The Portrait Society of America held a “Face Off competition” during their Art of the Portrait 2009 conference held at the Hyatt in Reston Virginia. Think 15 artists and 5 models and about 100-200 fellow artists, collectors and students in one large room; if you throw in lights, chairs and organized (but deliciously fun) chaos you have an accurate idea of what being there was like.
Scott Burdick
Each model posed for three artists and each section held all of the artists working materials (taborets, palettes, easels and lights) as well as chairs about six-seven feet behind for attendees to watch the artists at work. The final results can be viewed at the <a title=”Results of the 2009 Face Off Event”
I am linking the pictures I took of the artists at work. Besides those I’ve already linked of Liberace, Carducci and Ryder; my most favorite ones were the three works by the artists lucky enough to paint Ada.
Paul Newton
She’s a beautiful model that we occasionally are lucky enough to paint in class. She has pale translucent skin, dark hair and very fine delicate features. She’s also difficult to paint because (at least for me) I tend to lapse into painting what I think I see instead of what is actually there. Not sure if this makes sense to you…sadly it does to me.
I apologize for the poor quality of the Paul Newton picture, but even though it is fuzzy I think you get the sense of how he was working on the painting; I think he nailed it.
Scott Burdick
Chris Saper
Paul Newton
Other pictures of the artists at work.
Vasudeo Kamath
Rich Nelson
Thomas Nash
The rest of the paintings for the Face Off competition can be found at this link.
On Thursday evening (25 April 2009) 15 portrait artists participated in a face off with five models in the grand ball room of the Reston Hyatt in Reston Virginia. The following nationally known and reknown artists participated: Laurel Boeck, Judith Carducci, Vasudeo Kamath, Ann Manry Kenyon, Ying-He Liu, Thomas Nash, Rich Nelson, Dawn Whitelaw Paul Newton, Anthony Ryder, Chris Saper, Jason Bouldin, Scott Burdick, Wende Caporale and of course Robert Liberace (yes I am biased!).
Anthony Ryder
The difficulty for the artist participating was to produce a fairly complete portrait or at least as much of the portrait as they could while subject to the scrutiny of hundreds were watching, photographing, and commenting as well as asking questions. Participating in this is certainly not for the faint of heart!
Robert Liberace
The organizers set the room up so that there were three artist per each model. This worked out fantastically since it allowed each artist to have a fair shot at a workable angle of a model and reduced crowding between artists as well as the artists and the crowds. Due to space limitations I’d like to focus on the model Desi. Anthony Ryder was set up to the model’s right, Judy Carducci was directly in front of Desi and Robert Liberace was to the model’s left.
I thought I’d taken a picture of Judi Carduci but sadly I can’t find the one of her in action.
These are the final results from Ryder, Carduci and Liberace. Judi Carducci won the event (the conference attendees voted on this). Now the best part of this was that the winner was allowed to select their model and Judi selected Robert Liberace as her model. So on Friday morning Ms. Carducci gave a wonderful demo on painting a pastel portrait.
Desi by Anthony Ryder
Desi by Judi Carducci
Desi by Robert Liberace
Due to posting length I will make a second posting with pictures of the other artists working during the event.
Hopefully, I will be able to get at least a solid draft finished on the Portrait Society of America’s 2009 Conference. In the mean time I leave you with this wonderful stop motion film about a wolf and a pig. Scott Nolley posted it in a link on his facebook page, thank you Scott.
Tomorrow the Portrait Society of America begins their 2009 Art of the Portrait Conference in Washington DC. It should a wonderful event. Robert Liberace as well as a host of well known and famous artists will be be in attendance and demonstrating, critiquing, meeting collectors and painters and basically having a great time!
Well I didn’t do any work in class. We’re now in two classrooms and one of the models didn’t show. So I told Rob that I would model if I could buy the demo. He accepted and this is the result. Keep in mind that this is a 60-minute demo about creating a grisaille.
Rob used raw umber, titanium white. and a small amount of cad orange and burnt sienna.
At one point, during the 2nd session Rob started talking about my nose and it’s structure. Now it was already a little itchy and the more he talked about it the itchier it got. I thought it was funny.
Thank you Robert for letting me do this, it was a blast.
Class starts again tomorrow evening. I’m really looking forward to it. I always feel rusty when class starts again.
On a slightly sadder note, I was looking at a house I was thinking about making an offer on, and found out I didn’t move fast enough. They accepted another contract this evening.
My art class is on break for another few weeks and until this weekend I haven’t been out as much and I’d like.
I’ve had some trouble with my electric power and finally figure out that it was due to a bad element in my water heater which was responsible for drawing about 1700 kilowatts/month over the last two months. Either that or elves are stealing my amps.
So during the latter part of the week I had no power until the electrician called for a plumber which took another 3 days. Ah the joys of cold water and owning your own home. Everything is better now-yeah.
I have two doves that are now nesting in my savory herbs. They are shielded behind my Meyers lemon tree, clementine and Jaffir lime trees (they’re dwarfs) as well as several rosemary plants. So far she’s laid two eggs. They are darker than mourning doves (or is it morning doves) and very cute. Sadly it means I can’t use my back patio until the babies are hatched….
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