintings throughout history - so I'm doing nothing particularly radical here. Just my attempt at exploring the place of these visuals in my current paintings as I observe; reflect, explore.
It's a lousy drawing - but the idea was what I was after.

brush maintenance

Well I didn't wait for the new years in order to clean up my studio. What a mess - even for me. No pictures please, too gross. But I did it. In addition in my housekeeping I organized my oil paints - man, but I have a lot of paint. Especially as I was 'resupplied' over Christmas. I put them in piles organized initially as reds, blues, yellows, browns, grays/whites/black, greens. I put them in separate drawers in order to keep integrity and as I need one for painting I go to the drawer and pick out the one that I feel I need to use up first. Great plan - see how it works out in practice.

Next is a tip I picked up for brush maintenance - this for my flats, filberts, brights in order to keep a shape and edge on them. 

I wash them and shape them in an expected manner, then I use a piece of clean (no printing on the side touching the brush hairs) cardboard. I would use most any kind paper as long as it is clean. I fold the paper over into a wedge, place the brush hairs in the fold and secure the two, and apply pressure with a paper clip. Nice. Shapes the hairs nicely, with a good to excellent quality brush I now have a well tapered and shaped brush ready for my next painting.

'frog left' 10 x 8" oil/canvas

Continuing with my 'Florida landscapes' series of paintings is this wetlands painting of a frog in his natural setting. 

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