August - This and That

I can't say it's the summer doldrums, since there is still alot going on right now. So thought I'd catch up on some of the recent goings on. My artist friend Jami Buck has a solo show of her artwork at the Church of the Redeemer for the month of August. Her reception was Sunday a week ago. Alot of artist friends came out to enjoy her art and to give her moral support. You can see her artwork on her blog. I bought one of her paintings of a small boat in the marsh grass.

Also I finished my Painting in Veils class with Kimberly Krause. Our last painting was of the figure. I previously posted my underpainting, but when I started applying the glazes I realized I did not build up enough white pigment in the underpainting to capture the color glazing - I learned this was an important step. So I spent our last class session applying more flake white and tinted white underpainting. I will apply the glazes at home - I've put in my order for some glazing medium. I hope to try some more paintings at home once I've "mastered" the grisaille underpainting technique. Here is the updated underpainting. I applied white and toned white mixture to the entire figure and some of the background areas -notably the checkered floor pattern. Can't wait for the glazing compound to arrive in the mail!

Also, I've been starting a series of critter paintings for a show that I'm doing jointly with fellow artist and friend Kathy Friedline. I'm trying to finish at least six new small critter paintings for this exhibit, which will be at the Church of the Redeemer in October. Here are a couple of preview excerpts from the first two that are almost finished - four more to go . . .

Sketch Crawl at the Exploreum - Reptiles!

Yesterday morning was the latest Sketch Crawl sponsored by the Mobile Arts Council. We were hosted by the downtown Mobile Exploreum, and adult sketchers were granted free admission to the Reptiles exhibit. This was a wonderful exhibit with live specimens of turtles, snakes, lizards and gators/crocodiles, as well as some great interactive exhibits teaching little known facts about reptiles. My favorite "critters" were the Alligator Snapping Turtle and the Bearded Lizard. I tried to sketch the snapping turtle, but was not successful since he kept moving - he would get a bead on the spectators on the outside of his class case, and follow them back and forth. The Bearded Lizard and Saltwater Crocodile were much more cooperative subjects. Here are my sketches and a couple of photos of the snapping turtle. You might want to go down to the Exploreum and check out this exhibit. Also, check out all the wonderful sketches at the MAC sketch crawl website.

The Figure Underpainting

Last Tuesday we had a live model and created an underpainting from the figure. This time we were to chose a single color to create the underpainting - I selected my favorite Burnt Sienna, thinned with turpentine, and then hi-lighted with lead white again. I was able to create some interesting affects from the turp and paint, and also enjoyed putting in some of the background features and the tiled floor. This is a poor photo which makes the perspective look off due to the camera angle, but you can see the general effect of the underpainting/value study. This week we will apply glazes over the deer skull underpainting we created several weeks ago, while we let the figure underpainting continue to dry. Then next week (our last session) we will apply glazes over the figure underpainting.