Inwood Community Clothing Exchange and Blood Drive

Fun posters I just finished this morning for an upcoming community event.  I'm trying to figure out ways to keep my pencil sketches preserved and interesting with variations in line.  Fun project.

Inwood Community Clothing Exchange & Blood Drive
April 6-7, 2012

Friday, April 6: Donate items from 6:30-8:30pm
Saturday, April 7: Collect items from 10:00am-1:00pm.

Donate clothes, housewares, toys, books, and other items.

PLEASE DONATE ONLY CLEAN, GENTLY-USED ITEMS FROM BED BUG-FREE HOMES.

Blood drive will take place from 10am-3pm

Location:

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints 

1815 Riverside Drive at Payson Avenue 

1.5 blocks west of Dyckman/200th & Broadway in Inwood 

New York, NY 10034

It will be a fun day to swap stuff and give back to the community.

What I learned in class today

So for all of those who are obsessed with learning to paint form with accuracy in light and shadow, here is a really handy chart that Greg Mortenson made for my painting class.  I also like how he made the tones broken down into nine values.  It looks easy when you see it broken down on a simple sphere, but once you try and apply it to a face, not so easy!

Forgive my palette done on palette paper today, but this is a simple illustration of painting in "strings".  Greg showed me how to mix a nice warm out of Gamblin's Asphaltum and Ivory Black, then mix it with white gradually till you get this nice gradient of values.  You can also mix this with just Ivory Black and White, or any of you mother tones you want to make a large pile of.  Then, once you have you basic values established, you can mix the two in the middle to get warmer cools, or add chroma on the outside for more variations.

Newest oil portraits

So this week, I took a couple of vacation days just to paint.  I didn't leave the apartment, hardly even my studio, for three days and here's what I did.  I also started another painting of my friend and her child that I haven't posted yet. I am pretty excited about the way this one turned out.

This and the next two paintings got a few touch-ups and now I think I can finally almost say they are done.

Grand Central Academy Weekly Update

Here is an update on my progress in the portrait painting class.  This week I made a transfer of last week's drawing to a linen canvas and started to lay in value with wiping in and out. This picture blows out my lighter values unfortunately, but you get a general idea.  You are now looking at 12 hours.

Here is some more student work that I saw sitting around the studio this week.  It seems like they have students draw the figure, paint a small color sketch, and then a more finished looking larger painting of the figure.  I think my favorite stage of the work isn't the finished painting, but this little color sketch.  I find it very moving.  I posted it earlier when only half of it was painted and now you can see the full figure.

Another "color sketch" version where nothing is blended.

Odd Nerdrum Opening at Forum Gallery March 3, 2012

I was pretty blown away to see these paintings in person by Norwegian artist, Odd Nerdrum.  Especially this painting here with the woman and baby.  There is something about the way he painted the child's face either in the colors or how smooth the transition from the yellow colored light to the violet shadows across the eyes that really sings. The surface texture was really interesting and the colors all had a really harmonious color palette.  The landscapes in the backgrounds reminded me of Leonardo DaVinci figure paintings and how he would stage them in environments.  This work is just so emotional and dramatic.  I even like the stretching and exaggerated anatomy.

 

This painting especially follows after the tradition of a Rembrandt portrait.  It was also interesting to see how the paintings were framed.  The canvases were floating inside of these beautiful frames so that there was a gap between the edge of the canvas and the beginning of the frame.  I've seen this done with simple shadow box frames, but here I think it gave it a more contemporary vibe.  I've never seen that done before and I think it's smart.

Look at this texture.  It's like he took blobs of dried up paint from his palette and scraped in onto the painting.

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This painting was priced at $375,000.

Two of his paintings were absent from the show and at the Armory.  I think I will go back next Saturday during my GCA class lunch break and take a look when they come back.