Chasing The Summer Sun

I have begun doing a painting a day.

I did this painting this morning, Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011.

One reason I want to paint daily is because I know that I will not be able to paint as much as I am now when I go back to school in the fall--ironically for a degree in Fine Art!

(However, I am looking forward--after a summer break-- to going back to Lane Community College and learning more from the great painter and Instructor Adam Grosowski.)

I like painting the sunrise because no matter what happens during the rest of the day I know that I have done at least one painting.

I like the painting that I did this morning, which I call Pink Champagne Sunrise.

I don't always like what I do and occasionally scrape the paint off my painting surfaces. At times like this I wonder why I am crazy enough to try and be an artist. 

I like Pink Champagne Sunrise  because of its strong value contrasts, abstracted simplified forms, and it's impasto texture. I got the texture by applying the paint with a palette knife.

I started using the palette knife because I am trying to use bolder simplified forms and trying not to overwork my paintings. When I get down there, close to the painting surface, with a small brush, I tend to move the paint around and around and add too much detail: I get lost in the forest for the trees.

I am looking forward to doing many more paintings before school starts, but I know that I am also going to want to paint the fall with its varied colors: cadmium yellow, cadmium red medium,  alizarin crimson, moss green, ochres, and orange--as well as other colors.

Now, I need to get out there while I can and chase the summer sun!

Images from Ink and Burnt Wood.

Although the term has just started at Lane Community College, my Instructors have me busy creating images.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Here are some of the images I have created this Spring term.

 

 

Although Adam Grosowsky was supposed to be teaching us in our Intermediate Drawing class we have a stand-in Instructor while Adam is out. The stand-in is named Bob Divine.

Hopefully Adam will be back next term.

The Shadow Masters: Chiaroscuro

My Instructor, at Lane Community College, Adam Grosowski experienced a personal crisis and consequently wasn't around, this last term, as much as I would have liked.
It was unfortunate because when he was around I learned more, about painting, from him than I have any one else.

I am obviously not the only one who thinks Adam is "the bomb", for instance,
I registered for one of his classes, next term, and even though I registered early the class was full--he had to sign a waiver to squeeze me in.

One thing Adam kept doing is pointing us towards the Masters so that we could learn from them. He especially liked Wyeth, Hopper, and Degas.

Now that I am on Spring break and I am completely without an Instructor I feel like a sheep without a shepherd.
So, I have decided to do my own studies of the Masters. I looked past Hopper and Wyeth to Rembrandt Van Rijn and Caravaggio--Masters of the technique of chiaroscuro.

I work well with deadlines and assignments, so I set a few for myself. I gave myself the assignment to do a self-portrait in the chiaroscuro style of Rembrandt Van Rijn.
Here are the stages of the drawing as I worked on it:

The drawing was done with vine charcoal, white charcoal, and Conte crayon on 17" x 24" archival drawing paper.

The Dead Painter's Society: Copying The Masters

The Dead Painter's Society is a group of students from Adam Grosowski's painting class at Lane Community College (LCC).

We meet outside of class, at LCC, on Fridays, from 12 noon until we are tired and want to go home.

 I did this painting today: Friday, Febuary 25, 2011.

In class we are supposed to be copying the masters--paying especial attention to values: black(1), grey(5), and white10).

This painting (acrylic on cardboard) is after Theophilus Brown, Untitled (Interior), 1963. Oil on canvas, 46 1/4 x 48 in.

Theophilus Brown was part of the Bay Area Figurative Art School of 1950-1965. Richard Diebenkorn is the most famous of that school of painters.

The photos below are of my painting in progress. I will add color--hopefully-- this weekend, once I get the values in order.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Pelvic Bone or a Grotesque Face?

Although this acrylic painting on cardboard looks like some sort of grotesque face it is actually a painting of an animal's pelvic bone.

I did the painting in my Introduction  to Painting class. The warmer color is from the brown of the cardboard and I used black acrylic paint for the dark and white paint for the highlights.

My Instructor, Adam Grosowski, is an awesome painter and teacher and he is making us do a lot of value studies in graphite (slide sketches) and in acrylic paint. He says that most anything can be rendered in ones, fives, and tens on the value scale. One is black, five is gray, and 10 is white.

The two paintings on the right are an interesting comparison. The one on the left I did in 45 minutes and it is on the brown side of the cardboard. After I finished, Adam said that I needed to take a detail of  the painting and blow it up and do another painting-- only this time I needed to do it in a 15 minute time frame. (I did it on the white side of another piece of cardboard.)

The interesting part, to me, is that one painting took 45 minutes and one took 15 minutes and yet they are comparable and the 15 minute painting doesn't at all look crappy even though I was racing the clock.

This also was the experience of the rest of the class.

 

I am learning a lot and after every class I feel as though I am walking out a better artist. Next term I have Adam Grosowsky as my Instructor in Intermediate Drawing and I can't wait!