Stephanie - Art Students League Aug 10-21

I'd love to paint Stephanie again sometime. Her friend, Tom, posed on the other side of the room. During the last of these 2 weeks, they entered an online contest to design the funniest (most terrifying) golf outfit, and Tom won! The prize was a new PSP. I have a link to Tom's appalling kilt get-up somewhere.

 oil on canvas paper, 16x20


oil on cheap canvas board, 16x16
I wish I had done this one on nicer material.
I often like how the square pictures turn out.oil on canvas paper, 16x20


oil on panel , 9x12


oil on panel, 12x16

oil on panel , 9x12

Mitch -- ASL Aug 3 - 7

oil, 16x20 canvas paper


I got a little bored making so many pictures of Donna, so for the second week of the pose, I've traded for a place facing the other model. I haven't accomplished much so far.

Here's what the studio looks like without artists or models:

Donna -- ASL Figure Painting: July 27 - 31

I like to paint Donna--she smiles a little while she's posing. It makes me wonder what she's thinking about.

16x20 canvas paper
18x24 canvas board

18x24 canvas board

16x12 oil on panel


So far, my 3 favorite pictures have been the 3 I've tried on panel.

ASL Figure Painting: July 21-24

We lost a day when our model got sick and didn't turn up. Luckily, the replacement model was great and took the same pose for the rest of this second week of the pose.


I traded places with a friend and painted the model from the other side:

oil, 16x20 canvas board


And here I am back at the same easel where I did those other purple portraits from last week. Even with a different model, it really helps to have drawn the head a few times before in this same position.

There is a prettier painting underneath this one. Somebody in my class was a little bothered by how much I screwed it up a perfectly nice picture with all the patchiness on top of her skin. Well, people, I'm still learning here. It's going to happen more often than not.

oil, 9x12 canvas board

ASL Figure Painting: July 17

I think this is one of my favorite pictures. For me, this is the best likeness. Also, I like the way the paint surface looks over panel (vs cotton duck canvas). I started it near the end of class so I didn't have a chance to screw it up too much.

I've had trouble taking pictures of these paintings. For example, the painting above should be colored more like the picture below--any advice out there on how to make it happen without flash spots? Photographing purples is terrible. Worse than trying to mix them, even.


8x10, oil on panel

ASL Figure Painting: July 13-17

oil, 12x16 canvas board

oil, 14x18 canvas board
Trying out a lot of things here that didn't work at all!


oil on canvas board, 12x16
This is a terrible painting but I kind of like it. It's humble, or something. Or just bad. And needs friends.

Helena--ASL Figure Painting: July 6 - 10

I think this one is a little better than the last. I need to remove that dark line under her chin.



Can't believe I've been doing this for more than a month already! I like painting in the mornings a lot. It's not time that I'd otherwise use wisely.

12x12, oil on panel

Helena--ASL Figure Painting: June 29 - Jul 3

oil, 11x14 cotton duck canvas

Karina -- ASL Figure Painting: June 22 - 26

Same model as below. This picture took me a week. A lot of that week was spent staring blankly. When I got tired of that, I liked to mix up the wrong paint colors, scrape them off my palette, and start over mixing more of the wrong colors.

I probably should have started a new painting at day 2. I'm going to try to be more disciplined about doing new paintings every day instead of continuing to fiddle with the old.

There aren't many beginners in our class. Mary Beth told me and the few others that the best thing we could do for ourselves would be to work on "starts" rather than finishing paintings. It's hard to make yourself quit and start something new.

oil, 16x20 cotton duck canvas

yuck -- ASL Figure Painting: June 15 - 26 [Karina, Karina, Maria, Maria]

The model poses change every 2 wks, so in this, our 3rd wk of the session, we're into our second set of models/poses.

In the first week, we did a series of 4 one-day studies.
We're supposed to direct special attention to getting the colors right.

1. Abstraction to simpler geometric shapes.
2. Application of paint with palette knife only, no brushes. (Isn't it interesting how much shinier this makes the paint?)
3. Memory painting of model seated directly behind us, or out of line-of-sight.
4. Non-dominant hand--for me, left hand only to mix and apply paint. It drove me crazy.

I really, really didn't want to post these but, by this point, it seems unscientific not to! So, for the sake of science...







oil on 9x12 canvas pad.

Tyrone--ASL Figure Painting: June 1 - 12

I've started attending a figure painting studio session at the Art Students League. My instructor, Mary Beth McKenzie, talks to us individually for a few minutes 2x per week. She is generous and insanely good at both painting and teaching, but the class format leaves me unsupervised longer than I'm used to and I've been screwing up my paintings a lot more now! These screw-ups are all good, necessary steps toward maturity, I think.

That's the pep talk I use to I cheer myself up and steel myself up for more of this!



Mary Beth persuaded me to give up on this one and start anew. Good advice.

So, same model, same pose:



I spent most of these 2 weeks mixing colors I never used. I learned how to make a lot of colors. GRAAAA!!!

This model's skin tone is made with viridian green + cadmium red, which yields a startlingly rich brown or purple, depending. I also learned to push around a rich color that starts with black + cadmium red + cadmium yellow. I think whatever that's called is going to be one of my new favorite colors.

oil on cotton duck canvas, both 16x20

Portraits II: Homework Assignments

Miniature Self-Portrait. (from passport photo)
I realize it doesn't look like me.
Last semester's version was so much worse! I think I may have thrown it away in disgust.
This one almost killed me. I didn't have the right brushes and the one I bought was still too big. I ended up using flat toothpicks. Toothpicks make terrible brushes for oil paintings, by the way.
oil, 2x2 on wood


Life-Size Lips assignment--from a magazine photo
oil, 4x5 canvas board

Life-Size Nose assignment. Yes, it's my nose.
oil, 4x5 canvas board
This poor little painting--it's darkish greenish brownish because I tried to speed up the drying time by baking it in the oven. Bad idea! It darkened all the colors and made it smell like toasted linseed oil. I won't be doing that again.


last semester's Life-Size Nose assignment. Yes, it's my nose again.
oil, 4x5 canvas board

Life-Size Eye (from magazine image)
oil, 4x5 canvas board


Group Portrait assignment--from People Magazine photo
oil, 6x8 canvas board

Portraits II: #5

She was the greatest model we've had yet! She kept herself so still yet somehow maintained the intensity of her expression. I wish this painting had turned out better because I really enjoyed painting her. This was one of those pictures I screwed up at the end and couldn't manage to fix in time. She was so pretty.

When I turn the picture sideways or upside down, I can see the features apart from the whole, and I can remember what I really liked about parts of this painting while I was making it. When I step back and look at the whole, I wonder what I was thinking.

She's holding a Union Jack umbrella. I got tired of fixing the stripes as the umbrella shifted, so that's why they're gestured in on top of the previous attempts.

oil on 16x20 cotton duck canvas

New York Academy of Art--Figure Painting

Unfinished painting--

I've been having so much fun painting this semester that I signed up for a Wednesday night 6-wk Continuing Ed painting class at the New York Academy of Art. Yikes--those artists are For REAL. More than half the class had MFAs! Geez--here I've been congratulating myself when what I draw looks like a person. So I took down a lot of notes and tried to keep up.

My teacher was John Wellington. He teaches a style of painting more in the Academic tradition--think Prud'hon, Velasquez, Ingres.... Think underpainting! Think the opposite of everything I've done so far! Think careful and tidy! I thought the opposition to my natural tendencies would be a good challenge.

I'm both impatient and slow, so this approach was pretty much guaranteed to drive me nuts, but I liked learning it a lot.

Because I like to glop paint on so thickly that the underlying layers of paint never show through, I had to change everything I did. I learned a lot. This painting started with a warm brown-red wash, then a semi-transparent grisille--the monochromatic painting/drawing of the model in cool Viridian green. Then a semi-transparent pinkish glaze on top of that for the flesh tone, but, as you can see in the extended arm or the belly area of the portrait above, you have to let the green underneath show through!

It's all in blending the edges.

Which is to say, it's all in the materials. I learned how to use medium, what round badger brushes are good for, and the amazing difference that expensive paints can make in this kind of painting. Also, I learned the cheap cotton duck canvases I've been using are crap. This painting is on portrait linen, and it was very very nice and smooth to work on. I can't afford to make it a habit yet. I may try painting on gessoed paper--it's cheaper and I learned how to prepare it in this class.

Portraits II: #4

She's wearing a vest made of purple fur--zowee!

Still trying hard to pay attention. I think it's helping. A lot. I felt like the underlying sketch drew itself, it seemed so clear where I should put the next lines. The model had a certain way of sitting and presenting herself and I felt like I got lucky with representing that inner part. The likeness is pretty good too--I mean, for me.

(I'm really excited when it looks like the person. I do understand that this is the bare minimum base-level expectation most people have for portraits, but it still seems like an unexpected miracle when it happens for me.)

I'm happier with the drawing component of this portrait than with the painterly aspects. There's not a lot of volume. But then I also like flatness of the paint in the arms.... There's just a lot more I wanted to do in the face. I got distracted by the background. The chroma was too high. I'd painted it pure cadmium red, which resembles red-orange nail polish. Love the color but it made the background jump in front of the central figure. I toned it down with an entire mini-tube of magenta on top. I was really happy at the time with how closely the red background ended up matching the real-life red backdrop, but now I wish I'd divided those 3 hours over the rest of the painting.

Portraits II: #3

Another great model. I think he told me that he's recently retired and started a second career as an artist's model, and this was one of his first jobs.

You might not be able to tell from this painting, but I've started to feel like I've turned a corner with this painting and the last one. The drawing is coming a lot easier. I'm starting to be able to get a pretty good likeness without so many initial wrong turns, and the model liked this painting, which made me overly pleased with myself.

I think I'm doing better work because I'm concentrating harder. Up until this painting, I've done mostly joyriding with a paintbrush in hand and then tried to fix up the worst mistakes. I've switched my working method over to telling myself "Pay Attention! Pay attention. Pay Attention!" and have tried to be more deliberate.

Portraits II: #2

Great model--I love the Manic Panic hair. She's a burlesque dancer under the stage name Dirty Martini, which surprised me only because she seems so petite. Really petite. I don't understand how her professional photographs make her look so zaftig.

I don't think I got a very good likeness--lost it in the eyes and couldn't fix it before we had to stop--but the longer it hangs drying on my wall, the more I like the look.

Portraits II: #1

I don't like this one at all.

Surprise! I finally put in the pictures for painting class

Soon I'll take some pictures of all the stuff I made in the collage class and fill in the gaps in this blog. I don't know exactly when I'll do this, but probably when I'm supposed to be doing something else.

Portraits - Eleven/Twelve: #6 Grand Inquisitor? Star Trek?

This is the last one!
We're back to my least favorite thing, 'lighting from below,' but this time there's a spooky red filter over the lamp. Our teacher gave us a big hint--the red parts will look like they're reflecting red light only if all the rest of the painting is made darker. So we just adjusted all the other paint colors down a few steps darker from real life. This is the first time he made us paint something different from what we could actually see. Pretending it's a little bit darker isn't that hard, but it felt like an uphill jog. My brain is even more out-of-shape than the rest of me.