Merry Christmas

I put this little video together for our friends and family, and if your reading this, then I consider you a friend.

From me and my family, I wish you a very Merry Christmas. Thank you.

Weekend with the Masters Videos

My friend Taaron Parsons has posted a few videos on YouTube from the "Masters" event. They are from a panel discussion where Richard Schmid, Scott Burdick, Rose Frantzen, Carolyn Anderson, Quang Ho, Sherrie McGraw, Dan Gerhartz and Jeremy Lipking spoke about the various advancements of technology and if they have positive or negative effects on art and artists.

I thought this discussion was great. I'm not sure if it's as exciting without being their live, but if you have an hour, it would be worth watching. Check out all the videos here.

And you can start with Part One below:

On a similar note, American Artist has released a special "Workshop" magazine that focuses on the "Masters" event. The price is fairly high at $20, but if you didn't have a chance to go, or you want a little keepsake if you did go, it might be worth the price. I initially thought the price was so high because of the included DVD, but the videos on it are more sales pitches than a documentary of the actual event.  If you do want it though, you should hurry to your local book store, my Barnes & Noble only had one copy left.

 

 

Been a little busy

Sorry for the lapse in posts. I had a great family vacation in mid November and then the normal holiday stuff the last couple weeks. Hopefully I'm back to normal now (at least till Christmas).

I forgot to post some previous photos from a Putney Painter day a few weeks back, so here they are below:

This is John Smith . . . he brought along an old wood drawer from a desk of his, and set up his Still Life inside. I thought that this worked really well with the overhead lights. I generally like my light source coming from the side (like from a window) or downward, at a 45 degree angle, and this method is great to keep in mind if you can't control or are painting under standard room lighting.

Richard Schmid had a great start with a Chinese doll. I wish I had some better pictures of this, but it was really stunning in person. Richard painted the background tone the night before (using paint and some medium) and then wiped out the dolls face. This technique creates a great effect of luminosity. Below is another in-process shot of one of his paintings that uses the same pull-off technique:

Above is Richard Schimd demonstrating his techniques of painting sticks and twigs on Tatiana Sink's painting. He used a combination of palette knife and brushes to create the shapes. He keeps the shapes fairly rigid and his paint mixtures are thick and not over mixed, making sure all the various colors are very visible.

And finally, below are two in process shots of my study from that day. I still have a bunch to do on it, and I will take some more pictures along the way.

Nikolai Blokhin

I don't know much about this artist, except that he is from Russia, was born in 1968, and that he can really paint and draw. His website can be found here.

These images say it all, so here you go:

Another day with Richard and Nancy

Yesterday, I had the amazing privelage of spending the day at Richard Schmid and Nancy Guzik's house. My friend Taaron and I met up with Daniel Keys and Michelle Dunnaway and painted a figure in Nancy's studio.

The painting time was fantastic and a lot more intimate and focused than the Putney Painter days that I have been to. Both Richard and Nancy's studio have great north daylight windows that are about ten feet in the air and 20 or more feet wide. This was the first time that I had painted in pure north daylight . . . most of the time I use 5000k lights that have a similar effect. The light was much softer and diffused than my bulbs, and the shadows were a little brighter and smoother (especially in the morning hours).

During a break, Richard took us into his studio and showed off some recent stuff. We also got to pick through some of the hundreds of paintings he has stacked up. After we finished painting, we persuaded him that we all needed to look through more paintings, and he pulled out two stacks that had about 75 studies that were done over the years at the Putney barn, and at the Palette and Chisel.

If that wasn't enough, we watched a performance by Nancy and her cat Zorro, and spent the rest of the evening talking over dinner at a local restaurant. This kinda stuff gets me so excited about being an artist, about learning and painting in this time period, and about the real value that it holds in our society.

My painting:

Couple paintings

I just ran across these two paintings that align nicely with some previous posts of mine. I enjoyed them, so I thought you might like them as well.

Gustave Klimt: Two Girls with Oleander 

Little side note: I used to work in landscaping during art school, and Oleander is an incredibly poisonous plant. If we were trimming the plant, we had to make sure we didn't touch our let any of the plant touch our mouths. Oleander gradually slows your heart down till you eventually die. Another landscape worker was trimming the bushes after a rain, and some of the dew and drops from the leaves landed in his mouth, he was found an hour later almost unconscious and was rushed to the hospital.

I wonder if there is some message in this painting . . . having two young girls looking and playing with such a poisonous plant.

Thomas Dewing: The Piano

Edmund Tarbell

In a previous post, I spoke of Thomas Dewing and highlighted some of his extraordinary paintings. Dewing was a member of a small group of elite painters in the New York/Boston area known as the Ten American Painters (referred to mostly as "The Ten").

 

Seated (left to right): Edward Simmons, Willard L. Metcalf, Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir, Robert Reid

Standing (left to right): William Merritt Chase, Frank W. Benson, Edmund C. Tarbell, Thomas Dewing, Joseph De Camp

Another member of this group was Edmund Tarbell. He was born near Boston and graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, along with two other artists that would also became members of The Ten, Robert Reid and Frank Benson. After continuing his studies and traveling in France and throughout Europe, he returned to Boston and soon after held the position of his former teacher, Otto Grundmann (Edmund was 26!).

Tarbell also co-founded The Guild of Boston Artists in 1914, and in 1919 became the principal of the art school at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in D.C.

Most of the examples here are of his interior figures which he painted later in his life. I can see some similarities to the work of Dewing, and I wonder if that was the composition and subject style of the time, or if "The Ten" influenced each others works and subject matter. In either event, I absolutely love these paintings.

More on Edmund Tarbell:
Art Renewal Center
Wikipedia
flickr

More on "The Ten"
Antiques and Fine Art Article
Amazon
Wikipedia

Modeling for the Putney Painters

I got to spend another day with the Putney Painters -- but no painting for me, today I was the model.

Below is Richard Schmid's start. He probably painted for 30 minutes total today, he was bouncing around between all the other artists, helping and instructing.

The best of the day was Nancy Guzik. Below is her start and finish. I really love those drawing lines . . .

Here is Katie Swatland and her final painting.