You're Not Going to Believe it, BUT..

So much to tell! First - I found this AWESOME cow skull yesterday. I've been wanting some bones to study for ages and here they showed up on display at the local Hospice fund raising second hand store. I whipped the car around grabbed the skull - NO PRICE - what is it not for sale - Oh they just put it out 20 minutes before and were super excited about their rhinestone cowboy display with the skull as cherry on top but they agreed to take $25 if I would wait to pick it up until the end of the day - in which piles of people stopped by to try to buy it. I was so stoked to get this gem!

And then - I was visiting my friend Honey and she suggested I ask her friendly survivalist type handyman if he could get me some more animal bones, as he hunts for 99% of the meat his family eats. Well, he is on board and I'm waiting for perhaps an entire elk skeleton! How great is that?

Well, actually some of you may wonder how great it really is. I'm not a weirdo, and I'm not obsessed with imitating Georgia O'Keefe. But I do love anatomy and we have the same bones as animals - just in different shapes and sizes. If I could get my hands on a human skeleton with out spending a fortune or doing something unethical - I would. And yes, I know they have plastic ones, but real ones are better! But somehow it's helpful to understand our bones when you see a similar animal version of them. It's sort of deep and profound.

Ok and since my copy and paste command has mysteriously STOPPED WORKING!?! I'm going to comment on the next photos you see. So the photos are in order, but I don't want to type all that again. Augh! So as you can see, Drew and Mark are coming along. Drew still looks like he's in the army which is not the way he looks in reality. Gonna fix that, and Mark is taking shape.

Works in progress. I'm working on a grisaille of Drew - pictured next to the Michael Grimaldi workshop project. I'm going about it in a similar manner. Trying to take my time and do things correctly. Lots to fix in the drawing of Drew - the gesture isn't quite right and he looks a little broken - I have to work the torso more - visualize it through the arm.

Portrait of Mark Arinsberg - the always delightful bobble head model. Well - to be fair he's not a professional. Painting portraits is a whole different game than painting a professional model. Posing for a painting is much more work than you might think. It's super cool, but not easy. I've got a lot of work to do here too - Mark looks older here than in real life. Gotta fix that.

Well, lots of work to do. focus focus focus.

Starts of Three New Paintings

I started three paintings this past week. In response to a workshop with Michael Grimaldi, I'm switching my work habits from fast and furious to a more deliberate process. The first step is to determine the composition. This takes time, and will mature with practice. What I'm sharing with you all today are the seeds of paintings. There are aspects in all these compositions that I love as well as things I'd like to tweak.

In this compositional study of Drew, I like a lot of it, but don't like the importance that box his hand rests on is having. It looks like a a courtroom scene - swearing on the Bible or something. I'll think on this and see what I figure out. I want the picture to be about Drew looking out the window, about the light and color and tone, about the body. I'll be studying anatomy quite a bit in the execution of this painting - it's more of an academic exercise than the others so maybe the box doesn't matter as much - although on the other hand - it matters. Paintings will always have some degree of academic exercise in them. Make the composition work. Don't be lazy.

Honey, seated, looking out the window. I tried positioning her looking at me, but I just love the way a person's face looks when they're gazing out a window. - It's becoming a common theme in my work. I'm considering lowering the picture to include her leg. She has a very lovely hand hanging down,

and then the composition would have a little of this Velasquez thing going on.

Here's an interior composition. I'm looking out of my studio door into what we call the Gallery and then into the kitchen and sliding glass door to the outside. The color of the light is really interesting. Because there is direct sunlight shining in I'll have to work on this one during certain times of the day - I think maybe I'll have an hour and a half - two hours at a time for this one. I don't know if the changing season will affect it either. It may. I'm not sure if I want it with the lighter curtain on the right or without - as seen below - sort of.

It's not that easy to share these so publicly, I'm not sure it's a great idea to share the process. But it's helpful for me to put it up - simply to get clearer about what I'm doing.

Starting a painting is a little nerve wracking. First of all, there are more ideas than time to execute them. I admit to laziness too; many of my ideas require effort and sometimes I prefer the comfort of the studio over the effort involved in capturing interesting topics of family life, paintings out of doors etc. Of course I do work on landscapes occaisonally, but I'm talking about spending time with a painting. It takes effort to cart your stuff to a location day after day - in the same light to work for a little while. I tend to stick to my studio out of laziness and convenience. I should work on breaking this laziness habit.

So anyway, another reason I find it nerve wracking to start a painting is because I can get impatient - I want it to get where it's going and move on to the next thing. I'm working on enjoying the process, relaxing. It'll happen. Physical exercise helps.

New Portrait Competition Show on Television

Since we've seen reality competition shows on singing, dancing, joke telling, cooking, modeling, designing, pet training and on and on and on, it's kind of a mystery that there haven't been any dealing with painting. Until now - or er, I just heard about it now - but it's in Canada, and apparently before that there was one in Great Britain.

So, Bravo TV Canada is set to air (tonight, Sept 12) Star Portraits, a new show where three portrait artists paint one celebrity client. Apparently the viewing audience votes for their favorite. What fun! I guess the BBC version had the sitter choosing their favorite portrait. To me the most interesting thing would be some sort of combination. It's interesting to see what people at large think, interesting to see what the sitter thinks and throw in some art critics too.

However it's done, it's a good thing to get art and portraits into the minds of the masses! Go team! So all you Canadians out there, tune in, as for the rest of us, maybe Netflix will have it sometime. Perhaps Bravo TV will create an American version one of these days.

Monday Night Sketching at Tease

Maia Alexandra was the model. She wore sort of a sparkly tourquoise belly dance costume and has very large eyes making her look like a Disney Princess - Jasmine. The lighting was great - I'm going to try to get lighting like that in my studio. It lit the face from the front and above, creating a little shadow under the nose, putting the top lip in shadow and a little, but not all of the eyes in shadow.

View from my new studio

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

Yay - I'm home - super anxious to hit the studio, lots of things to study and work on.

I'll looking forward to working on Arinsberg's portrait, Honey's portrait. I'm anxious to start a still life, a long model pose. Michael Grimaldi suggested it was valuable to get a female model and a male model in the same room to compare and contrast them anatomically (hold the jokes - I'm talking rib cages, that type of thing). He also reminded me I need to get a hold of a skeleton - I know where I might be able to get one, - plastic of course, unfortunately. However if anyone has any cow or sheep or whatever bones, that would be really neat. I ordered my Human Anatomy Coloring Book - going to work on that. I might look into taking a class if one is offered in my area. I'm also going to read up on contemporary art - I know so very little about it - that's a failing - I went to SFMOMA and just didn't get it. whew!

ok what else - bring it on. I'm going to bed early, getting up early and taking it all on.

Still Alive

I'm still alive, in San Francisco, studying with Michael Grimaldi at BACAA - Figure Painting. It's fantasitic. He's smart, organized, hard working, funny. There are lots of great students. I'm amazed that a serious art class can be relaxed and fun. Michael is a rigorous teacher but he's so positive with all the students. I hear him offering helpful critiques but always saying "good" or "cool" - with out being insincere, just keeping us going along. And it starts at 10:30 - which is highly civilized and goes until 5:00 - it's a full day, but you can still go plein air painting or go read. Fabulous. Linda, the director of BACAA provides snacks - your brain needs food when all the synapses are firing. It's very well run. (For the most part art school before was just stressful. It was largely about how you'd never be a master. Anyway, I'm trying to make a positive blog post, not flame around. I'm not naming names.)

Anyway, there's a lot I'm taking away from this.

One: Composition. Michael said art schools don't really address the subject and not soon enough. And in my experience it's true. We can get excited about what we're doing and maintain the stamina required for study if we like what we're doing. Duh. Besides that, he threw out some things to look for and think about when making compositions, and suggested some books that have valuable info on the subject.

Two: Great reminders on spending adequate time drawing, I needed that. I tend to get lazy and hurried.

Three: Size - we're working a little smaller than what I've been doing and it's actually kind of helpful for working slowly. I'm going to try some smaller canvas sizes.

Four: Drawing using more triangulation rather than simple measuring, horizontal vertical comparisons. That's practical. I can do that more.

Five: Anatomy, it's just fun and interesting, and he knows a lot. Very cool.

Six: Another student gave me some tips for stretching canvas, sounds like it will be helpful.

Seven: Color theory - here I am sorely lacking. This is badly needed.

And more. It's such a treat.

PS. If anyone is still reading, I went to SFMOMA today - kind of disappointing, small, mostly special exhibits that were sold out. Very trendy and crowded. Nice view from the roof garden, though.

New Business Cards

So, I photographed my latest work in my new studio, for the purpose of blogging about it, and I think I left the camera at the studio. I can't find it. One of these days I'll bring the computer to the studio too, so everything will be together. For the time being I'm learning to juggle the seperation of my two biggest work tools - my studio space and my computer.

Anyway, I'm painting a portrait of Mark Arinsberg, designer and photographer and publicist in exchange for some design work etc. So here are my new business cards - Mark just made them - sweet, huh!?

my old business cards, homemade, adequate - but not inspiring

New Studio

I'm preparing to move into a new studio space - outside of my home. Until now, I've worked in my garage. I could run upstairs and start dinner, check email, grab a vase for a still life etc. I'm really, really excited to have a space that's outside of my home, it feels more professional, more like a job. The space is better, too, it's actually insulated, has a sink, lots of great light. The time is ripe for it, I'm ready to take this step, but as I dive into this move, I'm running into questions. Do I take my big old fashioned but very functional home computer down to the studio? I use it all the time for work - mostly for work in fact. But I share the printer with my husband... Also, do I bring the stool both my models use in my studio but also my nephew uses in the kitchen. Naturally the studio is likely to win out, change is just interesting, it has lots of potential, and lots of adjusting. Lots to figure out. Moving is lots of work.