Self Portrait

   Here's the progression shots for this recent self portrait. I've done many over the years, and its become a great way for me to mark my time, to try and struggle to capture a likeness, to create a volumetric form with paint and soul...The first session was spent blocking in the tones and shapes with a palette knife. The second and third session were spent refining the light and modeling of form. I wanted to mantain the freshness and immediacy of the experience so I tried to paint fast and edit well.

stage 1: 14" x 12"

stage 2

Finished stage

   There's something very comforting, but very frightening, about the self-portrait. Comforting, in the sense that its an image and a form that you know the most...you feel the pose as you're painting it. Frightening, because you can slip into that area where you see yourself outside of yourself; yourself as a thing in the world. Each session was probably about 2 hours...maybe 6 hours total. My next portrait is of my wife, Faith, which I'm excited to start. My daughter's painting is about half done, so I'll probably write a post about them soon...

Portraits for the New Year

     Since the start of the New Year I've been working on a few portraits of my family. While I was trained as a figurative artist, it's been awhile since I've taken on paintings like these. At Syracuse University, I drew from the model 3-4 times a week, painted dozens of portraits, and worked on large figurative compositions. This continued after graduation, where I slowly starting incorporating the figure into different kinds of spaces, focusing on how this could contain a narrative, with symbolic meaning. Eventually, concerns about space and atmosphere took over and the figure disappeared; I shifted my interests to the landscape. Periodically I will draw portraits in my sketchbooks, but these new paintings are more sustained and concentrated efforts. The whole project started in preparation for a large family portrait that I wanted to give my wife for her 40th birthday this year. I figured I would start with individual portraits before jumping into a large scale figure composition. I think of these paintings not only as studies for that project, and as portraits that stand on their own.

oil on linen, 9" x 12"

     This first one is a painting of my youngest son, Griffin. He was about a year old at this point, and the painting is based on a photograph I took of him. With all of these portraits (at least the kids), I had to use a photograph as a starting point for practical reasons. But, I also wanted to utilize one of the powers that photography possesses: freezing a moment in time. With these, I captured that instant when somebody turns to look at you, before the self-conscious realization that they are going to be photographed.  Although a photograph was used as the starting point, gradually through working with the paint, it merged with the struggle to manipulate a surface, form, and color.

oil on linen, 12" x 18"

      The next one in the series is my oldest son, Jasper. The photo I took of him somehow captured a moment of transition; from a boy to a young man (he's 9 now). There's a look of confidence and cockiness here, and I can get glimpses of the man he will eventually grow into. I had this photograph on my computer and initially was going to crop it into the actual image that you see on the screen. I started painting it for a few sessions, with the computer propped up on my desk, working from what was on the screen. (If I do need to work from a photograph, I actually prefer using this method. Rather than a photographic print, where the color and light can flatten out, the back lit computer image is much brighter and crisper.) As I was painting, I began to wonder why I felt the need to cover my tracks, so to speak, with the computer reference...why not put the actual source material that's in front of me, into the painting? Not only was I creating this 'frame within a frame' composition, but by incorporating the computer in the painting, it began to reference our (my) collective use of computer mediated imagery in general, and more specifically, Jasper's immersion in the world of video games, IPhones and screen time.

oil on linen, 18" x 22"

     The next one is a painting of my wife sitting in my studio. I still consider it in progress, but I think I'm close to resolving everything. I've tried to do a few paintings with this long hallway in it before, but somehow none of them clicked, until now. Perhaps, all I needed was a person to anchor the space. I like how her head is framed by various sized rectangles: the large covered door on the right, the painting of our former house in Brooklyn above her head, and the deep receding space at the end of the hall to the left. That long, deep space down the hall, lit with a warm yellow glow from within, becomes the metaphor for her deep in contemplative thought. She becomes the still point in the composition, the anchor that holds all the patterns, lines and edges together. Also, the slight tilt of my head as I'm painting, not only echoes her posture, but funnels everything towards her face and down that hallway.

     I've yet to start the last painting of my daughter, but I've done a few pencil drawings of her in my sketchbook. Here's a few:

 

Student work at the College of Charleston

Here are some images of student work from my Drawing I class at the College of Charleston:

 (sorry the names are omitted, I look through so many portfolios at the end of the semester, I don't write down who did what!)

full value charcoal drawing of a chair

Line drawing of flowers, pencil

isometric drawing, boxes

skeleton drawing, pencil

copy of John Singer Sargent, charcoal

1 point perspective drawing of bedroom, pencil

charcoal, drawing of your hand

thick and thin contour line drawing of a single flower, pencil

figure study, ink wash

self-portrait, charcoal

figure study, charcoal powder and charcoal

self-portrait, pencil

still-life, modelling form, charcoal

figure study, conte crayon

self-portrait in curved mirror, charcoal

still-life, modelling form, charcoal

drawing architecture in the landscape, pencil

still-life, full value rendering, charcoal

St. Philip Street progression

   I've pretty much reached the end of this painting. It's a fairly large painting (30" x 34.5") and I've been working on it regularly for about 2 months. An earlier post showed the prep work that went into it, but I've also documented the progression of the painting from start to finish. I've been doing this for a lot of paintings recently. Initially I thought it would just be fun to see, but for me it also provides a map of where I've been with the painting, and hopefully, where it is going. Each photo documents a painting session (give or take a few) which is usually about 3 hours. I did most of the work in the studio, but returned to the site to paint from the motif about 3 or 4 times. It's hard to do a painting this large on site... it takes a long time to set up, you're bound by weather conditions and the wind is always a disruption on rooftop paintings. At a certain point the light changes too much over the course of 2 months, so there's a lot on invention and relying on photos in the studio anyway. I think it's about as resolved as I can make it at this point, and I want to submit it for an exhibition soon. Here's the different stages with the final image when I stopped:

1st layer; washes of color over gesso. Used an actual size mock-up drawing to guide me

Thickening the layers of paint as I go; still fairly thin

Return to site, capturing the light and correcting the drawing

Adjusting the color in the studio. It's amazing the difference in color between outside and inside

Creating a surface density for the sky

Return to the site; working on the atmosphere from foreground to background

In the studio; blocking the cloud formations in from photographs

Back on site; clarifying things once more

Building the surface in the studio

Developing the clouds more; balancing 'looser' passages and 'tighter' passages

Final stage: noodling, straightening, balancing...the maddening part

   So at this point it's being put away. Sometimes when I put a painting away for awhile and bring it back out, what needs to be fixed will jump right out at me. There is a story I read about Claude Monet, who was known to want to go back into paintings after they were sold, sometimes many years later. Collectors didn't want him to view the work they had of his, because he would almost inevitably want the piece back so he could work on it more. I totally understand...a painting is never really 'finished', it is usually just stopped.

New Interior

   Here's an interior painting I'm working on right now. The idea came a few weeks ago while my daughter and I were watching a movie together, and as I came back into the room from the kitchen, the entire painting appeared to me in a flash. The motivation behind all my work is a desire to capture some sort of emotional response to the world; sometimes I have to dig for it and find it, but in this case, it hit me all at once. That's usually when I'm glad that my IPhone is in my pocket, so I can pull it out and take a quick shot to capture the moment. The next day I did a pencil sketch in the room and figured out the size of the canvas I wanted to use:

pencil on paper; 9" x 11"

   After toning the linen, I then proceeded to block the shapes in with a palette knife and large brush, striving for the overall light and mood of the painting:

oil on linen; 15" x 20"

   After a few sessions set up in front of the motif, the original vision for the painting began to emerge:

   I used the initial photo of my daughter as a reference for her portrait in the painting. I'm slowly starting to introduce the figure into my interiors, while still holding on to a sense of mystery and quietness in the work. Here's where it stands so far:

finished; 15" x 20"

Steeples, Triangles and Diagonals

 

   
     Here are some sketches for a new painting I'm planning. These were all done on site, and include a variation on slightly different angles of some buildings downtown. Once again, this is a rooftop parking garage scene; usually where I park when I go to teach drawing at the College of Charleston. This angle caught my eye: the deep canyon of space rolling back and ending at the back of St. Matthew's church (for some reason depicting the back of a church, rather than the facade seemed like an interesting idea). The vanishing point falls to the left of center, along a deep space where the eye follows the sharp diagonals like a bowling ball towards the center pin. There is a repetition of triangular shapes and a diagonally receding series of church steeples. I'm looking forward to the raking light of Fall and recreating this scene in the studio. I've yet to determine the final size, but around 3' x 4' is what I'm imagining...

Front Yard (progression)

   Recently, I have started documenting some of the larger, more sustained paintings in the studio through photographs. Each photo usually represents a single painting session (sometimes I miss one...) When I photograph the painting, it allows me to see it in another way; in this case, condensed through the photographic 'eye' verses my own eyes. By shrinking it down (and sometimes flipping it around on the computer) I'm able to see the image in a fresh way. Of course, I do this in the studio too, sometimes looking at the painting in a mirror from across the room, or painting some passages with the actual painting upside down on the wall or easel. I guess I find it interesting to see how a painting 'gets built', and I hope you do too. Here's the latest one, "Front Yard":

 

Final state: 22.5" x 27"