Nude with News

I can now post a small nude that I painted for the Portrait Society of America's Mystery Sale: Limited Size, Unlimited Talent. For this sale, artists are chosen and given a 6 x 9 inch panel to paint on and are asked not to sign their works. At the event which takes place at the organization's annual conference, buyers bid on the paintings without knowing who the artist of each painting is. It's great fun and it was an honor to participate along side some of the most well known artists working today (secretly.) Below was my contribution.

Oil, 6x9 inches

I've been pretty busy lately and while I haven't been able to post here much I've accumulated several bits of news to share:

My piece, Fairy and Her Steed was a finalist in this year's Art Renewal Center Salon. I'm excited to be including in their new Imaginative Realism category. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!

Looking Back has been accepted to the Oil Painters of America's First Annual Salon Show in Petoskey, MI. Taking place between June 21st and August 31st, 2013.

Crater Lake received second place in a juried show at Hope Gallery in Bristol, RI.

I'm honored and grateful to be included in all these events!

Mark

Oil on Canvas, 12 x 16 inches

Earth, with A Close-Up

A few little recent paintings. Prints available at my Etsy shop.

Home, Oil, 8 x 8 inches

Apple Harvest, Oil, 12 x 16 inches

Zeno

There are several things to think about when painting from a live model. One that I wasn't expecting while painting Zeno was at the end of his last sitting, when after standing up too quickly and stretching, he lost consciousness and fell face first off the model stand. Luckily, he came away with only a bloody nose.

Zeno, Oil, 11 x 14 inches

This second image is taken in raking light to show the relief texture of the brushwork. I didn't make an animated gif this time, but if you click on either image to zoom in with Blogger's image viewer, you should be able to get the same effect by flipping back and forth with the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Portrait Workshop

I taught my first alla prima portrait painting workshop recently in Wakefield, RI at South County Art Supply. Despite losing track of time and rushing the end of the demonstration I gave, it went pretty well and was a lot of fun. I'll probably do it again sometime, so if you would be interested in taking a workshop in Rhode Island, let me know in the comments or in an email so I can gauge the interest level. Below are a few pictures of my demonstration in progress and the end result (with a few touch ups to fix what I rushed.)

Oil, 12 x 16 inches

OPA National Exhibition

This new painting of mine has been accepted to the Oil Painters of America 22nd National Juried Exhibition! This year's the show will be at InSight Gallery in Fredericksburg TX from May18th - June17th.

Young Couple, Oil, 16 x 20 inches

Below is a detail (left) and an animated gif (right) showing both raking light and even light so you can see the relief of the brushwork, and because animated gifs are fun.

Detail

Raking Light

Jillian Looking Back

Pushing the brushwork.

Oil, 8 x 10 inches

Emily in Raking Light

Getting a good digital representation of an oil painting is difficult. I usually scan my paintings, but lately my digital photography skills have been improving. Finally realizing that one of the polarized lighting gels I made six months ago was rotated 90 degrees in the wrong direction was a good step (thereby creating glare rather than removing it.) Being able to remove glare from my photos in this way makes digitization go a lot faster.

Another perk is that I can also get good "raking light" photos like the one below without too much glare on relief brushwork. The term, raking light, means to have one light aimed at an angle very near to the plane of the surface being photographed (the painting.) This causes any bumps on the surface to cast shadows and shows all of the three-dimensional relief of the otherwise two-dimensional surface. This three dimensional quality is a major part of what is lost to a viewer when seeing a painting on a computer screen.

Among other things, the impressive effect of seeing a painting in person has to do with seeing it from multiple angles and being able to change how the light bounces into your eyes by moving around. So while a raking light photo still isn't as good as seeing something in person and doesn't suit every painting, it can add an interesting dimension to an otherwise flat image.

Oil, 14 x 18 inches

Clark

Oil, 11 x 14 inches

Fantasy Portrait and SILA Silver

New fantasy portrait completed at a smokey lava lake, near Mordor.

Oil, 16 x 20 inches

Judging by Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles for the annual Illustration West has been completed and I'm delighted to receive a Sliver Award for my painting Wind Farm! Congratulations to everyone who was accepted. See the award winners here.

A Fairy and Her Steed

Here's the new piece I teased in the last post. I took a new approach to color here and I like where it's going. Admittedly though, the bulge in the snakes body where it emerges from the grass is too subtle.

Oil, 18 x 24 inches

(Click Images to Zoom)

As the holidays are approaching,
now's a great time to see this print and many others
at my Etsy store!

Illuxcon Sneak Preview

Here's a peek of a new painting that will be making it's debut at Illuxcon this weekend! Come see it in person, or you'll have to wait until next week to see the full image.

Also, making their exhibiting debut will be Wind Power and Satyrs at Dusk. 

I hope to see you there!

Jessica

Oil, 11 x 14 inches

In just two weeks I'll be exhibiting at Illuxcon in Pennsylvania. It's the place to be for traditional fantasy art. I hope to see you there!

Video: Painting Wind

I've created a video so you can watch the process of creating my latest painting, Wind! In the video I quickly flip through the rough, preliminary planning stages and then you can watch me paint the whole piece in stop-motion. This is the first video I've ever made and isn't really meant to be an instructional video, but hopefully it's fun to watch the process. It compresses many weeks of planning and about ten days of painting time into three and a half minutes. I usually work section to section because it allows me to work "wet into wet" as much as possible without the paint drying.

I recommend clicking the little gear at the bottom of the video to upgrade to HD quality and watching it full screen to see the details of what's going on.

Thanks for watching! If you like it, please give it a thumbs up on youtube and share it on facebook or other social media.

Wind Farm

This is the first of what I hope to turn into a series of paintings based on energy sources. I hope this piece contributes, in some small way, to enthusiasm for clean energy and other dialogue about solutions to big problems. If you like this image and would like to help spread enthusiasm for clean energy, prints are available in two sizes at my Etsy Shop.

I also encourage anyone supportive of clean energy to visit the Department of Energy's Green Power Network to find out if there is a supplier of clean energy in your area. Many people don't even realize that they can easily sign up to purchase their electricity from clean sources for a near negligible increase in price.

Oil, 18 x 24 inches

Click the full image above or the detail views below to zoom.