Heather III

"Heather III Study" 12 x 16 in. Acrylic on Canvas. 2012

I guess this is turning into a series of "Heather." I started the painting with a 50% grey background,    painted in the black background, then slowly brought out the light side.

Kazaya

Kazaya. 9 x 18 in. Acrylic on Arches Watercolor Paper. 2011

Analogous Color Studies

I do these studies for warm-ups before working on a painting. They don't necessarily relate to what I'm painting, rather they're experiments and reminders that you can get a wide variety of color variations with a limited palette. In this case Analogous color harmonies.

Heather II

"Heather II" 15 x 19 in. Acrylic on Arches 140lb Watercolor Paper. 2012

Progress Pictures

This is my first complete painting for 2012. I had a study for this back in December and finally decided to paint the real thing. I toned the whole canvas with burnt umber and red oxide, then layer down my darkest darks. From there, I "lifted" the painting out into the light side. The most exciting part of the painting for me was painting in the contrast of warm shadows and almost blueish, white skin.

Nude Underpainting 1

Heather Underpainting Study. 8.5 x 11 in. Acrylic on Canvas. 2012

Just yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the Los Angeles Fine Art Show, which showcased some of the most premier art galleries and artists from East to West. It was so inspiring to visually experience the magnitude of each painting, especially those by Tim Solliday, Jeremy Lipking, Jordan Sokol and Adrian Gottlieb. I actually had to pick my jaw up from the floor when I saw Jeremy Lipking in the flesh for the first time... Not too bad for a Saturday afternoon.

Gottlieb's paintings really caught my eye because of his ability to emphasize luminosity through his portrait and figure paintings. Wanting to try his method of working myself, I read that he used various techniques of underpainting for his work, one in particular, Verdaccio. I dove in and grabbed some steps from this old master technique to try in my own painting and so far I have what is pictured above. I washed in a Burnt Umber acrylic background, marked in my figure and scumbled Titanium White (Open Acrylic from Golden) to bring out the lights. With Open Acrylic, it seems like you can get the best of both worlds with oil and its plastic counterpart.

Revision of Style Background Project

I made a small revision, courtesy of some great advice from my teacher Dominick Domingo. He pointed out that I needed a more distinct separation from background to foreground. So I made some minor adjustments to lighten the background and overlay it with desaturated blue.

Color Key Movie Studies

For Richard Keyes' "Color & Story" class, we were assigned to paint 50 still frames of live action and animated films. The movies had to have a major emphasis on color and each frame could only be painted within a 10 minutes time frame.