back at the LA River

After class today I took the painting I started back to the LA River for some more on location work. I still don't think it's done, but I do think it's better. At least I'm not going to scrape it down this time... oil on canvas, 18 by 36

randon things

A few different things fun to post about. First, I'm going to be painting some portraits today at the Gallery at the End of the World in Altadena. From 2pm to 6pm or so. The address is 2485 N. Lake Ave 91001. Here's how those came out, I painted Grace and Noah... Kids are always a moving target when you paint them live, but it's part of the challenge. oil on canvas, 14 by 10 and 12 by 9.


A couple days ago I was flipping through Southwest Art Magazine, and noticed they used my entry to the California Art Club Gold Medal Show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art to promote the show... a half page reproduction right there in the table of contents. What's that they say, all publicity is good publicity? I was surprised and excited to see that!

Yesterday I had some fun going to the Firing Line in Burbank and doing some target shooting. I haven't done it in a while, but I got back to it pretty quickly. Maybe it's all the drawing I do that makes my eyes sharp, it just seems target shooting is pretty easy... here are 30 rounds from 15 feet, 25 feet, and 50 feet away with a glock 19.

digital landscape

Here's a fantasy composition from photos taken at Travel Town in Griffith Park, Los Angeles. They have all sorts of old trains and engines to climb all over and that's where all the imagery comes from. All my photo reference is cut and pasted, rotated, flipped, distorted and whatnot in order to force them into the image I want to convey, then I compose the lighting for mood and structure. I imagine a person would be about the size to climb the huge staircase/gear in the upper right. I wanted to contrast two spatial illusions in the same picture, one of sharply plunging space on the top versus deeply falling space on the bottom. It was fun to experiment! The multiply layer effect in photoshop is >exactly< like how we would "light" the levels in the video game Spyro the Dragon. It's like memory lane! ^_^

composition and painting

Here are a couple in-class demo paintings I did on Monday and Tuesday at the Art Center College of Design. I like this set up because the lighting is quite different, rather than use the lighting spotlight all the time, I like to have the students paint the figures by the ambient fluorescent light of the room which has a very soft, cool effect in contrast to the hard, warm spotlight. My goal with these was to get the color notes right to get the 'real' feeling rather than relying on detail and rendering. oil on paper, 14 by 13 and 20 by 16

the LA river

After teaching today, I went out to the LA river at Fletcher Street and started a painting. It's a great motif and beautiful color with the water and reflections. I like the painting so far, but I ended up scraping it back with the intent of taking it back later in the week for more work, it needs some drawing. oil on canvas, 18 by 36

travel town

I met the students of my digital landscape class at Travel Town in Griffith Park for a photo, sketch, paint safari. There's lots of fun trains and engines and rusted parts to find. I painted a landscape along with the students, we were working all over the place. This is a small, quick sketch painted over an old portrait demo, I felt this view really said "travel town"! ^_^ oil on canvas panel, 12 by 16

el matador beach

After Lets Paint TV, I went to the El Matador Beach in Malibu with John Kilduff and painted the view. It was a beautiful day and perfect temperature. A great time and I like how the painting came out! oil on canvas panel, 12 by 16

btw here's how the Let's Paint TV webcam portrait came out...

portraits portraits portraits

It's been a big week for live portrait painting! I painted two at the Hive for art walk on Thursday and a new personal record of ¡SIX! last night at a new place called Altadena Junction that a friend of mine is getting off the ground.

digital landscape

Here's another composition I worked out for the Digital Landscape painting class I'm co-teaching at the Art Center College of Design. This is from a bunch of photos I took at an outing at Pasadena Central Park (previous post). If you live in the area you might recognize the Castle Green, all the other 'buildings' are pictures I took of the miniature towns they have set up inside Stats across the street... a few of the landscape elements are from pictures I took at Descanso Gardens and then the lightning bolt is from the internet. The idea is to create a more fantastic image than actually exists, direct the lighting and set a mood... this time I went for spooky! Also, since my last digital landscape was horizontal in format (previous post), I wanted to make this one a vertical to change things up.

chinatown

Today was a California Art Club paint-out in Chinatown. What a perfect day for it! A big crowd of painters showed up! John "Mr. Lets Paint TV" Kilduff was there throwing down the plein air (here's his piece) and I saw lots of other familiar faces which was nice! There was a reception afterwards and one of the Chinatown landlords really liked my piece, enough to buy it right there! that was awesome!! I'm glad Kilduff brought his camera so I could get a picture since I forgot mine. He loved the painting and it turns out I painted all three of the buildings he owns so he really wanted to have it. I got to see his office which was full of amazing art, he had paintings of Chinatown all the way from the 1920's! I'm honored to be in his collection. oil on canvas, 28 by 22

echo park

I was at echo park again today at 8am to give a painting demo to the students. I think they enjoyed watching the process and hearing me ramble about what I'm doing. It's a similar composition to the one a few days ago, but this time it's a little wider of a scene... oil on canvas, 18 by 36

a world of flavor

That's how they were selling us in 1984. Merit. I probably didn't spend as much time looking at the ad when I first encountered this issue of Playboy, but besides the nudes this is the most beautiful picture in the magazine. I first picked this to paint because it was a visually striking image to me, a big, heroic nautical theme! As I've worked on it and evolved it toward feeling done, I've found so much irony that can be read into it, topically, historically, personally, that I like it even more. Maybe I'll post a picture of the stages of the painting. (and the poor lost Blue Boy underneath it all!) oil on canvas, 40 by 60 (previous post)

merit

On Sunday I was back on this painting I have going from a 1984 ad for Merit cigarettes I found in an old Playboy magazine. The painting has always been a mess and it still is, but it's a little bit more accurate of a mess now! If I were more of a conceptual artist, I'd say there's some irony in this image given the current state of the economy... in 1984, America was the big super tanker and China was the little junk, now I think it's more the other way around! oil on canvas, 40 by 60 (previous post)