Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

It’s spring! and you know what that means!? Time to crawl out of the dark hole you been in and find beauty in the world again. Such a lovely long holiday weekend I took myself to Williamsburg for some shopping and mimosas with the cool kids.

“Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.”

(shopping blog post to follow, stay tuned. I found some pretty little things in lovely little places.)

This post however, is about all the beautiful, ugly, ironic, and just plain inspiring things I saw along the way. It’s Brooklyn, a giant collage of strange and cool. So walk with me if you would…

The Future Perfect…

Don’t Panic!

“Life is Hard, but Not Today”

“The World ain’t always Disney”

“You’re Face to Face with the Man Who Sold the World”

“Not Swallowed in the Sea”

“Helping Hands Will Show You the Way”

“Which Way Would You Like To GO?”

“There is a Crack in Everything,That’s How the Light Gets In”

“No More Pipe Dreams”

“The World Turned on it’s End”

But Everything’s Coming Up Roses”

“You’ve Got Tulips: Speak”

“You’ll Find Home…”

“…When You’ve Found Yourself”

There is nothing I hate more than being bored. Holiday traveling always means an excruciating amount of waiting in line, in terminals, in planes, utterly uninspired, to say the least. I’d way rather be painting in my studio, listening to Florence and the Machine. But you know, there is a way not to have to stare at the blank faces of dazed travelers and white walls of sanitarium terminals.

It’s true! it just takes a smidge amount of forethought and some key supply purchases. Check my set up on the tiny plane I took over the hills and through the woods to Grandma’s house…

I got my Florence and Snow Patrol fix with my beloved ipod, (for instant MOOD  just add Cherry Anger play list). The compact watercolor set by Windsor and Newton. My small lil cup o water disguised as a Noxzema 3.0 travel jar, and the best and largest brushes I can afford. Personally, I mostly paint with my Squirrel mop brush and a 12, 10, and 8 round as well as a 1″ flat. A rigger is good detail fun and tons of  paper towels by Viva fo sho.

See, since terminals rarely offer inspirational brain food I tend to keep boxes of swipes and tear sheets under my bed and stuffed in my sketchbook. A fist full of random images accompany me on most trips. I pull a lot from fashion magazines and photos I take around the city. It’s up to you to build your reference library. “Build it and they will come”… ideas I mean. What’s important is to keep the flow.

A very wise professor at SCAD once said “If you’re bored, you’re boring”. So true Cap’n, so true.

I’d like to take a moment to feature one of the most influential, creative geniuses I know. Mr. Bob Pendarvis, is a friend and former professor of mine from the sequential department at the Savannah College of Art and Design. In fact, Bob founded the department and is the reason for the season. So I’d like to tell you about his Kickstarter project .

A GIRL CALLED ANA TEACHES KITTENS HOW TO DRAW, is meant to provide inspiration for the next generation of young sequential artists and storytellers. It is the first in a series of books aimed especially at young girls, but hopefully entertaining for readers of all ages, girls or boys. Each 8.5″ x 11″, hardcover, full color book has over 200 pages and tells the story of how ANA helps kittens realize that communicating with art is simpler than they’d suspected, yet much more complicated than they’d ever imagined.

And since I’m a bit of a girly girl, and love Bob’s idea, I urge you to support him by going to the Kickstarter page and donating even a 1/4 of your penny jar to this project. His goal to be able to produce a high quality, full color hardcover book and send copies to potential publishers and school libraries. The long term, ultimate goal would be to develop the ANA books into an animated tv series.

And Bob doesn’t stop there, he advocates women in sequential art by putting together SUGAR NINJAS! Which also touches the giddy little art girl with fat crayons, in me.  So please help out a genius who’s moving the girly art world forward.

P.S. you also get prizes with every level of donation so check out the plethora of artistic SCAD talent you could get your hands on.

Yes, it’s true, nothing gets me more excited then Tuesday or Thursday night drawing sessions. Seriously, it has all my favorite things; wine, music, artsy people, and most importantly, costumed and/or nude people. If there were only so many “Drawing Clubs” as there are “Gentleman’s Clubs” I’d be all outta cash.

Here is a little “peep show” for you (look but don’t touch).

Alexander McQueen is the single most significant designer and influence in my life and career as a fashion designer and artist.  McQueen’s rise coincided with my education from 1997-2004. I recall some of the most significant images and designs as I collected reference and struggled to build my own artistic identity. I can’t begin to tell you how significant it all was and still is, but I can tell you how amazing it was to visit the exhibit Savage Beauty at the MET. ( Showing through August 7th)

Cameras are not allowed in the exhibition, however, the initial crowd was such that I was able to get away with a few shots of my own. (sorry MET I hope you understand) But the book sold at the exhibit and on Amazon has amazing photos in it and well worth the purchase. It has a cool hologram cover that will enthrall you.

McQueen’s impeccable tailoring and draping are unparalleled. No one will ever have access to the education and knowledge he had. The resources, sadly, are disappearing from the world and virtually non-existent in the United States.

Here are a few of my favorite pieces from the exhibit. I love the way he did asymmetrical pleating and draping across the body. It’s definitely a design element I incorporate into my collections.

As well as his use of leather and skins…

A conceptual designer; he told a story in all of his collections with a head to toe look, accessories were as much a part of the design as each garment.

He pulled as much from nature as he did from the technology of his craft…

He could merge culture with tradition, the sublime with the macabre and reinvent the standard of beauty in the doing and undoing of it all. For the first time fashion had feeling not just mood.

It will be interesting to see how Sarah Burton, McQueen’s understudy for over a decade, will continue the house. It will also be interesting to see how the future of fashion is changed by the death of what may be the last of quality and informed genius.

“He created a world for himself where he could do anything he wanted to do, with no constraints, no merchandiser coming upstairs and asking, ‘Where’s my three-button jacket?’ That’s very rare in fashion.” – Sarah Burton

It’s true, the commercial side of fashion will always demand functional, cost effective product that targets a variety of consumers. However, I hope that fashion will continue to value those who put forth a creative and experimental approach to what can be done in fashion. It is an art, and to many, the forefront of personal expression.

Check out this interview with NPR’s Leonard Lopate and the MET’s curator for the show Andrew Bolton, here.

In case you didn’t know, fashion illustration rocks my freaking world. I tend to choose consumer products based on artwork. Illustration communicates a mood the product is selling and I’m a sucker for it. I love illustrating products and clothing in watercolor it’s so moody and versatile. Which is why when I got the chance to watch Bil Donovan paint at the Society of Illustrators I damn near lost my cookies.

Bil Donovan has been illustrating forever, When I was designing at Magaschoni his art work graced the walls of the entry way which always elicited a moment of silence as I passed by. Seriously, his watercolors are so dreamy. The 3 hour demo was awesome, intimate and thrillingly inspirational. Bil answered questions as he sketched and talked about how he began (an exclusive contract with Dior, geezus) he even did a sketch of me, Swoon!

Bil started with warm up sketches while observing a model. Sketching with the brush, he shows how “easy” it is…

…to work the watercolor in a lucid wash fusing passages with expressive blooms and lost edges.

(please forgive the blurry photos I was just too damn excited and couldn’t hold the camera still)

The model as “muse” is no joke, these models were amazing and inspiring, I wanted to draw from them myself.

Donovan is such an energetic painter, you can see while he works how much he loves doing this. He interacts with his models and captures the spirit of the pose.

Using mostly flat brushes he nails the gesture and suggests the features of the face so perfectly. I tend to use all rounds myself, but I will be sure to try some of the techniques he showed us.

It was awesome to meet and watch one of my all time favorite illustrators at work. Thank you Bil!

(thank you Damian at SCIsquared for the above photo)

What do you do when your jilting whore muse is on the run again?

(I usually sulk in my thinking chair and ponder the blueness of my walls while awaiting her sweet return. but what I should do is….)

Turn to education and practice until Prometheus brings fire back to the people. Sometimes the most courageous act is simply to return to the table and insist on making SOMETHING.

Pick a subject you know, now is not the time to challenge your poor confused ego. In this case, I chose a photograph of something pretty and easy to understand so I can focus on the paint. With sound reference, a 4″ x 6″ piece of plate bristol (small mistakes are easy to sweep under the rug) and “The Book of Sorolla” (it’s important to have “directive” reference, something that looks like what you would like to accomplish if you didn’t have your head up your A**)

After penciling in a loose sketch I cover the entire surface with a wash of Zinc White Gouache. The consistency of which should be something like heavy cream. I dry it completely with my heat gun before throwing down my first color wash of Yellow Ochre and Cadmium Red.

You can see the white gouache will reactivate when you add washes, that’s OK, it’s all part of the madness. If you wanna get all misty and ethereal you can add a little more gouache to your colors.

I start dabbing in local colors and a few darks. I’m not to concerned with highlights or shadows yet, I can put those in later. With the white Gouache under coat I can lift out my highlights, so it’s sort of a subtractive way of painting you won’t usually see with watercolor. Also, because of the gouache, I can add form shadows later and blend by feathering them in, so I am not worried about hard edges and blooms either.

Something I’ve learned from workshops and watching artists like Mel Stabin, Charles Reid, and Felipe Echevarria paint, is that a painting never really looks like a painting until it’s done. That is to say, you have this idea that things should look “good” as you go, but really it’s a damn mess for a long, long time, until it’s not a mess anymore. So get comfortable with disaster and you will get closer to something worth looking at.

Here, you can see how I’ve started to add white gouache to my colors, blend and retouch in places with a wet brush. It’s a constant push and pull, it takes patience and a confident stroke. Noodle too long and you’ll get a muddy, over worked, “point of no return” mess. But that’s OK too, because after you fail you are one failure closer to a success. So keep trying (yeah, easy to say now, what was that crap I said about my thinking chair? riiiight ).

Now, we all have our favorite cheesy techniques we do as a “finishing touch”, and I have several. But this one works especially nice with the gouache under painting. I spatter just a few drops of clean water in the area I want (in this case the very bottom of the picture). Let it sit for a while, you’ll see the paint start to separate a little, now you can either dab it with a dry paper towel to get the “spots” or you can do a directional wipe to get some “smear” light effect, sort of like that stupid “lens flare” we all love to abuse in photo shop (right? right).

Here are a few more 6″ x 4″ sketches I’ve done with the same technique.

This one was 4″ x 6″ but the bottom got so muddy and over worked I cropped what was salvageable. Turns out, it is a way better composition anyway. See, sometimes we can live in the garden of “happy mistakes” with Mr. Bob Ross.

This one I tried a little Pen and ink in there too, meh, why not?

Felipe Echevarria has a really great demo here, check it out.

I’ve painted with Mel Stabin a while now, and he always delivers some encouraging quotes from varying sources. A few of my favorites are:

“Screw it, just do it.”

“Intuition is a direct effect of prolonged tuition”

“If a fish swims evocatively enough, it alone can depict a river”

“Exaggerate the essential and leave the obvious vague”

“Fall 7 times, stand up 8″

“If you clean it up, get analytical, all the subtle joy and emotion you felt in the first place goes flying out the window” (Andrew Wyeth)

“One’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes” (Andrew Wyeth)

Don’t worry, your muse will come back, she always does, and when she returns be sure and tell her…

“You’re perfect yes, it’s true, but without me you’re only you”

Did you find this demo helpful? Leave a comment or question.

People ask about my acrylic painting process, I guess you could call it “Glazing“. Kathrine Sandoz, one of my professors at  SCAD, taught me and I kind of ran away with it. So here is a demo or at least a visual process. The application falls loosely somewhere between Durer or Titan. An excellent book of reference on the subject is “How To Paint Like the Old Masters” by Joseph Sheppard.

I mostly documented this process for myself, since I seem to suffer amnesia immediately after completing a painting of this kind. Starting a new one, I cannot remember how I did the last. I’ve completed 5 of the series and I am almost finished with the 6th. It’s really like the movie Memento every time I start. Let me share the confusion with you and spread the love

This painting is titled “The Feast” you can view the entire series here.

I start with a very detailed drawing, somewhat with rendered values, especially where the focus is. The more I do these however, the less I am concerned with too much perfect drawing.

I then lay down a mid tone wash, usually of  burnt orange and begin establishing a monochromatic under painting. I first establish my values by layering white and “black”. I will eventually be glazing color over top of the established values. For my “black” I am mixing burnt umber, prussian blue, and sap green with a little matte medium.

(the general rule waiting to be broken is that the wash should be a compliment to, and opposite in temperature of what your finished overall color sceme will be. For example, here I plan for this to finish in a seedy, cool green. So I washed in a warm red. This under painting will pop the glazes of green to follow.)

I continue to pull whites and fill in the darks. Here it’s a chalky light green I’ve made with gesso, sap green and burnt umber. I use gesso as my initial white because I will need the added tooth it provides for the million glazes I am about to lay down. Acrylic can get smooth and no longer accept layers. If this happens, but you don’t want the chalky whites in transparent shadows, you can add matte medium which is transparent and will give you a little more tooth to keep going.

With much of the under painting in place I can start glazing in the local color. I will continue to manipulate the values, as they change with the addition of color, and will require adjusting. Keep in mind the colors are still very thin, I add matte medium to them and alternate color with thin white and “black” to establish form. It’s a slow process but luminous depth will be the result.

At this point there is  a lot of blending. Dry brushing lights over shadows (as seen in the lower left porcelain horse) glazing in a little reflected light (lower left corner on the tea cup), adding stronger highlights and blending ( lower right corner on the silver tea pot). I then keep building the darks and glazing over with green.

The values are pretty well established it’s time for that constant push and pull of glazing in warm and cool to make the lights luminous and turn shadows on forms. This process can take forever, and often I undo a really brilliant wash and have to go back over and over with more warm glazes and white.

I’ll glaze in a few more green, over-all washes using either sap green or quinacridone gold. This will set my mid tones and dark shadows. For my bright, glowy lights, I generally mix a thin glaze of cadmium yellow, burnt orange and maybe a little alizarin crimson . I glaze this over the brightest highlight points, then go back over it with thick white and then glaze again and back and forth until I am happy with it.

It can take a long time and lots of thin layers of paint but you get a rich bright painting. I am always happy when I finish one but starting one is very daunting.

The 6th is almost complete after which, I think I will toss this technique for a more direct painting approach. Something more along the lines of this and this oooo and this.

Other fine resources on this subject are:

http://smartflix.com/ you can rent DVD’s on just about anything you want to learn here

http://www.artistsnetwork.com/audiovideo/ you can buy small video clips to help with specific topics here

http://www.conceptart.org/ you can look at great work and ask the forum here

Did you find this demo helpful? Feel free to leave a comment or question.

Since taking an art tour of Spain last June (read about it here). I have been obsessed with Sorolla and his language in paint. The Hispanic Society of America has Sorolla’s “Vision of Spain” murals. When a few members of the Spain group came to visit NYC, a pilgrimage was in order.

Way up on 156th and Broadway it’s a bit of a trip to get there. We got in 45min before closing, but we had the whole place to ourselves. I didn’t quite know what to expect but I figured the best was back in Madrid. I was blown away when we walked into the Bancaja Gallery.

The murals are huge and the application of paint is so vivid, as if every stroke were a crescendo. How freaking awesome!

These were among the last paintings Sorolla completed before his death in 1923. Each painting celebrated the landscape and culture of its region. By 1917 he was, by his own admission, exhausted. He completed the final panel by the middle of 1919.

This one is not Sorolla but I love the colors and lighting.

The violet shadow across the nose and cheeks really pop the orange/red . Such an intense color choice.

Sorolla is the man!

Itching to paint, I thought I’d try some studies in watercolor and gouache from some of the photos I took in Spain. The point of these studies is not to copy, but to loosen the strokes, express the subject instead of depicting it and to explore some color theory. Here are 4 studies along with the Sorolla studies I was looking at for reference.

(for more of my sketches from Spain peek this)