Oil painting

18"x24" oil on Board
Finally, a oil painting finished. Now I will celebrate at Disney World.

J.C. Leyendecker

I just bought the coolest Leyendecker book. It is 250 pages of great reproductions which seems to have most of his work. If you don't know Leyendecker you need to see his work(start here, here or here), if you already know Leyendecker you've probably been looking for his work and this book is a great collection.

Thanks to Blake Loosli for the tip.

Girl

14"x18" oil on board.
You may have seen this one if you have been around for a while, but it never got posted. This was painted in 2005 and I really still like it a lot. It is one of those paintings that maybe you get lucky with but it is better then what you are capable of at the time. Though it is a little too tight it has some really nice edges that keep it feeling like an oil painting.

New great artist link; If your not already aware of Lucong he is a fantastic painter with a interesting subdued mood to his work. I like the portraiture that he is able to make accessible. It's not easy to paint a portrait that is appealing to everyone beyond just the subjects family.

keeping a low profile

I think things are getting a little better with my night course. I have figured out how to do just enough of what the teacher wants to keep him off my back, but still do what I want to do. I do think the many gesture drawings that we do is a useful exercise for me. This one was maybe 10-15 minutes, I kind of rush through it to see how far I can get.

What I like about this is that it seems I got a good feeling of weight here.

sketchbook #30

A drawing, following my typical method of a more finished face and loosing detail moving away.

Night school

So I decided I might sign up for a community night school figure drawing class. I love figure drawing, the cost was respectable, and regardless of what I learned from the teacher I could get some time with a live model. Right? Well turns I out it's miserable. The teacher, and I am choosing my words carefully here, is a jerk. He's got nothing but negative comments about anything I do (example: he pointed out that the left hand above was no good and couldn't see the suggestion of a hand in my shape, plus the model moved a lot). I'm in the class with a large group of beginners so I don't think I'm bad comparatively. He's just a jerk.
More importantly, I have no clue how his teaching method is supposed to help. No wonder there are so many untrained artists with teaching methods like this making things more confusing. One thing, I am not high on is overboard study of muscles, this guy is clearly proud of himself because he knows the name of every muscle in the body. I don't really think it is that important. I have a good basic knowledge of the bones and muscles and most of that is thanks to drawing them. I took an anatomy class once which I thought would help, it didn't, instead it was the lowest grade I received in college and a lot of stress. I think I have learned much more through observation of models. I am interested in being able to draw what I see not necessarily what the reason for these shapes are. My philosophy is learn to draw the shapes and masses and you can draw anything regardless of it's interior makeup. When I taught we only had a couple of models, students would ask for others but in my opinion you are learning to draw what you see if you can't draw one model that you are looking at you wont be able to draw a different one(though it may be more interesting for the artist). I am not trying to say it has no place for the study of anatomy but I think people like this get carried away, he can name them but can he draw them?
Chapter 2
Anyway, it is not fun but we'll see if the misery and practice helps my art in the end. You'll probably be seeing more figure drawings because I do a lot.

Flight

So I had more elaborate plans for a background but alas. The challenge with this style was trying to decide which lines to exclude(see drawing here). I also had no reference for the arm and had to make it up along with the bird.

figure drawing #21

A recent figure drawing. I like the shape of the leg.