February 7th, 2010
Here are a couple wet pastel paintings. I have done many of these wet pastel paintings. I was completely influence by Mark Englsih (http://www.markenglishonline.com/) when he did works with wet pastels. My first thoughts about the pastels was how horrendous are pastels. But I kept at it and now I feel pretty comfortable with pastels. It is a direct direct drawing medium and when you wet the pastels with a wide brush loaded with mineral spirits it becomes a very interesting method – runs, smears, color bleeding into other colors, lifting color back off and the painterly quality of the wet pastels is very unique. It can be very frustrating but it is a drawing skill builder! Thank-you Mark for all the inspiration.
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February 7th, 2010
This is a painting of my friend Matt from college days, oh lets say 1975 or 1976. I think we painted each other several times – shortage of models. This is fairly large (30 x40) and was painted in oils. It is funny to see it again after all these years. Thanks to the SCADphoto for scanning my very old slides. It was, I would say, done alla-prima with no preliminary drawing except on the canvas. It was like many of the works from back then, begin and finish and hope for the best. I think I really liked the ultramarine blue and burnt sienna mixture. But I would guess that I had no idea about the colors other than they worked for me.
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January 22nd, 2010
Here is another sketch that was glued into one of my sketchbooks. A scrap of paper, saved, trimmed and spray glued and placed in a sketchbook.
I refer to this type of sketch as a notan sketch because a few years ago, I decide to change how I draw in order to practice creating and visualizing notans of scenes, people and etc. (notan being the light and dark principle of design, google it and learn more about the term). This sketch was created in faculty meeting of people speaking, listening faculty and well background scenes, ties and stars and etc etc etc. Darks against lights (white of the paper) and the occasional repeat pattern on clothing and what not. One scene or one person’s portrait is arranged to be part of a whole. What is not black, must be the paper; what is white of the paper must be black or some sort of texture, and on and on. I think that is VP Andy Fulp who was the star of the show that faulty meeting. Andy left us with the wisdom of these words: the mic is always on. Makes one think.
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January 22nd, 2010
The other day, I came across a few elephant drawings in an old sketchbook. I think they were done in preparation for a demo in Materiasl and Techniques I course. It’s odd to look back at roughed out sketches because they seem to have no real purpose. Often times, I have to remind myself they do serve a very real purpose. It may be a subtle one. And the reason for the drawings may escape us now that we see them again after a long time. In fact, I questioned the time I spent on the drawings. What was I thinking? Their purpose is not so easily embraced nor regarded with much pride of accomplishment. But this repeat performance of the drawing routine, engaging in this ritual of visually figuring something out , (even if it is a ritual as simple as drawing with a no 2 pencil on paper), will produce in the artist a sense of confidence and maturity. So, for me, this ever present struggle to stay on the path of artistic development , reworking ideas, drawing and redrawing, pulling ideas out of the brain and putting them onto a page of my sketchbook for consideration maybe a very necessary part of being an artist. That’s what I hear anyway. Most of the time it seems to be a painful exercise but, every time it is a necessary one. It may be, simply, the price one pays to grow. So let’s give ourselves some credit. And, how about a pat on the back!. Even if these drawing efforts are not considered obvious evidence in producing wonderful works of art. It seems to be a required part of the art life.
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January 17th, 2010
These student assignment works in my opinion are very strong and ready for the big bad world of illustration. The only ingredient missing is that market and AD’s heavy handed influence. All the aspects of good art are present – value, value pattern, color scheme, idea, composition and strong/consistent drawing. What else could a college professor ask for from students in his class? These students worked hard in and out of class, learned new ways and created really good looking art work.
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January 16th, 2010
I wanted to show the students that in the C.F. Payne mixed media technique when Mr. Payne uses the very thinned oil mixture of Dioxazine purple, Permanent Green light and a bit of Burnt Sienna to darken and neutralize everything, they could sue other color mixtures or even one color to achieve the same effect. In the blue Lincoln, the oil color was Payne’s (no relation to Chris Payne) gray and some ultramarine blue for a little more blue color. In the brown Lincoln, I used a Gamblin oil color Asphaltum which is much like Burnt Umber. The results were good. And the blue lincoln was accpeted into the 3×3 Annual Proshow. So it goes to show you if you change a simple subject’s color to a different not expected color, your work will get into illustration annuals!
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January 15th, 2010
This is a work from several years ago when I was first working with C. F. Payne’s mixed media technique. I found a small printed pic of Jennifer Anniston on the cover of a tabloid mag and immediately got the ‘big idea’, ‘the vision’ and began developing the caricature design and drawing. Her hair, her smile and her chin all seemingly similar in shape became the point of design for this work. Also, this work has a lot of colored pencil work, much more than others I posted. The point being is that practice is one of the best teachers. Make your mistakes, make your blunders, go through those uneasy feeling of being a loser and hopefully you will come out the other side accomplished!
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January 15th, 2010
These four illustrations were begun as demos for the course I teach at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Just so happened that I really felt like finishing them up over the Christmas break. Buddy Holly was actually completed over the summer as it was from a demo during spring quarter.
In these works, I used more actual painting with the acrylics to adjust the colors and values and etc. By dabing or using the squiggle line with a small synthetic round, you can adjust color and value more subtiley than with colored pencils. Some areas are simple flat shapes which contrast the rendered areas with purpose. These catagories are ment to be contrasted in art – values/lights and darks, colors/warms and cools, textures/smooth and rough and so forth and so on.
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January 15th, 2010
These painting were done on location in the early morning hours during the summer of 09 and 08. Each painting is done on a watercolor block type paper, toned with a mixture of gesso and a cool pink acrylic combo. Some of the tones surfaces were mixed to be a beige tone or a blueish tone but in every case the tone was close to a middle value. Each painting was completed with a limited palette of lower saturated assymetrical primary tiad. The colors I use most often came from accomplished landscape painters like Scott Christensen and Kevin Mac Pherson. The tube colors are: Indian Red, Yellow Ochre, Indathrene Blue ( blue-violet not a blue) and Paynes Gray and titanium white and gesso. Acrylics dry quickly outside in the summer in the low country so I place my colors on a rolled up paper towel that is very damp with water and keep a spritzer bottle handy to mist the colors regularly.
Each painting was done in different locations around Savannah and South Carolina.
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August 19th, 2006
Here is one of the first illustrations I did using C.F. Payne’s mixed media technique. Although, Payne’s technique was derived from Mark English’s mixed media technique; Payne’s version seems to work better for me. This illustration called “Greenspan” was done from a small article in Time Magazine about the way the likes of Greenspan talk a language called “federalese” and after a few moments, most people, the media, realize that they have no idea what in the heck was said. So the concept of Greenspan as the court jester juggling the bowling pins seems to speak to the heart of the issue. We are entertained by the humor of that serious financial guy dress in funny clothes; we are being informed by the commentary but the whole time we are just watching a typical shallow song and dance show of of the feds manipulating the uninformed masses to take one more step towards their ultimate goal – own and control everything.
In this piece, I did not use the color in the same way as Payne. I used a singular flat wash of an ochre plus burnt sienna acrylic paint mixture and gesso over the entire transferred drawing. The transferred drawing was rendered a little with terra cotta prismacolor, the verthin pencil. Payne in contrast uses graphite on everything except flesh areas where he uses burnt ochre prismacolor thick lead pencils. Next, I used a mixture of Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna watercolor (Grumbacher brand) to apply a a singular transparent flat wash. Let the wash to dry and then lift off the watercolor to create light areas and essentially rendering the form. Next a wash of a very thinned out (with mineral spirits) oil paint mixture of Dioxazine Violet and Permanent Green light and a touch of Burnt Sienna is brushed over the entire image and allowed to dry so that the sheen of the wetness has disappeared. Using a kneaded eraser, erase out the light areas and again essentially rendering the forms. After erasing out the light values on the forms, I sprayed the work with Sureguard (use only in a well ventilated area!!!) retouchable photographers lacquer. This spray will seal the work, add a tooth and remain workable so I can add washes of acrylics to adjust color strength and colored pencils to add greater degree of rendering and details. Also, sometimes I will use acrylic paint in a impasto manner in areas to interest or texture.
Greenspan was selected for publishing in Applied Art Magazine and was accepted into SILA, Society of Illustrators of Los Angles.
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