Portrait of my Uncle Ronnie

This piece is around 24"x36"- it's close to life-size. It was completed last summer, but I haven't gotten the chance to take a picture of it until now. It's currently hanging in the terminal at the Winter Haven Airport about 20 minutes from my house.

I did this for a local aviation-themed competition, but it turned out to be a great exercise for my portrait skills- capturing a likeness, incorporating a photo into an environment, etc. This was only photo-reference.

Any critique would be awesome, thanks guys!

Captain Ron, 2012, 24"x36", oil on canvas.

Ink and a sponge

One or the Other, 12"x12", ink

It's No.15 of 30 in this series of portraits I've been posting recently- the medium is ink on illustration board. I drew an incredibly simple geometric head with strong shadows on tracing paper, then cut a stencil from it. I applied ink with a sponge over the stencil- I expected a clean application but the tracing paper rolled up from the water and the edges became incredibly organic, which I love. I'll keep this one in the toolbox. Last was a coat of matte medium to seal it, but it pulled a bit of the ink of and brushed it over the surface.

More to come!

Graphite

With a bit of ink, gesso, and matte medium.

This one is No.12/30.

ketchup

30 portraits project is complete and I'll be posting more over the course of this week and next- here's one, for now...

tracing paper

drawing on tracing paper is putting me in a good place right now. There's so much variety in line i can get, and just knowing that whatever i draw can be easily torn off, taped down, traced, scanned, whatever...

I may or may not be doing final lifework on it in the future, though I'd like some heavier stuff than what I've got right now. Vellum is looking really attractive, especially after rifling through so many images by Sergio Martinez. Check out this Line and Colors post on him- it contains links to his 4 (Four) separate blogs: http://www.linesandcolors.com/2010/01/18/sergio-martinez/ He has an amazing technique of doing an incredible drawing on transparent vellum, and then using oil or wax crayons diluted with turpenoid on the backside for his color. The way the color ghosts through the paper creates moods and atmosphere like nothing else (in his hands, anyway). Definitely check out his stuff. 

I'm currently working on an illustration for an incredible short story titled "To Build a Fire" by Jack London. Read it if you've got the time: http://www.jacklondons.net/buildafire.html

Just a couple pieces of life drawing for today.

drawlings

More drawings from the past week or so

Portraits

First couple portraits done for George Pratt's 30 heads in 30 days assignment. They must all be different media. The first is acrylic and gouache, and the second is watercolor, acrylic, and oil pastel.

more figure paintings

recent figure scrawls

starting out with gouache- it's pretty fun so far, and I like it more than acrylic, for some things. But I need real mileage with it to really see, so, plenty more to come.

small half hour acrylic self portraits

painting strictly from north light in figure class, afternoon light on the first and an extremely muted thunderstorm light on the second- really a challenge.

Some art, and I can't follow more than 300 people?

What gives? I have like a thousand more people I need to follow, blogspot. give them to me. gimme.

Also, the sophomore class at my school is beastly. I'm fucking scared guys. hold me

This is an in-progress detail shot of a large life-size portrait of my Uncle Ronny, who is a pilot. I don't have a decent picture of the finished work as it's currently hanging near the small airport in my town.

self portrait in progress

Still working on this one- not sure when I'll be finished. I'm too precious with my work- I feel that I need to push this piece out of my comfort zone and really learn something about painting while doing it.

PHOTOOSHOOOOOOPP

Summer break is here and so is my chance to finally try digital painting again. and I'm not liking the way it feels- every 5 seconds i'm like, this would just be so much easier with paint UGH

but anyways
more later

pen and ink exercises

Not all ink I guess. Check out the Library of Congress photostream on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

I've rarely found such a great source for reference images. Check them out! Government is good for something after all.

Edith

I'm calling this one done- I dare not paint without the model...

Edith, 11"x14", oil/c

More oil painting practice

Here's a couple paintings I've done in class recently- the square-format torso is finished (pose is over, anyway). The portrait of a wonderful model named Edith is in progress; one more three hour session on Monday.

Reading books by David Leffel has made me think more about the effect of the light, and how important it is. Or more accurately, how powerful it can be when given the proper attention. Also, the importance of the background in a portrait as an integral part of the image. 

Two paintings

 

These area couple painting done in class- the portrait in figure, 2 hours, the second done in painting class in downtown Sarasota from the 3rd floor of a parking garage, also 2 hours. I'm not happy at all with the landscape- I had grand visions of painting a scene akin to Lopez Garcia's Madrid cityscapes....haha. Maybe in a couple lifetimes.

I was also being inspired by the work of Ben Aronson. His landscapes have an awesome sense of space, and his compositions are always unique and inventive. A few of his scenes from rooftops are obviously influenced by Diebenkorn- at once they are landscapes with awesome atmospheric perspective, and at the same time they are obviously flat designs. Great textures as well, check him out!

The Memory Project

"Dariosh", 8"x10", acrylic

 This is a portrait of a young boy named Dariosh- it was done for http://www.memoryproject.org/ - Many thanks to Livy Long, http://livylongart.blogspot.com/, for giving me the heads up on this great opportunity to practice portraiture for a good cause!

At some point in the future we get pictures back of the children holding their very own one-of-a-kind portraits- it's really great. Had a lot of fun doing this one- I'm going to post up some meager process shots for anyone interested in how it came to be.

Sketchbook, p.3

Well that's that for now.