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.

Tasha

Oil, 11 x 14 inches

I've recently been notified that my painting "Glimmer at the Water's Edge" has been accepted to the Oil Painters of America Eastern Regional Exhibition! The show will open September 29th in Bennigton, VT, at the Bennington Center for the Arts.

Roark, Part Two

Oil, 11 x 14 inches
(click to zoom)

You may remember my last painting of Roark in a knit cap and long hair that I posted back in March. Well, he shaved his head and he hardly looks like the same person.

Ali

Oil, 11 x 14 inches

Etiquette of Drawing in Public

Persistent followers of my blog know that I often get my drawing practice while visiting my local coffee shop. I am often asked if I have frequent encounters with angry drawing subjects demanding to know why I'm staring at them, but the truth is I've never had anyone get upset. I've only been met with curiosity and enthusiasm.  The secret is... don't act like a creep! This sounds simple, and in practice it is, but it takes some thought to understand it from your subjects perspective.

Number one, don't hide and don't hide your drawing. It may seem counter intuitive when you don't want your subject to be aware that they are being drawn (since this can make them assume a less natural and more self-conscious pose) but acting secretive equals acting creepy. Be open, be friendly. You don't have to tell your subject that your drawing them, but if they happen to come over or walk by, don't cover up your drawing . Show it to them if you like or just make it easy to see so they know what you're doing.

Number two, don't be distracting. This is the most common mistake artists make when drawing in public. They put their sketchbook flat on the cafe table and continuously bob their head up and down between subject and sketch. Movement in our periphery vision catches our attention, especially when it's followed by a face looking at us. So just as the left side of the animated image in your periphery vision (below) is distracting you from reading this, the artist distracts their subject with constant movement and draws the subject's attention to the fact that they are being stared at. Solution: find some way to situate your drawing surface and the subject in or near the same field of vision so that the only thing you have to move is your eyes. This is different from being secretive. It's a matter of common courtesy to avoid being distracting.

Don't be distracting to your subject!

Even using this method, I am sometimes "caught." I glace back up from my sketch to have my gaze met head on by the subject before the drawing is finished. Not wanting to disturb them from their pose, I change the direction of my glances to something else nearby for three or four glances. This is usually enough to make them think I'm actually drawing something else. When they go back to what they were doing I continue my drawing. Then when I'm done, I leave it out on the table for them to see if they decide to come investigate with a walk-by; sometimes we have a conversation.