Faces, Acrylics, and Bad Photos of OK Drawings

This week I worked a lot on this painting. We're not fighting as much any more, but I'm not really sure I know where it's going either. It's looking a little zombie-like, which isn't really what I want, but I like the way the paint is starting to build up and the faces are starting to look convincing.

I worked for a while with acrylics on paper, which is really fun sometimes because you can get so much done so quickly, since the drying time is really fast. Acrylics can be less scary too, because I won't have to wait a couple of days to be able to cover up a mistake.

And I went back to figure drawing this Saturday.

This week we went as a class to the art history library to practice our browsing skills. I went away with more books than I could carry. Artists I am now looking at are:

Rembrandt (by most standards, probably the best painter who ever lived)

Toulouse Lautrec (Who I've always been pretty sure was awesome, but now I'm positive)

Andrew Wyeth

Glenn Brown

Nigel Cooke

And I had to leave Lucian Freud behind, mostly because he was too heavy. Freud's paintings can be amazing, but to me a lot of them can be painfully redundant . . . Like he needs to be a better editor. This is especially apparent when flipping through a book of face after face after face . . . But maybe that's just me. He has moments of brilliance though, certainly. Here's my favorite painting by him:

The light is like, Whoa! And the faces are so sensitive . . . While other times they just come off as goofy to me.

Time keeping:

Painting 10 1/2

Figure Drawing 3

Acrylics 3

Copying Rembrandt 1

Working on grant proposal 1 1/2

Progress

Hey guys,

Not a whole lot to report, just been plugging away. Took a break from the painting that was giving me problems but I didn't mange to take a break from painting like I said I would and ended up working on this guy:

And I think it's going pretty well. I think the tricky thing will be to make sure I'm portraying movement and not just creating a three-headed monster. But hey, even if that happens, I suppose I'd be okay with that.

I finally got back to the Saturday figure drawing session. I tried working bigger with charcoal. Here are two that look kind of okay.

And here's a drawing I did in my sketchbook. All of last semester I hardly did a drawing outside of my sketchbook, but since IP for some reason I switched to working mostly on loose paper. There's something really nice about working in a book though. It's very personal. Maybe because you can't hang it on a wall, so your audience is limited to whoever is holding the book. It's intimate.

I like books a lot. So much that I have to destroy them. If you want to see what that looks like you can go here.

Timekeeping:

Painting: 7 hours

Figure Drawing: 3 hours

Drawing in studio: 2.5 hours

Hands

Ruining a good painting is like hurting someone you love.

You're all like, wow. I really didn't want to do that. I mean, hurting you is the last thing I'd ever want to do.

I'd take it back if I could. But I can't.

And now you look like shit.

And not all the paint thinner in the world could scrub away that awful mess I put on your face.

I think I lost the metaphor. 

--

In other news, I did more hand drawings. I like these.

And the abstract is going well

We had a critique this week and I thought it went well. We have a very thoughtful group of people and it's always good to hear what they're thinking, and also to see their work. They shared their experiences of looking at my painting, which is my favorite thing for people to do during critiques because for me that's what painting is all about. Some people thought the image was violent and others thought it was innocent, and I thought that was great because I'm pretty sure it's both.

Well, I haven't been painting very well lately so I think I'm going to take a break for a few days and just draw because that's going a little better.

FALL BREAK!

Time keeping:

Writing project proposal: 2 hours

Drawing: 8 hours

Painting: 6 hours

Art Prize Interlude

Have you been to Art Prize? If you Haven't, well it's too late. But it'll be back next year.

Anyway, everything about Art Prize is great. Everywhere you turn, there's a huge installation, all storefront windows are plastered with art, and the stuff in the museums is at least twice as interesting as it usually is. Plus the hippies come out in full swing and bang on their guitars. What's not to like?

The only bummer is this took home 1st place.

Ugh.

But no worries, there was lots of good art to be seen. Here are a few that I took photos of:

-Damian Goidich (http://damianart.blogspot.com/)

Some Greenness

Erm, okay, so I'm already late on my Thursday claim. But in my defense, I'm lazy and easily distracted.

Here's what I've been working on:

This painting was super fun. Painting without subject matter is a really good thing to do sometimes; It really loosens me up, and it makes the other paintings come easier. Also, it teaches me so much about how paintings evolve, how to make them interesting . . . Yadayada composition yadada. Plus, if you work in acrylic, you can do a painting in like, super-speed. I'm gonna work on this one a lot more. Right now I'm pretty sure the colors are really gross.

I also think the colors in this one are sort of gross, but I think it's a good example of how I want to paint movement. This is the same figure, but his head is overlapped over its self in two different positions. It's kind of a cubist technique, but it doesn't look very cubist.

And you've seen these before, but they are developing. I'm going to try to work back and forth with the compliments, from red to green and back to red again, and see if that works. Also, if I haven't told you, I'm colorblind. So, if I do something super weird/ stupid with color, I'm gonna go ahead and blame it on that. But feel free to let me know.

Oh, and I made this drawing. It has almost every material in my studio in it, but most of what you see in the end is acrylic paint.

Time keeping:

Painting: 13.5 hours

Drawing: 2 hours

Photographing and photoshopping: 2 hours

Hanging stuff up in my studio: 1 hour (you probably don't care about this)