A Moment's Beauty

Over the past month, I have been showing some work at Beardsley Fine Art, in their "A Moment's Beauty" group show. The Reception was this past weekend, and I had the pleasure of meeting many of the other artists as well as collectors and art lovers from the area. Beardsley gallery is a fairly new gallery that pride themselves in showing only the best of today's representational art.

In a short time, they have begun representing some of the biggest names in art, including Burton Silverman, Glenn Harrington, Dennis Sheehan, and many others. It was an honor to be a part of the event, and hope this is the start of a long-lasting relationship with both the gallery and the other artists. (By the way, that stunning lady next to me is my wife - and model)

Burton Silverman

Glenn Harrington

Katie Swatland

Sargent and the Sea

My brother and I had the opportunity to visit the Corcoran Gallery this last weekend to see the John Singer Sargent exhibition. Seeing the scrapbooks and sketch books of Sargent, along with the hundreds of framed drawings, was a very humbling experience. The amount of work Sargent devoted to just the above painting (En Route pour la pêche) involved numerous sketches and then individual studies of each figure (all from life, without using photography and probably having to pull a lot of things from memory for the final painting). If I was limited to those conditions and needed to devote that amount of time for constructing a painting, the quality of my work would have never been equal to even the lesser painters of that time and I would only paint a few paintings a year. John Singer Sargent isn't just a Master because of his finished paintings, but also because of his devotion and work ethic to develop and construct the paintings that dominated the art world of that time.

Below are more works from the exhibition and their collection. If your anywhere near DC, get over to the Corcoran (it's also right next to the White House and the other national monuments, making it a perfect day for sight seeing).

Painting Demo - Part 3

Here is the last of my painting demonstration. The below pictures take you through the final steps of refining the skin tones and the background. I wouldn't consider the below final, because after taking a few days away from it, I always find things to touch-up and re-do.

At this stage, I warmed up the skin tones on the back and the left arm (mostly in the darks). Although my reference photos seemed to be producing that almost purple tone, the colors were looking a little muddy and out of the norm (remember, nobody is ever going to see the reference photos, just the painting). I also started with the hand and a little more dabbling in the background.


Not much to be said here, just working my way out . . . trying to be "brushy" and soft edged.

Apprehension, 24 x36 - Here is the the "final" painting. If I make any major changes, I'll post an update, and if you see something that looks off, or needs fixing, let me know.

Update: After some time away from the painting, I felt that the neck/jaw line could use some editing. Although the source material was as I originally painted it, it didn't do the model (nor my painting) the justice it deserves. Below is the Final painting - at least till I find something else to fiddle with.