New Painting!

Here's the drawing for a new painting. This is with the model, George, I hired. I shot some reference for the background, immersing him in a bizarre landscape of folds and stars. I think this has potential. I have friends from California coming for the weekend. Will be great to see them, but it sucks losing momentum when I start something like this.

Nose Dive

Okay, so this was a week of work down the gutter. I became increasingly dissatisfied with how this was going. Felt like I was floundering. It's hard to flounder in a painting whilst floundering with my adjustment to New York. I might need to get a truck soon. So I went a little further with this painting, making it worse, all the while thinking of something else I wanted to try out. You don't get to see the even less inspired version. It was painted over, then put aside. On to something else.

Value Study

Here's the value study. I intend for most elements to get a bit lighter as I layer paint on them. With this painting I'm going to try and get most of the abstract elements done before doing the figure, which is opposite of what I did with the last two. Stay tuned.

Drawing on Canvas

The drawing on the canvas has been finished and I'm happy with it. I'm going to do most of the value study on the canvas in black, white, and greys. I've some colors in mind, and I know thing will change as I go, but a basic value structure is always good to work with.

I put some clear plastic up on my wall, found the studs, and screwed the canvas to my wall. Ghetto fabulous easel! Only three holes in the drywall, nobody will know. I am the Kaiser Soze of apartments, nobody has any idea what's happened even after I'm gone. Thought I'd be able to work at school so I ditched my last easel, which I wasn't crazy about. This will do nicely until September and the games begin.

First New York Painting

NYAA is doing some remodeling, which means I'm starting to work from home. Not a bad thing, I'm used to it. The first image is a line drawing of the composition - any circles will actually be stars. Using stars to break up some of the main shapes and will be add depth. Stars are great, and are something worthy of adding to my first painting in New York.

I attempted to do a full value study with charcoal. It didn't turn out well, but was useful. I love charcoal.

It will be interesting to see if this painting goes "as planned" or gets completely changed throughout the process like the last couple. Tomorrow I'm setting up my painting studio in my bedroom and getting the canvas ready. Hopefully I'll have time to start drawing, I'm swinging for the fences on this one.

New York!

I landed on June 19, 2011. This was a week of record heat and I inhabited an apartment I had never seen before, in a neighborhood that was completely foreign. The apartment is up four flights of stairs, had no AC, no blinds, no furniture, no internet... nothing. The only thing it had was volcanic properties of heat and light.
   It's almost August now and after a wind-sprint of "gettin-shit-done" my place is furnished and comfortable.
   I have never had this much culture shock inside my own country. I live in a Hasidic neighborhood, so everyone looks funky to me. The best grocery store here is Russian, so I can't read half the labels and have to mime questions to the staff. And I've been living in a town of 1000 people for the last three years with daily commutes down dirt roads in my pickup. Learning the bus routes and subway lines has been a bit of an adjustment.
   I'm starting to see the matrix a little bit.

Spent 2 days updating my web site. I'm happy with it, good to see some refinement in what's included.

Hired a model to pose for the next painting. Very cool guy who works as a stunt man. Taking a look at the photos after this post to see what I've got to work with.

Included in this post is my last painting, called "Time To Leave Town."

Finally... an update!

I got back from a three week trip to Northern India with some new ideas about painting... and this is what I did. I've been thinking about how much I love the implied narrative that comes with any figurative painting.  But the mental exercise that happens with abstract painting is also very interesting to me. I'm certainly not the first to mix the two together. But I like the idea of having a figure interacting with an abstraction. The abstraction feels, to me, like an extension of a figure's mental state.