Animal Celebrities

And the beautiful Rudy makes an appearance:

The dude needed a dog.

The Homeless

I didn't make the March 31st 11:59 PM deadline...but this work was done in March - I promise. I set a goal for myself, which I didn't meet...but I got sort of close with starting this new one the other day and working on it a bit tonight. I did a sketch a while ago for it:

Based on Pity the Sorrows of a Poor Old Man by Theodore Gericault:

Rough sketch of the painting composition:

Slow and Steady

Spring time in my life has been incredibly busy. March has flown by mostly because I've been working a lot of overtime recently. Good for the savings account, bad for the painting production. I am, however, almost done with this gem - and my my my it's taken a while :

The lighting in my studio sucks, so I'll get better images soon. My favorite part has to be this negative space her body creates:

Thanks to my beautiful friends for lending me their body and face for this piece!

Art Crawl is in exactly a month, and I'm hoping to have a few more done. So...here we go!

Done, done, on to the next one!

Life imitating art

I've been working on this sickly/medicated concept painting for quite a while. No wonder why I woke up this morning with a fantastic cold. So I took the opportunity today to catch up on some much needed rest and painting. I think this one is almost done. Just a few finishing touches are needed after this coat has dried. This is becoming one of my favorite faces so far:

And a close-up of a mighty fine hand:

Once the paint thinner dries I'll get much better images up...

The Medicated - coming along!

I thought I'd give you a glimpse at my inspiration for this piece, which is "Sick Girl" by Christian Krohg. I love her face and expression, and I love the texture of the paint:

For mine, I do want to focus on the expression of emptiness and exhaustion. I also do want to keep some of the original sketch style that I had (see last post). Things are coming right along, and I'm working on how to make that looser style closer to my own.

And further progress on the face (I'm afraid to touch the hands because I love them how they are now..we'll see what happens):

New year, new painting

Guess December wasn't a very productive month for me. Yikes. Well after being stagnant for a while, I'm trying to shake it off, and start something. Life has changed in many ways, and I'm moving at the end of this month into another apartment, but this time with a roommate, who also happens to be an artist. So let's hope this only helps with the production...if someone has a cure for laziness, please pass it on.

The new one I started last night is visually quite a departure from my usual style. I decided not to sketch in pencil as I usually do, but go right for the paint. Everything was done at one time, which is why it's fairly monochromatic and ... well, green tinged skin isn't attractive on anyone...so I'll be toning that down, no worries :) This started as "The Hypochondriac" after watching Pride & Prejudice and Synecdoche, NY pretty close together. Both with major characters with many ailments and remedies. I realized, that the pose was more of that of an addict hiding yet painfully exposing their vice. So it may be changed to a different substance or possibly none at all. "The User" or "The Medicated" may end up being a better stereotype for this painting. Anyway, here's the outline:I'm really enjoying the German Expressionism look of it for now, but obviously this will change - well, maybe only a bit.

Another stray note...for the painters who read this, have you ever used the "Indian Red" color by Winsor & Newton? The pigment is so strong, that the touch of red I was going to use turned into a lot of red. Good and bad at the same time I guess.