Pencils: Hancock Center

Here is a drawing I did of the Hancock Recreation Center.
My Ted Kautzky pencil book has arrived so you'll see
my pencils start to improve, along with my compositions.

Outdoor study updates

Here is another painting; I hope you find
some beauty in my oils:

Update on my Plein Air studies

Hey there, well yesterday I went back
to the greenbelt and decided to paint
a cluster of beautiful earth. It was
not until I started painting outdoors
that I was aware of the relationships
of warm light, cool shadows and warm
reflected light. This can be seen to
great effect on a cliff wall, with
all the rock outcroppings intercepting
the light and having warm reflected light
bounce back onto its planes.


(I made the cast shadow a bit too blue
on one of the planes of the rock, but
I'll consider it a little accent;)

Lifedrawing update: 5/26/09

Well after sorting through the drawings from last night,
and burning the ones that were disappointing I'm left with
these two: -The other drawings were proportionally bad and
too messy. I find it very challenging to keep a balance
between being conscious of each individual brush stroke
and working the whole drawing in a generally loose way.
When I do solve that problem then I'll be confident in drawing.

My paintings for the day

Well, these are what I painted today at
the AVAA. I'm very much trying to think
of value,temperature,color, and edge quality
with each brushstroke. When I unpack my things
and look over my paintings I realize just how
little I've put down on the canvas. I know what
I need to do; I just have to do it.

A painting for today

Man, today was a beautiful day for painting clouds, but
I decided to go ahead and stay on the ground this time:

Updates on Greenbelt studies

Here are two more paintings that I created:

Life drawing update: 5/21/9

Lifedrawing update:5/18/9

Well, I think it is about time that I make
better use of the whole page of paper. In
the past I had just been drawing little figures
here and there but now I'm going to compose the
figure in a more pleasing way.

Rocks

Here is a color study that I created
this afternoon at a beautiful greenbelt:

Outdoor study

After the Sunday afternoon drawing session
I hiked the greenbelt by my home and created
this little study. There are so many things
that frustrate me about the painting, such
as the color temperatures especially the
vivid purple shadow, ugh. I'm content with
the relationship of hard/soft edges between
the treetops and rooftops.

Mother's Urn

Such a beautiful day outside. Well, here is my little
painting for the day(colors are a bit more desaturated in the photo):

Learning oils

I decided to post a couple failed oils that I wiped
down with turp and rag. Interestingly, the wiped
paintings seem to be more unified and in harmony
compared to the original attempts.


Something I was pleased with:

Trees

Today I had packed up my painting supplies and arrived
at the Hancock Golf course only to discover that I seemed to
have forgotten my tripod head. Oh well, I made the best of it
by sitting in the shade and painted with my travel easel placed
atop its carrying case.



While I was exploring around the Hancock center I discovered
an amazing tree that reminded me of a Scott Christensen painting.
I made sure to sketch it in my little sketchbook and will have
to go back and paint it.

life drawings 5/12/9

Here are a couple lifedrawings from the AVAA
session held last night:

Sunday session

blah, too much white:

Landscape study 1

The first of more to come; a landscape study from one
of my inspirations, Scott christensen.

Saturday Morning

Ah, I love Saturday mornings. Here are two oils that I attempted
at the Hancock Center session. I have to say that I had so much
fun with trying out different techniques, such as attacking the
canvas with spatterings of turpentine and wiping away paint with
a paper towel, which is similar to pulling value over the form
when I work with charcoal.

Learning

Well, here is an oil painting I attempted earlier today. I started out
with dry brushing to test colors and values before moving into turp.
On another note, I did not intend for this to look grotesque or
shocking-I'm just bad with suggesting what I want and controlling paint-.

Outdoors and indoors

On Kautzky

My friend, John, had told me about a great artist who
was skilled in creating pleasing compositions, Ted Kautzky.
After having borrowed a book by Kautzky I then stumbled upon
one of Kautzky's art books at the local Book store several months later,
which was a great surprise. After reading it a second time I've
absorbed a bit more of his teachings, so here are a few studies
to show my understanding:

Paintings

Well, last week I had the wonderful experience of painting a beautiful model
in a pleasant studio, which is located in a pretty, rural setting. I do hope to
paint Waverly at Stephen's and Tiffany's home again sometime soon=D
Here is one that I did during the first three hour session:


I had forgotten about this little painting I whipped up awhile ago,
nothing much but I know that I have to do a large amount of these
quick paintings(less than an hour) and a lot of them to get the big
information down:

and this:

On composition and lifedrawing

Okay, so in the pursuit of making better and better pictures
I've started to become aware of compositional choices and
forcing myself to actually compose pictures with elements
that I want and others that I do not wish to include.
Here are two drawings that I created today at the local
lifedrawing session, along with a parsing of each:



I started out this drawing by dividing it into three areas of values;
light,midtone,and dark. Here is a simplified visual of what I was thinking:



I then composed the drawing by thinking about design and how to pleasantly
lead the viewer's eye through my drawing. The urns in the back repeat in a
diagonal up to the figure's head,a key area of interest, which is
also circular just as the contours of the urns. Each urn has a simple design
which is repeated on the pillow near the model, tying the background to the
foreground. While I'm on the subject of shapes, I've chosen to repeat a simple
triangle shape, the spear, in a way that leads the eye in a triangular pattern
through the picture:




On this one I used the arrangements of a chosen shape,flowers, to lead the viewers
eye throughout the picture. While analyzing my drawing I realized that the shadow
cast by the vase I included also mimics the shadow cast by the figure's head.


I'll wrap up this post with some sketches I made today: