New Easel!

I've used the old Jullian  French Easel for as long as I've been painting, but I am trying a new (to me) smaller more compact style. This is the Mabef M27. Gonna take it out soon! Right now I'm test driving it in the studio. Photos of it in use and folded up. Super simple and handy rests to put your palette or whatever. Much smaller and lighter than the Jullian too and frees an arm up when walking around.

Time to seriously get back to the Blog

I just discovered that I can have my blog show up on my website, paintwithalex.com, and I suddenly feel a rejuvenated spirit to get back to posting here, on my blog! That explains this post, and I'm also going to start "flashback reblogs" reposting an oldie but goodie, which explains the previous post :) Finally, here is a drawing of my old friend in his garden for something to look at. Just posting some random visual content to enjoy, which I will do much more often...

Flashback Re-Blog: Santa Anita, orig.posted 01/27/07

Here's a couple pics of the Santa Anita composition I'm working on. The races have started so the place is exciting again! I went with my sketchbook and did a drawing of the center ring where all the action happens. I also took a bunch of random photos which I cut and pasted and composed in photoshop over the drawing so I could get a nice feeling of the crowds and movement. The first photo is the sketchbook drawing of the overall environs and then with the people composed in. The next photo is the first stage of the painting, a freehanded underdrawing to arrive at the overall placement. The last photo is how the painting looks now. I went over the preliminary drawing in acrylic with a limited palette of white, burnt umber, deep violet, and ultramarine blue. I like how it looks so far, nice and sunny! The blue and the burnt umber neutralize to a greenish black and then the deep violet is just enough red to counteract as well as enhance the slight green. I think if you used a raw umber as well as the burnt, you could suggest even more color, especially in the greens and yellows. I plan to take this to the racetrack soon and go over in oil en plein air for even greater realism and truth in color.

Alex Schaefer Prints Now Available At Saatchi Art

It's been a long time coming, but Alex Schaefer is now offering prints at a variety of prices through the Saatchi Art website. New paintings added each week! Click www.saatchiart.com/paintwithalex to see what's available and what's new!

www.saatchiArt.com/paintwithalex

PAINT! with Alex episode 4: Local Color

This episode is titled "Local Color and the Evolution of Form"

A lot of painters have heard the term "local color" but don't really know what it is! Watch this episode and learn. Your understanding of this concept is crucial to comprehending later on how the illusion of light is created with paint. Local color is fixed and constant, if you were to mix a pile of paint that was the "local color" of something, you would have mixed the color of the thing itself

PAINT! with Alex Episode 3: Monochrome Master Copy

Episode 3: Monochrome Master Copy
     This show starts off with a PRO TIP how to reduce-recycle-reuse your solvent; save money and be good to the environment!
    We also bring up the reasoning behind and how to "square-up" an image and canvas in order to use that technique to transfer the placement of the composition.
     Then like episode 2 we are working again in MONOCHROME and we start with our darkest dark BLACK (mix 70-30 burnt umber - ultramarine blue) and WHITE and between them we mix MIDDLE GRAY! expanding on our value scale we also mix another HALFTONE between White and Middle Grey and another one between Middle Grey and Black.
     With squaring up and five "notes" of grey on our palette we are ready to tackle blocking in our copy of renowned painting Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze

PAINT! with Alex: Magic Middle - the First Halftone

Episode 2: Magic Middle: the First Halftone

This episode we start with Black (mix 50-50 burnt umber - ultramarine blue) and White and between them we mix MIDDLE GRAY! It's visually HALF WAY between white and black and so it is the first HALFTONE. It might not seem exciting because it doesn't say anything smart sounding or fancy, but we will learn more and more that this simple "value" on the scale of the "notes of the painter" gradating from white to black, is a fundamental, primal force for creating visual impact; easily as important as the concept of OVERLAP from episode 1.

Once we find that middle gray value I ask viewers watching to start an "eye keyboard" of their own and painting an 8" stripe of that middle gray mixture down the middle of a 14 by 18 inch canvas panel, then to the right and left of that paint straight white and straight black.

Then we take those piles of paint on our palette, white, middle gray and black, and whip out a cute Cat in the Window picture with a simple solid design easy enough for anyone to have fun with!

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