A Japanese wedding kimono was loaned to me for a studio set-up with a vase of silk flowers. It's an opportunity for color, pattern, and drama. Two Visual Critique responses to oil paintings by two students. The Wednesday night model didn't show up so students took turns posing for the class; thank you Ying! ABOVE: Silk Flowers, oil on linen, 22 x 20 inches (56 x 51 cm), 10/28/11 Silk … [Read more...]
Visual Critique
Visual Critiques are drawings done in response to other students's work. My drawings were made without preliminary sketches, worked directly from six paintings, work of half the class. Drawings for these assignments become the property of the artist whose painting is the original subject. 1. George Bellows's lithos of prize fights came to mind as I began "Fighters". As Bellows' had done, I … [Read more...]
October Light
My studio work day begins with drawing the city from third floor windows, using sumi ink and bamboo pen. Drawing led to doing a larger acrylic painting on paper. Simplifying and limiting color to black and white has helped organize space. This week the color yellow made its appearance. The critical response was, "You are doing what you already know how to do." The evening drawing class … [Read more...]
BU First Month
Events are moving too quickly to post everything from the graduate school program on the blog. Here are highlights. The photographs are snapshots, hand held, daylight. The city paintings are influenced in part by recently reading Don DeLillo's White Noise. The story concerned an "airborne toxic event" hovering over Somerville, Mass, circa 1985. The next series of paintings use only black and … [Read more...]
Project Review
Painting in school quickly developed too many areas of interest: oil landscapes, figure drawing, homework, and the bamboo pen & sumi ink drawing series. I realized drawing is pushing out painting time in the first three weeks. These are all good projects but the MFA degree I am pursuing is in painting, not drawing. Adjustments must be made. The oil landscapes are from my studio window. … [Read more...]
ANE / Bennington — Week 1, no. 3
Last painting was done on Friday in the acryla-gouache figure class. The female model alternated between two poses within the same paintin, while the third figure is from a photograph. Saturday we had final critique and discussion of the week's work. ABOVE: 3 figures, acryla-gouache on panel, 16 x 20 inches ( 41 x 51 cm), 07/22/11 Eleven paintings in a week, acryla-gouache on panel, … [Read more...]
ANE / Bennington — week 1, no. 2
Day four. We had a new model today. She posed while we combined her image with two other sources — a place and a figure. In the afternoon she took two poses wearing different clothes to create the impression of being two people. We're working fast to try to complete a painting in less than three hours at the same time that the panel size increases. It was extremely hot in the studio for the second … [Read more...]
ANE / Bennington — Week 1, no. 1
During my first week at Art New England, I am in a class called "The Figure in Context" taught by Susan Lichtman. The first night we were assigned two homework paintings: a quick twilight landscape and a still-life, leaving space in both to fit the figure. We did a direct painting of the figure on the first morning of class. In the afternoon, we painted her into the still-life using light tones … [Read more...]