Doing.

This past Friday, I visited a highly ranked school of art. My initial motivation for this was to see the facilities and get some one-on-one action with someone of influence in the program. These things were accomplished. This was not all. It ignited a passion inside of me. A passion that leads me to roll my eyes and question why am I doing this. Why? The answer, is, of course, because I need to. Yet, then, as I was so painstakingly reminded when signing into this damned internet site that keeps records of dates and such, why have I not touched a pencil or a brush since April?

Grounding.

So, as a great friend and teacher said: "Shut up and make something" - did I get that quote right, Alonso??

Doing.

I'm in the beginning processes of a collaborative body of portraits (much much more to come of that) but for now, I was recently persuaded to conquer my fear and past failures with watercolor. 6 hours of driving yesterday listening to some inspiring music, I got this image courtesy of Lissie. It's a little rough, but it's a first attempt.

The Average American - Finished Product

And a close-up:This painting, from start to finish, took me just about two weeks. Which, is ridiculously fast for me. It all kind of came together in a great easy way - and I love it.

The Homeless - Finished Product

I've had a lot of frustrations with this painting. But, thankfully, I've finally learned to work through those instead of not paying attention to it for months, forgetting the color combinations and having dried chunky paint that cannot be re-worked. As of tonight, I'm calling it done. I like it. I've been trying to have some areas of my compositions be out of control (well, not IN control, so out of control for me). This means much looser brushstrokes and one way to express this is playing with depth of field. In a photograph, if the foreground is in focus, the background is usually a bit blurry, and vis versa. I've been trying to incorporate this... I feel that so far it's successful. It's also been incredibly liberating for me to not be 100% detailed in every corner of the painting. So...to sum up: I'm done with this painting. I like it.

Here are some in progress shots:

Productive Weekend

It feels good to get things done. After spending quite a bit of time on this painting over the weekend, I feel that it is near completion. I'm really enjoying how it's coming along! I have quite a few that I want to get finished before the St Paul Art Crawl (which is the 29th...eeek, less than 2 weeks). So hopefully this productivity will continue to flow!

The Average American

As I am doing portraits of different types of people, I am sure to create some portraits that may offend. But I guess art shouldn't necessarily be easy to swallow. For so many reasons, obesity is a major problem especially in this country, so it is a type I definitely could not omit. This painting is based on a picture I took of a woman at the MN State Fair. As always, I am not using her face for the portrait.

First sketch:

And a bit more time into it:

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: