A Sad Panda

Well I was not accepted into the 5×5x5 show.  I think the work in person (had they judged it by looking at the physical specimen) would have made it into the show.  This tells me that I need to learn about how to photograph my work.  I looked at the submission photo again and I don’t think it was 100% in synch with the image.  So I have far more to learn about yet another area of being an artist.

Intake at the next show is this Monday, hopefully I will make it because I will be returning from a trip to Colorado that night and the timing could be tight if there are any delays.  At least the paintings will be physically submitted (I am submitting both salt shaker paintings).

On a happier note, I am flying to Colorodo this afternoon to visit my sister.  I haven’t seen her in abotu a year and a half so it should be lovely.

Friday Night (24 Oct)

 

Winston Week 2

 

(published from an earlier draft)

Tough day today and a long week at a close; thank goodness I have two days off.  Tomorrow plan on attending Matt Sesow’s gallery opening; am really stoked; it’s a nice reward for a busy week.

Tonight we developed our paintings further. I had trouble again with segueing from the grasaille into color. I apologize for the shadow to the right, its from my camera and I wanted you to see the horizontal layout of the painting so I didn’t crop the photo. 

20 Minute Study

Rob helped me a great deal with this.  The pose was tough because the artist was initially leaning his head against the wall and then he ended up with his head straight.  I wanted the first pose and did my best.  Rob helped brighten it up and he corrected the left side of the face. 

He asked me to spend the last 20 minutes of the class doing a simple color sketch. These are rough and you aren’t worried about capturing a likeness -only seeing what colors are visible and getting their temperature correct. 

I like the color in ths one much more than the 2-day study.  Its fresher and happier.

Waiting on News

Art.  The Target Gallery mailed off the results of the juried competition for their small works show today.  5×5x(5) will be a December show and the first serious competition I’ve ever entered.

Even if I don’t get into the show I found everything  very interesting. I think my work was at a disadvantage because I had to save it at 300dpi at 4×6″.  I don’t know if I read things correctly but it basically made the image about twice as large as life size.  Not sure if that was/is good or bad to be honest.

and WAR.  I have been slogging along at Warhammer Online (referred to as WAR) as well and enjoying things.  I was fortunate enough to find some very laid back fellow gamers who run a great guild.. several of them were involved in the beta so they really know their way around.  So far I am pretty slow at leveling and just made level 8 last night (after about 12 total hours of play).  I am used to zipping up to my low teens in World of Warcraft in that much time.  Part of it is I am still trying to understand the interface and a larger part is that I simply don’t know where everything is.  I’ve also tried out a couple of other classes, a greenskin shaman (think green gnome) and  a sorceress which is one powerful creature. 

Sadly, just like  in WoW, all of the female characters look like glorified barbies or sex kittens; with the exception of a healer class (she reminds me of a undead female with no bones showing).  The tanks can only be male but the high DPS (damage per second) classes can be both.  Only the empire has fire mages which are supposed to be horribly wicked. 

I played in one game of RvR (realm vs Realm) on Sunday with my healer who was level 6.  She was killed again and again because -as soon as they realised I was healing they nuked me.  and nuked me and nuked me.  It was fun though and I think I will really enjoy the RvR once my toon gets a little higher.

Warhammer Online

I’ve been thinking about getting my feet wet with this game.  Tonight I did more than think about it.  I went out and bought it. 

Coming from a World of Warcraft background all I can say is that this game looks really different.  I am still loading the game and it’s taking forever and I am still on disc one of two.  So while I was waiting I did a google seach and found several useful guides as well:

Ardwulf’s Lair  Excellent explainations of how public quests work.

WoW Insider (I know it seems counterintuitive but this explains some of the things that will be very new to a person with a WoW background).

Wikipedia The ever helpful general history and information on the game

Hammerwiki See above, similar information (and an amusing link to WoW RotLK)

I also found a great video created by the folks at Mythic Entertainment that explain some of the information you need to help explain the difference between actions, tactics, and morale for a character.   

 here is the game trailer and the second youtube video is some fun Player vs Player (PvP) and Realm vs Realm (RvR) and a peek at some of the mounts. Note to self NEVER roll an elf it looks like a dressed up my little pony /rolling eyes.

 

And on the lighter side, this is an hysterical prank call I ran across on youtube.

Sunday Plein Aire, Attempt #4

Initial Picture

I went plein aire painting Sunday. I decided to paint a friend’s house in Old Town Alexandria. The sky was clear and the weather was cool – to- cold with quite a breeze at times. It was a gorgeous day to be outside.

The advantage to painting my friend’s house is that it’s one block off of the tourist area. There was foot traffic and quite a bit of road traffic but I was able to get quite a bit accomplished.

I do need to say that this is only my 4th plein aire painting, I learn a bit more each time I go out.

Most of my friends who paint have said painting outside is very similar to painting the figure.  You do initial sketch, very quickly get in your darks (very important since the light is constantly changing), do initial color lay down and then get to work.

House Sketch

I paid attention to the distance between the windows, where the shutters were as well as the dormers. I also lay in the first indication of the shadows on the roof. The color is raw umber thinned with gamsol. I used an 8×10″ oil primed linen canvas Mine were purchased from Raymar they are double oil primed linen).

I learned for my florist shop that painting a building full on didn’t help to make the painting interesting. That I should approach it from an angle. So I selected a spot about 30 degrees off from center. The view allowed me to include a pretty magnolia tree on the right side of the building. I included a small strip of the grey building next door. Frankly I am not certain that was wise but it helped me gauge what went were so in it stayed.

Initial Color Lay In

I used a thinned burnt sienna with some raw umber mixed in for the building, I darken the shadows with more raw umber, laid in the brick wall with burnt sienna and raw umber. The magnolia tree is all raw umber and the grey building to the left was created by mixing raw umber with ultramarine blue and white. The sky is a thinned cerulean blue.

It always amazes how bright a color will seem (especially on a white panel) when you first lay it down and then how quickly it quiets down. Seeming this has made me a little less nervous about color with the human figure.

House Painting About 60% Complete

So, the windows were blocked in with a dark grey using raw umber and ultramarine blue. Same for the black of the shutters. I had no idea how to translate the color of the roof. The shadows were a really rich dark and the roof was black to start with but with the intense sunlight on it it seems a brownish/greenish black. I left it as is.

My friend lives across the street from a large business building. When I first started painting I could not see the reflections of the building, I could later once the light changed. I found it interesting that I could see the reflections of the building in the photos I took with my camera but not with my eyes.

Finished House Painting

I am not certain if including this building in the reflections was wise, but it was there and since it’s part of their daily view I felt it helped keep the painting real (in context to the site). Ok, that sounded a tad stuffy but hopefully you understand what I mean.

Over all I think I did ok. I even snuck her cat into the picture which wasn’t accurate but I figured she’d love it. It’s pretty small so you wouldn’t see the cat unless you were looking for him.

Irvine Contemporary Opening

Hello Hope II 2008, by Leslie Holt

I browsed through several Art Galleries in the Washington DC 14th Street art corridor today.

Curator’s Office. My first stop was at the Curator’s Office. Andrea Pollan has a small but wonderful gallery and her current show, Potential Energy-A Collaboration, features works on paper by Ann Tarantino and Kate McGraw.

Ann Tarantino has two works which were featured at Jan Beckman’s 20×200 site this week. Both at beautiful, I particularly loved her print Far and Wide but Flying Colors is wonderful as well. Both are still available but moving briskly at the site.

Regime Change Show at Martin Irvine

Jan Beckman’s site sell large, medium, and small editions of the same print in edition sizes of 2, 20, and 200 respectively. The small size limited edition prints are very affordable at $20.00 each.

While I was there, Andrea showed me two new Leslie Holt Hello Kitty paintings, Hello Hope and Hello Change. Both paintings featured different riffs on Shepard Fairey’s famous Obama poster. Both were wonderful but only the Hello Hope was available so I quickly snagged it. Lucky me!

Irvine Contemporary. I ended up at Martin Irvine’s gallery, Irvine Contemporary. There was an amazing show that opened tonight, Regime ChangeStarts at Home features the works of Shepard Fairey (The artist behind the tricolor Obama poster), Al Farrow and and Paul Miller (DJ Spooky).

Rose Girl, by Shepard Fairey, Image from the Irvine Contemporary Website

Shepard Fairey’s work is phenomenal, it is a combination of a collage, stencil and acrylic paints; this is street art at it’s best. Fairey has a strong graphic design background and it really shows in his work. According the his bio at the Martin Irving Gallery Fairey graduated in with a BA 1992 from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work reminds me of some of the intense and graphically powerful socialist party posters I used to see in Germany during the early 1990s. Sadly most of the work was far out of reach for me since it was priced at $16,000-17,000 but the impact of seeing it up close was incredible.

Fairey created a limited edition poster of his larger work, China Girl (original China Girl is shown on the left). the collage background looked like newspapers and the type of thin paper with intricate pattern that reminded me of the delicate wrapping papers available from India. The image is large and powerful.

Rose Girl Limited Edition Print, Irvine Contemporary Gallery

The limited edition print (450 total) lacks some of the depth of the original. Understandable because there is no collage involved; it’s a sexy image anyway. Although I love the original the print was very inexpensive at $100 each. The graphic image was amazing and yes I did buy one; how could I not?

The alley behind the gallery featured numerous posters that had been pasted to a wall. As a cohesive whole they were amazing. Beside thin posters featuring images by Fairey, there was also some of the paper he’d used in his collage works. Many of the posters were blocked together and there were also a few unique ones. Gallery guests were welcome to photograph them.

Obey Poster Wall (segment/fragment)

I spied a large Obama poster of Fairey’s which had been pasted on the third story wall of a building near Whole Foods. There were also several freshly pasted posters plastered up on different surfaces throughout the 14th Street corridor.

Overall it was an amazing show. The first time I’d seen Fairey’s work was the Obama poster (which I love). I was lucky enough to have a friend give me the Obama poster when they returned from the Democratic Convention in Denver.

If you live in the DC area make sure you stop by the Martin Irving Gallery to this show; it’s amazing. They are located at 1412 14th Street NW, Washington DC 202-332-8767.

Note- there are several great blog posts about this show and Shepard Fairey as well.  checkout Adventrues of Hoogrrl.

Friday Evening Class (17 Oct)

Mike a Demo by Robert Liberace

Class was a great deal of fun tonight! There was a scheduling snafu and we ended up with three models instead of two–bonus! Both models were males in their (assuming) 40-50s. They looked like they’ve lived a bit and wear their experiences well.

Since we have the models for three evenings, Rob asked us to work on a graisille drawing using raw umber and white. Rob gave a demo using Mike for his model. He sat and painted Mike in profile. He laid in an initial drawing using raw umber thinned with gamsol (a turpentine substitute) and some stand oil.

The entire focus of a graisille underpainting is to correctly draw what you are seeing (perspectives, proportion etc) and then translate it to varies shades of a mixture of two colors (in this case the raw umber and titanium white).

Finished Graisille of Mike by Robert Liberace

Rob’s demo was extremely helpful and informative. The only color used the was the umber/white. He had prepped the canvas with the toned sienna background earlier. Although I am usually very afraid of making grays but in this case that is the sole intent. I am certain you are equally amazed at the modeling he was able to accomplish using these colors.

I had a little bit of trouble trying to figure out how to translate his burnt sienna background with my neutral gray background. The gray did make for a very dark toned graisille. I had even more trouble with the idea of deliberately going towards a raw umber and white mixture. I doubted the results would be good.

I decided to paint Winston who is an older african american male. I’d been reading an article in the American Artist magazine and had seen a delicate head study of an african american male and I wanted to try something similar using Winston.

Winston Initial Lay Down

Marjorie posed Winston seated on a stool and leaning against the wall. After fooling around a little with thumbnails, I decided to paint him in the left portion of my 9×12 panel. He looked weary and I wanted to capture it.

This photo show what the painting looked like minus a few final touches. Again this isn’t supposed to be even remotely finished, just a good start. The model changed his head position significantly during the evening, from leaning back with chin at about a 45 degree angle to sitting almost straight up. I decided to continue with the leaning back position since it reinforced being weary. The background is acrylic neutral gray but appears a tad bluish in the picture.

I decided that tonight I would paint this exactly how Rob demo-ed. Thick accurate shadow patterns, care taken with drawing, and working with only two paint colors. Think I am off to a good start on this painting. I know I really liked it and Rob seemed to like it as well (the modeling and how I worked the graisille). Keep your fingers crossed.

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

Gilmore and McCain Palin Sign

Sign-age of the political times. Tonight I had some errands in the Old Town section of Alexandria. I walked down Prince Street to see what is happening with some politically feuding neighbors.

It seems that at the corner of Prince Street and Columbus Street has a political sign war. There is a McCain/Palin and Gilmore fan and across the street is a law firm that are huge Obama fans. It’s made for some interesting walks.

Obama at the Window

The McCain/Palin fan placed a HUGE “This is McCain Country” sign on the wall of his yard (it looks like a very large -for old town- walled garden) as well as a smaller (about 3×5feet) tasteful “Gilmore” sign in screaming bright red nailed/affixed to the top of his walled garden. The law firm across the had a few Obama signs in their windows; I think they measured about 16×20 inches. At some point they added a sign in almost every window-but they were small signs.

So the McCain/Palin homeowner removed the Gilmore sign, placed a large “Gilmore, drill here, drill now” sign up. This sign is about 5×8 feet and another of the large McCain country signs (I guess just in case you missed the first one).

Tonight I realized the law firm struck back-they placed one of those life-size cardboard cutouts of Sen. Obama in their window and it’s staring at the entrance to the house across the street. How funny is that?

Vice President Cheney, AP Photo from CNN.Com

Shocking News. I noted today that CNN ran a story on Vice President Cheney. VP Cheney has fallen ill again and he was taken to George Washington Hospital in Washington DC for treatment. The Story that CNN ran stated the Vice President was experiencing irregular heartbeats again so it was back to the hospital for him.

I was pretty amazed. I believe this was the first credible reporting of the medical confirmation that Cheney DOES in fact have a heart…Will wonders ever cease?

Hopefully everyone enjoyed the presidential debates.

Friday Night and Sunday again…

Friday Night Study

Friday evening class. I seemed to have real problems last night in class. For the first evening (last Friday) I concentrated on correctly rendering the shadows and form of the model. Last night I completed the head and applied the initial color. My color range was way too dim so Rob had me punch up the color several degrees.

I went back in and reworked it but I wasn’t too happy with the final work. Its very dark and dim. Even after reworking the color. Also disappointing what how adding the brighter color really dulled and grayed out the other colors. The the color is off on this picture, the actual image is darker, oh and the model’s left side is pretty wonky. My main focus Friday night was trying to correctly apply color from the initial two-color study. I failed pretty miserably but I will continue plugging away.

Sunday. Today, I went to an area of the Potomac waterfront and tried to paint plein air. The results were ok, I had fun painting a limb of a sycamore tree. But I have no final work to post; I painted four paintings and wiped all four out. I think I should have headed to Alexandria and reworked my painting from last week.

I also discovered one of the hazards of plein air (err besides the bugs and sunburn) people talked to me

Sycamore Leaves

nonstop and even when I stepped away from the easel they crowded it. A friend said he’d seen me (as he walked by 4 times) with a crowd of folks around, he said it looked like I was teaching a workshop!

Now I was very polite and made a point of talking to the younger kids (about 11-13) painting if they were interested. But it made it hard to get much done. I had picked what I thought was a off-the-path locale but the day was so beautiful everyone was out.

Hopefully the picture on the right gives you a sense of how gorgeous the day was.

Lean Six-ed Out

I worked pretty late this week on my greenbelt project and am delighted to discover that my project was signed off and approved. This is quite a relief. I did learn some great things from the entire process and I am hoping to set up a meeting next week with some other folks who perform a similar function for their offices to see how we’re doing by their yard stick and how our process maps and Failure Evaluation Modes Analysis look and compare.

So complete for me means that I continue to measure but I am measuring a few more data points and then we’ll go back and reassess the FMEA et al. It’s been interesting but the stats honestly makes my head hurt and eyes water.

I’ve been painting on and off all week no great results. I wiped the canvas off and repainted the same porcelain pitcher 4 or 5 times to no avail…..

I will be painting again this weekend as well as class this Friday with Rob. There is an art opening I am going to try to hit in Bethesda as well.

I love 3 day weekends.