It has been forever, but I have finally decided to throw something together just to make some people happy.  I got three things too put up tonight but I have tons more but no camera to take pictures with( if anyone wants to take pictures of them let me know!).  Also I have been working on a new piece it is large, about 3 by 5 feet, I don’t remember the exact measurement right now but it is a depiction of death with a cows skull for a head, creating similar story to the minotaur from greek mythology. It is looking epic! pictures soon.

I have been taking a printmaking class and I am really itching to get into silk screening and possibly making shirts and jackets and maybe even throwing some ink on to some bags made by Nolan bags (http://www.nolanbags.com/) btw great guy who hand makes custom bags. Throwing together some drawings to make into prints and expressing my love of octopi, I have been working with the tentacle skull that i saw a similar image and decided to try a similar design. 

Kinda a bad picture but its in the works I am doing dry-point so i am in the middle of etching it so the plexi is throwing a glare.

other then that I just have two paintings that I did from live models.

Its a wild world.

It has been a while since I have posted anything up , I have been quite busy going through the daily grind. But I am gonna take a quick break from all that and give everyone a little sum up on my thoughts and ideas from this last week.  First off I am disappointed by the crappy quality of the pictures i have been putting up and i am working on finding a good Digital camera( any suggestions?).

So I have two new paintings two show, one was a quick paint that i did today in class with a model. I was quite pleased with it, but it was more of a learning experience then actually. Learning is so important at this stage in my artistic career, I know I will not make any amazing artwork right now, but I will learn the techniques  to do it.  Also I will through up a picture of the virtue I am working on in en grisaille, (Justice btw)  as a  base coat just giving me a quick outline it is going well.

nude male

Justice

And too finish it  all off I am working on a new idea about doing a Painting dealing with Cupid, but not as a nice  little baby but a huge warrior. More to come on this one tho.

Before the break of dawn.

Today was a long day but I got a lot of work done. A couple hours in the classes will drain you and add all the drawing and painting you are working on really takes it out of you. I did an en grisaille layer on my life painting, getting most of her done, except some work on the hands feet and right leg. the face is in a basis layout just to get the basic shadows down on the canvas before I start adding more and more layers of paint. I have noticed that I tend to work to dark on all my pieces, whether is charcoal graphite or paint, I always make the object too dark. I am working on learning how to make a lighter piece and creating more of a smooth image that is soft on the eyes.

Early work

Also while finding this picture a ran across my self portrait I did. it is quite stylized but is simple and I really enjoy the whole painting (not quite finished needs some touch up).

self portrait(unfinished and bad picture)

Tomorrow we plain on sealing half of the virtues painting while also finishing rendering the other half. I am quite excited to get started on that, it is a huge piece and I know I will learn a lot from it and my skills will greatly improve.

PEACE OUT!

The King and Rose.

The King is just a quick sketch up of a chess king and pawn that I am playing around with for an actual piece I want to paint. This painting would be a Master playing against a child, and the child will be making the last move using a pawn to knock over the masters king(yes it is also about the title of this blog). This is just a tear picture of one of my pages in my sketchbook where i was working on shading cylinders and then the two chess pieces.

The King and Pawn sketches

Also I found a picture of a painting I was working on a few weeks ago it is in its earlier stages of painting and is still in grey scale without the background sealed or painted. I do not have the final image because I gave it to one of my close friends, but as soon as I am able I will snag a pic and trow it up here to be viewed.  This rose is one of my favorite works so far, just because of the simplicity and the early line work makes the whole rose pop out some. as you can tell it is one of my earlier works so the line work is quite overdone and the blending has not become fluid.

Rose in grey

Contrast and the Virtues

I used charcoal today for the first time while drawing nude model. It was all value work with very little line work except to set up the composition and to find the correct proportions of the model. The angle I was drawing was not the most amazing spot because the darker side of her was closer to me then the light highlighted portion. I enjoyed using Charcoal because of how dark i could make the shadows, which also helped my highlights pop out even more creating a very highly contrasted piece. As seen below I have only finished the top portion of her, I did not have tons of time to spend on the whole body so i felt it was more important to get the head and torso done before the legs and feet.(which are outlined in a 2H graphite pencil.) I am hoping the model will be in the same pose next class so I can re work the facial features and also work more on the chest, while completing the legs.

Woman in Contrast- Charcoal

As well as my figure drawing I have also been working on the 7 virtues and the traveler painting( which does not have a name at the moment). It has been a long process that started about a month ago when Michael and I began the first steps of the preparation.  We hung the canvas, which is HUGE, and then I went to work gesso’ing it 4 times. After the whole group of us laying it out we projected the image of the virtues up on the wall, and traced them out. Tomorrow we plan to finish the rendering and then seal it so on monday we can begin to paint!

The beginning

I am beginning to paint a large piece,  30 by 10 feet to be more specific. Luckily I am not going solo on this work, there is 5 of us working on it, and we all hope to get it done by december. This is just a quick post before i run of to my life paining course but I will post a more detailed look at the painting later this evening.