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.

Painting in Veils - Progress

This summer I am taking an oil painting class at Space 301 Gallery, taught by Kimberly Krause, a fine young artist and friend here in Mobile. She is sharing with us a painting technique she learned from Benjamin Shamback using a grisaille and glazing methods, similar to methods used by the classic master painters (e.g. Rembrandt and Vermeer, to name a few). We first create a "monotone" underpainting, by mixing warm and cool "greys" using complementary colors (I used burnt sienna and ultramarine blue) and lead white. We were identifying the lights and shadows (values) and letting the lead white form an impasto-type underlayer for texture. I was not too sure about what I was trying to do, but apparently the most successful or interesting results come when you get various textures and "happy accidents" using the lead white, neutral shadow colors and turpentine.

The first night we created a grisaille underpainting of a deer skull and bowls - the subject matter was mostly white/neutral colors.

The second night we created a grisaille underpainting of a colorful sunflowers/mangos still life.

The third night (this week) we practiced the glazing technique over the sunflowers grisaille painting (creating a thin "couch" layer of glazing medium, with thin layers of dry oil paint then scrumbled over areas of the painting and then rubbed out, and then successive thin layers of dry oil paint lain in, scrumbled and partially rubbed off). You can totally wipe out some glaze layers for hilights. The overlayment of color glazes are supposed to provide a luminosity to the paint. Then you can apply "impasto" paint as desired to finish off the painting.

I don't think I was that very successful with the glazing on this painting, since my underpainting seemed too dark and/or my glazes were applied too thickly. But I think I now have an idea of what to do with the next painting - at least we'll see if that is the case next week. Next week we create a grisaille underpainting from a live figure model. Should be fun and a different twist.

This is a challenge to learn a new technique while also trying to learn the special quirks of painting with oils. But just practicing using oils is helping me be more comfortable with the medium, which is what I wanted to accomplish after all.

I'll post our further progress in this class after our figure session next week!

SALSA 2010, Etc.

Well, I entered a couple of my cow paintings into the SALSA 2010 exhibit at Space 301. SALSA is the South Alabama Survey of Artists exhibit - a new regional show of contemporary art. My "Sweet Home Cheese Farm Bull (Baldwin County Cow No. 1) was accepted and I delivered it to the gallery last Monday; and the opening reception was Friday during the 5th Anniversary LODA Artwalk. It was a steamy but wonderful night to celebrate the downtown Mobile Arts scene. My friend Kathy Friedline, her husband Mark, and I made the rounds. Festivities were all along Dauphin Street, from Cathedral Square Gallery on the upper end; to the Art Gowns Project at Mobile Arts Council, a colorful, abstract exhibit of works by Mark Davis, Wanda Sullivan and JoAnn Cox at The Paper Wasp, and the SALSA exhibit at Space 301 on the lower end; as well as several other gallery venues in between. Street musicians were everywhere, and I especially enjoyed the Bay City Brass group. Here are a few photos from Friday night.

Kathy took this photo of me by my bull painting.

The Bay City Brass Band in Cathedral Square.

Bertice McPherson with one of her sculptures - she won an Honorable Mention award in the show!

Jami Buck's beautiful abstract piece.

Lydia Host's interesting figurative sculpture.

Mary Elizabeth's wonderful collage with a Nancy Drew theme.

Saturday we had our Figure Group and a new model (Mason), who had a lengthy resume listing his professional modeling experience - he turned out to be a great model. After our drawing session, Mary Elizabeth invited the group to her place for a light gourmet lunch followed by yummy homemade ice cream.

On Sunday I woke to discover a photo of my cow painting was posted along with a few others in the local newspaper Arts Column coverage of the SALSA show - which was a nice surprise. My artwork has now been accepted into two recent regional shows (University of Mobile Juried Exhibition and the SALSA 2010), so maybe I can now be considered an emerging artist (?). I don't really care so much if I sell my art work or win any awards, but it does give me pleasure to have people recognize and appreciate my art.

Later Sunday, I attended a video on Miniature Art at the Mobile Museum of Art (sponsored by our Alabama Miniature Art Society as an educational outreach program); and then rushed on to the opening reception for my friends Janie Brown and Carolyn Greene. They are holding a joint exhibition at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer. They had a nice show and a good turnout at the reception. My friend Kathy Friedline and I are scheduled to show here together in October; and my friend Jami Buck will show there in August. This is turning out to be a fun place to show your artwork, even if it does not provide much public exposure. I'm including a photo from the reception. Carolyn and Janie in front of Janie's artwork.

Another busy art-filled weekend here in Mobile!

Winter to Summer, and Bayou Heartaches

Last Saturday I picked up my painting at the Library as we were taking down the Mobile Art Association Spring Show. I promised to post a photo of my painting I entered into this show. This is an acrylic painting, 15 in. by 30 in., titled "Winter Grackles, St. Marks Wildlife Refuge". This is based on a photo I took in January when we spent a few days in Apalachicola, Florida and had a chance to visit the refuge. This is one of my favorite places along the coast, ever since I was in college at Florida State University. I used to visit the refuge in the fall and winter and look for gators sunbathing if it was a cool sunny day. This was a fun painting to finish using my palette knife for both water and marsh grasses, as well as putting lots of different colors and texture in the fence boards.

From winter to summer - today our Plein Air South group made a trip down to Bayou La Batre to try to paint some shrimp boats. Everyone has been so upset about the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf and the fear that this could totally change the gulf coast way of life, especially for the shrimpers along the coast. Bayou La Batre is the seafood capital of Alabama, and the whole town is dependent in one way or another on the fishing industry in the Gulf. We found a shady spot along the bayou to paint a few boats, and then traveled down Shell Belt Road to the mouth of the bayou. All the shrimp boats were out in the sound working for BP - BP has hired local boat owners to assist with spotting the oil spill locations and skimming for oil in the open water areas. After lunch, Kathy Friedline and I went back to the Bayou and caught the shrimpboat flotilla returning to the Bayou city docks. We talked to some of the shrimpers, who said that they had observed the globs of moussey oil passing through the "Katrina Cut" in Dauphin Island and entering into Mississippi Sound. The skimmer boats were in route to try to collect the spill. It was heartbreaking to hear the local fishermen express their frustration that things had gotten so bad and their fears that they were losing their livelihood and way of life. It is also sad to think that this spill could ruin all the wonderful coastal areas along the coast, from the Louisiana Delta, to our barrier islands, the gulf fishing industry and all the way to the Apalachicola Bay.

Our Plein Air painting group under the shade.

Three of the Bosarge brothers on their boat in Bayou La Batre.

Workers unload some oiled booms.

View of shrimp boats in the bayou.

My little watercolor capturing a couple of boats in the upper bayou near the lift bridge.

Figures and Portraits

The last few days have been quieter and I am enjoying it, and perhaps getting more back to normal. Saturday morning was my downtown figure drawing group, and we had Joni for our model - and most of us just love drawing Joni - she has such interesting features. We had a good sized turn-out for the group, which was the last meeting for the spring session and a planning session for what comes next. We decided to continue the group into the summer and to rotate responsibilities of who will pose/time the model and who will line up the model each session. It is nice to see everyone want to cooperate to keep a good thing going. I'm posting some drawings from this week - one from my Wednesday night figure drawing group and two from Saturday's session.

More playing around with color with my hard pastels!

This last one is an example of having to draw what you see, not what you think it should be. Her left leg was in an interesting fore-shortened position, so hopefully I've captured what looks like a leg and knee!

Later Saturday afternoon I went downtown to the Cathedral Square Gallery for the 4th Saturday Upper Dauphin Street Art Walk. My friend Satomi asked me to join her in doing portrait sketches during the art walk. Satomi and I sat in front of the gallery to sketch and were able to get our gallery intern to pose for us, in order to entice passersby to enter the gallery. Not sure how effective we were, but we'll try this again next time and maybe recruit some other of the gallery artists to participate with us. Unfortunately I did not get a photo of our portrait sketches (I gave both of mine to the intern). But I've noticed I've been a little more effective in capturing the faces of the figures I've been drawing lately, so I've been getting a little portraiture practice in my figure drawing sessions.