The Main Loop

Plein Air: My Bike & Paint Adventure

2012-02-12T10:00:00.000-08:00

I was part of an article in Plein Air Magazine's online edition.

http://www.outdoorpainter.com/news/just-one-painter-of-light-550.html

Steve Doherty, the editor of Plein Air Magazine, contacted me after seeing me regularly post plein air paintings to Facebook's "En Plein Air" group.

I went out and rode my bike every day for almost a month and did a painting or two. Most of these are 6x8" oils on panels. I didn't have a set goal with most of these other than for the sake of study. I did get a lot of valuable brush milage out of it. I think I got some new fans out of it on Facebook and Google+ too.

Some of these are available for purchase through the Christopher Queen Gallery. Check out my page if you want to see them:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150574153106282.433918.134969141281&type=3

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Also worth noting: If you haven't been looking at my tumblr lately, and you are a fan of vintage illustration you might not be in the know - I did the hard work of lifting the best paintings off of the latest Heritage auction listings - See them at my tumblr: http://themainloop.tumblr.com/

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I'm on this week's Bohemian!

2012-02-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

Hiya folks,

I happy to announce that the North Bay Bohemian decided to use "Reve D'Or" as the cover to this week's paper! If you are local to my area, pick one up today, and write a letter to the editor letting him know you dig the artwork :)

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Ballpoint Pen - A Humble Medium

2012-01-19T18:39:00.000-08:00

This round of drawings started with me forgetting 90% of my tools at home. Oops!

I tried to make do with what I had, but it was getting really annoying having only a blunt pastel tool, charcoal powder, an eraser pencil, and a blending stump. You just can't do much with it.

I went out to my car and dug around for anything else...

I found a Verithin pencil....

...and a ballpoint pen.

It'd been a really long time since I'd used a pen for life drawing. It's a good exercise to try to not have an eraser to fall back on. Being as direct as you can will make you quicker.

This one was actually a Pilot Fineliner. It's cool but not quite as smooth as a ballpoint pen.

Here are a few more 20-minute drawings.

People seem to enjoy the novelty of a ballpoint pen more than the look of it, but it's definitely one of my favorite drawing tools. Not as much as charcoal(nor as permanent, unfortunately) but worth trying if you are in some sort of rut.

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Randy Sexton Workshop - Weekend Warrior

2012-01-08T23:58:00.000-08:00

This weekend I took advantage of my prize for taking top honors at the 2011 Valona Paintout this year. What was that prize you say? Why, it was a workshop with the extremely fine painter Randy Sexton. It was a lot of fun. Although I didn't need as much instruction as the rest of the class, I really enjoyed the practice time that I got in. I did as many clunkers as those halfway worth showing, as is expected with doing these quick studies. I've been familiar with doing quick studies ever since I took a class with Craig Nelson back in the day, so I think I was ahead of the pack. The other students definitely improved by the end of the class, which is saying something about Randy's teaching skills. (By the way, super super nice guy)

We started with 25-minute studies in the beginning of day one. We then moved on to 1.5 hr studies in the afternoon.

This is one of the 25-er's that survived:

I did this one in the afternoon in about 1.5 hours.

Day two began with a 25 minute study, then I did this one in about 2.5 hours. This one came out pretty successful. The likeness was decent, and I had a pretty good variety in paint thickness.

This one was about 2 hours long. It was a fun exercise in dramatic lighting. Not quite as solid of a finish as the other one (matter of fact, it's quite unfinished) but I am planning on taking it to a finish cuz ya know what why not?

Here are some shots of what Randy did over the weekend. He spent most of the time helping the students so there's nothing here that's too mind-blowing but he does have a lot of dynamite studies all throughout his studio.

He frequently offers workshops in the Bay Area and other areas throughout the country (and in Europe sometimes, I think.) If he's good enough to teach Pixar employees, you can probably learn something from him.

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Figure Drawing - New Tools

2011-12-30T12:49:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, here are a bunch of drawings from the last few months. I held back on posting most of these because I had so many paintings to post before, but I am just about caught up with all of that so here are some new sketches.

These next drawings are from when I crashed Henry Yan's drawing workshop at the Academy of art. Man, I miss the 2-minute intense gesture drawings, and she was great. These were so much fun to do. They never do two-minute gestures in Sebastopol, but they get you warmed up really well.

10-minutes

20-minute drawings done with mostly vine charcoal.

These next drawings were from a few days ago. I've been using a lot of new drawing tools, of which I am working on doing another "materials breakdown" movie.

Have a Happy New Year!

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Oil Painting - Pismo Beach, California

2011-12-24T18:03:00.000-08:00

"Rosy Air" 10x18 in. Oil on Linen Mounted on Panel

Merry Christmas everyone! Not that it's that cold around here, but I hope this painting reminds you of warm days at the beach after a long day of playing, or sunbathing, or watching your dog chase waves around.

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iPhone 4S Test - Head Drawing in Vine Charcoal

2011-12-14T22:34:00.000-08:00

Shot a video using my iPhone. Wanted to see how well the quality is captured. Fortunately it did quite well. More paintings demos coming soon.

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New Figurative Series: Body of Earth

2011-12-08T21:02:00.001-08:00

I am happy to unveil my newest series of figurative paintings. These have been in the works for a long time, and actually have been completed since before the "Natural Patterns" series, but they have been difficult not only in getting decent pictures of them, but in deciding how would be the best way to present them.

I have used my friend Nicole for figure drawings and studies many times. She is a former gymnast and dancer who is in incredible shape. Not only that but she's so giving of her time and talents for my artistic pursuits. I've been wanting to use her for a series all to her own for a while now.

This series grew out of my love of depicting the "form" of the "human form". I love being able to show the solidity and intricacy of the human body. The way things interlock, push, and pull underneath the skin is extremely fascinating. Nicole is the perfect model to explore this with. As with my other series, I like to tie in the subject and background in unique ways. In this series I've been attempting to echo suggestions of the form outside of the figure and into the murkiness of the backgrounds.

This series has been one that I've been exploring within the actual creation of the pieces instead of how I normally plan everything out. I feel like this series is going to evolve dramatically from these first few shots by the time I am done exploring it. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy these first steps.

"Reaching Ascension" 9x9 Oil on Canvas Mounted on Board

"Tephra" 11x14 Oil on Canvas Mounted on Board

"Supreme Luminary" 10x18 Oil on Canvas Mounted on Board

"Eternal Braid"Oil on Canvas Mounted on Board

"Void Brightening" 20x14 in. Oil on Canvas Mounted on Board

Which is your favorite painting from the series? Vote here: http://bit.ly/naturalpatternspoll

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New Series + Woodland - Modern Eden Gallery

2011-12-02T06:55:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

I am participating in this month's group show at the Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco where I had my solo show earlier this year. The show is called Woodland and I created these new paintings for it.

They are both 10x10" oil on wood panel. I posted up WIPs on Facebook that you can check out here: LINK

If you are in the area and want to check out the show, you can RSVP for the event here or here.

This is the start of a new direction I am going in with the pattern concept I've been working with for the last year and a half. Rather than having the pattern interact with the skin of the model, it is growing out of the cloth and into the background. I hope you enjoy them.

"Of The Wildland" 10x10" Oil on Panel. 2011

Purchase Online: http://moderneden.myshopify.com/collections/woodland/products/of-the-wildland

"Attimi Bellissimi" 10x10" Oil on Panel. 2011

Purchase Online:http://moderneden.myshopify.com/collections/woodland/products/attimi-bellissimi

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Holiday Cheer!

2011-11-25T01:10:00.000-08:00

Due to the response I have gotten from the weekend sale, I am permanently lowering prices on all of my available drawings. I would like to sell them to make room for new drawings in 2012. Check them out. Happy shopping!
https://www.zatista.com/store/index/The-Main-Loop

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Figure Drawing - Going Tonal

2011-11-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

This week I used only vine charcoal with hints of 4B General charcoal pencil and compressed charcoal to add some darks.

These were 3-minute sketches each. I basically strove to capture the silhouettes in the first minute or so, then used the rest of the time to work on refining that silhouette.

These next drawings were 5 minutes each. The further down you go, the more of the original strokes you can see. You can see how loose I start with these drawings.

This next drawing was 10-minutes long. I get the overall proportions and light/dark patterns down by this time. If I'm doing well, that is.

All of the following drawings are 20-minutes each.

This one was probably my favorite drawing. I like the foreshortening of the leg on this one.

In most of these drawings I use a blending stump. I use my fingers as well. This last one probably used the most layers of vine charcoal. I would probably advise against this if you can't spray-fix the drawing. It gets smudged up too easily.

I love the feeling of vine charcoal over the sketch paper. It's too bad that it's so fragile. If you don't take care of the drawings they will get smudged around too easily.

I have a non-utilized Etsy shop. How many of you are on there? I've been reluctant to start using it. One, because I have a Zatista store, and two, I am not sure how effective it is in comparison to the other stores. I do want to try it out though. Let me know if you are interested in any of these drawings or other drawings from my recent posts. Email me and I will create a listing on Etsy.

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Plein Air Events: 2011 in Review + Rankings

2011-11-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

Last year I made a post about the plein air events I did in 2010. I thought I would do the same thing for this year since not only did I participate in some events for the 2nd time but I did some new events as well. This year I kept it pretty local for the most part. I didn't have the chance to apply for most of the out-of-town events so I kept up appearances by doing so many local events.

Marin Fair Plein Air 2011

I started off this year a little later than usual with the first event being early July. The plein-air-circuit season actually starts back in May with the Carmel Art Festival. Since I've yet to participate in these events I started a bit later, with a lot more local events.

I did this one last year as well. It's a fun little event, if you don't mind painting amongst crowds in the middle of July heat. It's a cheap event, unjuried at $12 per panel. You get a good 4 hours or so to paint anywhere in the fairgrounds. I won first place again this year. If I keep this up, it's a good way to win 250 bucks a year for not a whole lot of effort.

Pacific Northwest Plein Air 2011

I returned to Northern Oregon this year to participate in this year's Pacific Northwest Plein Air 2011. I had such a great time last year and was highly anticipating my return to the Gorge. I made friends last year that I was looking forward to seeing again. A few things changed this year, a bit to the detriment of the event.

Last year they put us up in a condo, about 5 or 6 of us in the same house. It was fun because we all could get together at the end of the day and comment on each other's paintings, share drinks and stories, and generally have a good time. This year they had us a bit spread out amongst separate generous hosts. It was still nice, and we managed to hang out a lot with some effort, but that aspect of the event was noticeably missing.

I didn't get to attend this year's reception but from what I heard, sales were not nearly as good as last year's. I didn't sell any paintings, but I still had such a good time painting there. I would love to come back next year but it's tough to justify such a big travelling expense without any guarantee of compensation. I would have to consider this event more of a "vacation" than a viable method of generating sales.

The event itself is consistently well-organized. Being the premier event in the area, they do get good prizes donated to them by the big art supply companies. They have pretty good events for the artists and they do a decent job of picking "suggested areas" if you care to paint with fellow artists. Most artists however, go find their own favorite spots.

Without being an established artist in the area, sales are tough in that part of the country. This event still gets a high recommendation from me for the same reason it got high marks last year: a gorgeous varied locale with no shortage of amazing scenery, well-organized events and great camraderie with the other artists.

The Great Petaluma Paintout

This is a local one-day event in Petaluma. It's a small event, open to anyone who wants to participate. You are confined to a small section of Petaluma with about 3 hours to do what you want. I chose to paint something I knew the other artists wouldn't be compelled to paint. I don't know if it backfired or what, but I didn't get any prize or sale. At 20 dollars to apply, it didn't seem that worth it for most people unless they won something or managed to make a sale. I am a bit leery of outdoor exhibitions nowadays. They don't seem all that conducive for sales and networking.

CWA Paintout: Marin Art and Garden Center

I participated in the California Watercolor Association's paint-out at the Marin Art and Garden Center in Ross, California. It's a place I've painted at for fun a bunch of times, which is the reason I applied to this one. It was open to oil painters, but something doesn't feel right about painting in oils at an event focused on watercolors. This was the first time I have painted in gouache for an event like this. It was a bit tricky painting here on such an overcast day. There was a decent mix of professionals and hobbyists who painted at this event. I squeaked by with a third place award. The reception was really short, and it was pretty much attended only by friends of the artists. It was a decent event, but I'd put it in the "do-for-fun" category instead of the "must-do".

Calistoga Plein Air Paint Out 2011

This event has a lot of potential. It's the first year for this event, and for first-timers, they did a pretty good job. It was a 2-day event with a 1-day reception/sale. The cool part about it is that a lot of the local wineries opened their property to us artists who might not normally be welcome. It was fun because it's really close to home. The participants were a mix of amateurs and local semi-pro's. I may have been a bit out-classed by them, so I feel like if higher-caliber artists applied it could grow into a pretty cool event. It's tough to sell in my range when everyone else sells so low.

Clunie Festival: East Sacramento

This is another first-time event, but it's actually a morphing of a different event from a few years ago called Capitol Plein Air. A few of the people I've painted with and since became friends in Sacramento helped run this show. It's another 1-day event which means opportunities to sell are limited. McKinley Park is in one of the nicest neighborhoods of Sacramento so one would hope that the big spenders come out. Truth is, a lot hangs on the reputation of the event. It's really hard to establish credibility in the first year of any event. The organizers did a great job of trying to do so, though. The event was extremely well-attended, and some big sales were had, but they were either by well-established artists or inexpensive art. If they keep expanding the event and attract art organizations to donate good prizes, they will get great publicity. They are doing everything else right. This is what happens when veterans of plein air events learn from what works and what doesn't and try to establish a new event with the hopes of getting something good going.

Valona Plein Air Paint Out 2011

This was my second time participating in this event. It's put on by the Epperson Gallery in Crockett(North East SF Bay). I like this event because so many friends of mine participate and the receptions are pretty well-attended. I tend to focus on different things there because it's so unique of an area to paint. The town is very industrial and there is an interesting muted tone to everything in the area. The prizes are different at this event as well because instead of cash prizes, this year I won another Pam Glover painting (much bigger than last year's) and a weekend workshop with Randy Sexton. I am not sure if they are doing it next year, but I hope they do. I do well at this show and it is helping me to establish my credibility in the area.

3rd Annual Paint Allied Arts

The final event in the season. It's a bit far-out in the season so the weather is gonna be hit-or-miss. The Allied Arts Guild buildings and park is in a great neighborhood in Menlo Park and is a beautiful place to paint. I think I would much prefer painting here in spring when everything is in bloom. It's got to look amazing. It's another one-day event and sale. To me I find it a bit weird to have an outdoor show when they have a gallery. For some reason it kind of works here, though. The gallery is a bit too small to be comfortable with lots of crowds anyway. The reception was well-attended despite the gloomy weather. People were somewhat willing to buy if you had the right price. A couple of people sold but the paintings were $300 and under. I got a lot of people interested in my work, but I may be out of their range. I did give out a lot of cards, though. Word did spread. It was nice to see some familiar painters there as well.

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So here are this year's order of plein air events, from least-likely to want to do again to most-likely.

#8 CWA Paintout: Marin Art and Garden Center
#7 The Great Petaluma Paintout
#6 3rd Annual Paint Allied Arts
#5 Marin Fair Plein Air 2011
#4 Calistoga Plein Air Paint Out 2011
#3 Clunie Festival: East Sacramento
#2 Pacific Northwest Plein Air 2011
#1 Valona Plein Air Paint Out 2011

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Closing Thoughts:

In the 2+ years I have done just about every local event in the area. I've only done 1 of the larger events in California, and only one out-of-state event. I think I have a pretty good idea of which events are good and which aren't quite as good. Next year I plan on cutting back on the smaller events and go instead for the better-recognized events. I feel like the money I spend on applying for local events for negligible benefits could be much better applied to going for national events. I don't know if I have the reputation or accolades to make it to the big leagues yet, but I feel like I am ready to start trying. There are some events in California that I still need to try out, as well. It's not gotten to the point that I can rely on these events for steady income. At best they are like paid vacations, but at worst they can be really expensive busts.
Next year I am trying out a lot of new (to me) events, and if I don't get juried in, I will cut way back in participation in local plein air events.

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Figure Drawing - Shorthand

2011-11-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

This week my weapons of choice were primarily these woodless colored pencils by Koh-I-Noor called Progresso's. I also use Cretacolor Nero leads (not the pencil). I sharpen them to a long point just like a charcoal pencil, but they glide better than traditional charcoals.

These first drawings were 3 minutes each. I didn't plan on getting so tonal so quickly but it just happened to work out that way.

These next 5 minute drawings were done with General charcoal pencils. They look a bit more like my 10-minute drawings usually do.

This 10-minute drawing looks a lot more like my 20-minute drawing.

What I realized was that I am really sharpening my shorthand for the time I am allowed. Even the model commented on this.

When everything is going right, I can get a lot in because I get the little shapes right on the first pass. I don't have to slow down as much because I put down the right info in less strokes.

I find when things start to feel too effortless, I have to switch it up to feel like I'm not cheating anymore. Weird, I know.

I think next week I'm gonna use a lot of vine charcoal. I'm feeling a very tonal mood coming along...

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Video: Building My Own Canvas Panels

2011-11-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

I've upgraded my computer after so many years, which means I can finally play with video. This is something I made a while back but I've never been able to publish it until now. If you were ever curious about how to make your own canvas panels, I hope this is informative.

Here is a good question I am answering from Facebook:

Q: how thick are those boards? and what's the biggest you've tried with veneer plywood before warping becomes an issue (obviously the panels are nice and flat right after pressing but do they stay that way if you go to let's say 12x16 or 14x18) ?
btw i really like birchwood but it's quite a bit more expensive.
Sergio Lopez Thats a good question. They are about 3/16". I would say you can probably get up to 18x24" before you should start thinking about reinforcing them. I like birchwood too, but I think they are even more susceptible to warping than the veneer panels.

I will try to make some more painting and drawing videos soon.

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Paint Allied Arts - Results (Mister Walk Down Me I'm The Walkway)

2011-11-07T09:51:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,Just letting you know that I won 3rd place for this painting I did at the Paint Allied Arts paint-out in Menlo Park.

"Down The Walkway" 9x12 Oil on Canvas. $700

I spent close to 3 hours on this one which is more than I usually spend on a plein air painting, but since it was so consistently overcast the whole time, the lighting situation didn't change much, affording me the time to really make sense of the complex scene. I started off with a thumbnail sketch to figure out how I was going to group the lights and darks together.

I've also been trying to get into using thicker paint. One of the best ways to do it is to shovel on a bunch of paint with a palette knife, then take a brush and spread it out. You get the best of both approaches. I'm not usually a fan of the "palette knife"-look for the most part, so it's a good way to get a lot of paint on your canvas efficiently.

The way they did the awards were the top 3 people's choice votes get the prizes. They gave ballots for the public to cast before the stated deadline, so by the time I got mine up, half the people got their votes in. A lot of people told me that they wanted to change their votes after seeing mine! Not a big deal, but more prize money woulda' been nice... Oh well.

This pretty much concludes the year's plein-air event schedule for me. I will do another write-up with my thoughts on the year's events soon. (Link to last year's review: http://themainloop.blogspot.com/2010/12/this-is-article-i-have-been-meaning-to.html)

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In other news, fellow artist Terry Miura has a show at the Thomas Reynolds Gallery in SF. I checked it out and it was outstanding! I really like the direction his new cityscapes are taking. I ended up in a bunch of photos from the opening(wish I brought a change of clothes).

http://terrymiura.blogspot.com/2011/11/urban-aria-opening-was-blast.html

The paintings look great in the gallery. They are very well-presented in the space. Would love to show there... (hint, hint)

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Paint Allied Arts 2011

2011-11-04T01:35:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, November 5th, I am participating for the second time in the Paint Allied Arts plein air paint-out in Menlo Park. We will be painting at the beautiful Allied Arts Guild building. I don't know how well I'll do there, but it's such a cool place to paint. The place was designed at the turn of the 19th century back when architects knew what they were doing. It's a real treat to paint there, regardless of the outcome. If you want to check it out, I will be painting there from 10 AM to about 1:30. We will be exhibiting the paintings from 2 PM to 4 PM. It's a cool place to check out if you've never been there. Hope to see you there!

Paint Allied Arts 2011
Location: Portola Art Gallery, Allied Arts GuildEvent Dates: 11/5/2011 - 11/5/2011
Reception: 11/5/2011 • 10 a.m. -- 4 p.m.

Come join us for the

Plein Air Allied Arts 2011 Paint Out

November 5, 2011

10:00 a.m. -- 4:00 p.m.

25 Artists will be creating beautiful works of the lovely gardens

of the Allied Arts Guild

Pack a picnic or enjoy lunch at the wonderful Cafe Primavera

Mention our show for a 10% discount at the restaurant

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Figure Drawing - A Lonely Pencil

2011-11-04T01:18:00.000-07:00

This time I almost exclusively used the fat black Lyra Color-Giant pencil. I am still using the Canson Biggie sketch pad. The hard pencils feel fairly close to what Conte pencils feel like on smooth newsprint. Conte is still nice and waxier whereas the Lyra feels more like graphite, but the Lyra lead is sturdier. You can press down a bit harder. That's one thing I hate about Conte pencils: they tend to be delicate. They break a lot more than the other ones seem to.

This first one is 5 minutes. It's a bit blockier than I usually do these quicker poses. For some reason I draw with more straight lines with a pencil than with a compressed stick.

The next two drawings are 10 minutes each. They were fun. I felt warmed up quicker than I normally do by this time. I'm not totally sure why.

This was the girl I drew instead of the model, totally stalked her with my eyeballs... CREEPYYYY

I felt like I was pretty good with the lighting today. More so than usual.

This is a tough position to draw. It's harder than it looks. Trying to draw it as I saw it didn't look quite right. I had to "lipo" some areas of her figure.

A ten minute drawing to finish off the night. I used the Ritmo charcoal pencil this time. The hair was the most successful area in my opinion.

So I've been using a lot of different tools and approaches on this sketch paper surface. Would love to know what you think of where your preferences are leaning towards. I always enjoy feedback!

If you want a handy way to look at the other posts I've made about drawing, check out the label "charcoal":

http://themainloop.blogspot.com/search/label/Charcoal

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How To Get The Largest Images From Blogspot

2011-11-02T01:48:00.000-07:00

This isn't really about art in particular but it might be useful to some people. I don't know how obvious this may be to some people because it took me a while to figure this out on my own.

If you're like me, you save a lot of images for your own reference. I have a lot of blogs in my RSS feed and I save a lot of images from them as well, but not everyone posts the images in the highest resolution that they uploaded them, even. I've found a way to reveal and download them.

Note: this only works on "blogspot" blogs. Wordpress? Tumblr? On your own. (Actually I do know how to grab those from Tumblr but it's a bit hit-or-miss.)

Sometimes when you click on an image in a Blogspot blog, the image won't be full-size, it will be something like 400 pixels wide.

If you right-click to open the image in a new tab, it will open it to whatever the original poster set it to show up as.

In this case, it shows up as a 400-pixel-wide image. This is represented in the URL of the image.

All you have to do to get the largest image is change where it says "s400" in the URL to "s1600" and it will automatically switch to the largest size.*

*Sometimes it will be a number other than 400. Doesn't matter. Change it to 1600 anyways.

If it shows up less than 1600 pixels wide, then that's the original size of the image and there's nothing you can do about it.

That's really all there is to it. It took me a while to realize that's all I needed to do.

Next time I will show you how to grab an image from a Flickr account even when the owner has disabled downloading of their images using Firefox.

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Valona Plein Air 2011 - My Contributions

2011-10-28T19:59:00.000-07:00

Last year I participated in the 2010 Valona Paint Out in Crockett, California. It was a good time. I nabbed 1st Place for the painting of the C+H sugar refinery. This year I returned to Crockett and painted these scenes around town.

Whereas last year the boundaries of the event were open, this year they had us stick to northern Contra Costa(Valona, Crockett, Port Costa). With my paintings I basically stuck to Crockett for more of a local feel. This part of the Bay Area has a certain quality of light that is made from the amount of moisture in the air. There is a white softness to the light that is very distinct.

I found that the shadows casted in this scene made an interesting pattern for a painting.

"Industrial Patterns" 8x10 Oil on Canvas Board. $550

I feel like even in black and white the light and dark pattern holds up:

EDIT: "Industrial Patterns" won 1st place at the Valona Paintout 2011!

This next painting was done from the other side of the factory. I was trying to take advantage of the quality of air that I mentioned. The paint in the sky is much thicker than it looks in this picture.

"The Carquinez Air" 8x10 Oil on Canvas Board. $550

This painting was done at the end of the factory. I enjoyed the shape of the tree and the composition between the tree and the building on the right. I've been trying to push for a more unified color harmony, so I pushed the muted yellows a lot more than how I saw them. It's pretty fun to push yourself beyond what you see while still making it feel natural.

"On The Strait" 8x10 Oil on Canvas Board. $550

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These paintings will be on display at the Epperson Gallery in Crockett, CA. The opening reception is from 2 to 5 pm, so if you have Halloween party plans and you're in the East Bay, there will be plenty of time to check them out before the festivities.

Reception and Silent Auction - 2:00 to 5:00 Pm, October 30th.
Awards Reception - 2:00 to 5:00 Pm, October 29th.

View Larger Map

If you want to go check it out earlier, from 11 to 1 there will be a model at the plaza near downtown Crockett which we will be painting. It should be a good day with the weather tomorrow so you should come check it out if you can.

I also heard that the Artist Choice and People's Choice winners will receive a weekend workshop with Randy Sexton. Sweet!

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Figure Drawing - Further Exploration

2011-10-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

Here are a bunch of new drawings from the past few weeks. Still playing around with different drawing tools.

10-minute drawing:

He could not stop talking about how I did the hair:

I usually don't do well with drawing the head at this angle, but I liked how this one came out:

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The first drawings were done with one model, then they switched.

A rare bald female model:

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Last week's Wednesday night figure drawing session:

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Yesterday's session. I felt "on" for most of this one. I started off with a lot of energy that I think helped set the tone for the rest of the session. These first three drawings were done in 3 minutes.

5-minute drawings:

A ten-minute drawing:

20-minute drawings:

She did some weird thing with her boots on this one. If I had another 5 minutes I could have made them read better....

Finishing off with a ten-minute drawing:

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1st Annual Calistoga Plein Air Paintout

2011-10-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

This weekend I participated in the 1st Annual Calistoga Plein Air Festival. It was great to participate in an event so close to where I live. It's literally a half hour away from where I live. Napa Valley is beautiful at this time of the year. Even though it's raining right now, we had perfect weather the whole weekend. It was neither too warm nor too cold.

For this event I decided to start my palette from scratch, and not use any cadmiums or other bright colors. I put down white, a neutral cool grey, and ivory black. My primary colors were ultramarine blue, yellow ochre, and burnt sienna as my red. My secondary colors were Gamblin Radiant Yellow, viridian, and alizarin crimson. To finish it off, I added Winsor Newton Green Gold and dioxazine purple(which I used very sparingly). It's just way easier to harmonize color (if cheaper) and what you observe is usually way grayer than how people paint it. I've been looking at a lot of 19th Century landscape painters lately so it's been influencing what I want my paintings to look like.

I painted these next two paintings in Bothe State Park, which was on the outskirts of where we were allowed to paint. I'd never been there before, and I don't know why. It's a very underrated park, and a relatively easy hike. Most of the trail goes along a creek, which I bet looks a lot more impressive after some winter rain.

This painting I like, although it might be a bit abstract for most. I think the feeling of light breaking through the forest canopy on to the wet rocks reads well here. The inclusion of ivory black in some of the shadows worked well.

This might be my favorite painting I did of the weekend. I even put it in a frame. The reason I liked it so much was the way it came together in the very beginning block-in. Rather than what tends to usually happen in these situations, every stroke tended to strengthen the piece. There are parts where it got dangerously close to doing the opposite, but the balancing act that is trying not to ruin a strong start is one of the great thrills of painting if you ask me. This painting is 6x8 inches and I did this piece in about 45 minutes or so.

On the second day I started off by going to the outskirts of Calistoga and painting this view of Mt. St. Helena. I actually came back after the exhibity to work on it some more to try and fix the drabness of the painting that occurred when viewing it indoors instead of outdoors when painting. It's still one of the hardest things to honestly capture the feeling of midday sun in a painting. I constantly study how other painters tackle it. I think it has a lot to do with the sky color. I will say more about it once I learn more about it.

This was one of my least favorite paintings of the weekend. I had higher hopes for this scene, but it just didn't work out the way I wanted it to. Hills full of pines are still very difficult for me to pull off. It's something I still need to work on. That tree ended up coming out too generic.

This painting was the definite crowd-pleaser. It's another one I went back to touch up afterwards. I got some critiques on it, which I didn't totally agree with, but it was still strengthened by going back and painting on it the next day.

I actually included the older versions of the paintings that I ended up exhibiting. See if you think they were improved by extra work.

I won an "honorable mention" award (less than 3rd place), though 5 separate people came to me and told me I should have won 1st place. Go figure... Sales were good for a lot of people who had paintings under $500. Note to self: paint smaller next year?

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Figure Drawings - Tonal on Sketch Paper

2011-10-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I said I would try some more tonal drawings this time around. I started off this session with the usual Derwent pencils that I enjoy. These are 10-minute drawings. I pushed the feeling of the forms on the one of the right. I think I'm just getting used to compensating for bad lighting.

This was a 20-minute drawing that started off pretty tonal. I indicated the overall shapes very lightly. I didn't put in the sharp outlines until after I had layed in the large tones.

I switched my tools on these next ones. The darkest darks are made with Char-Kole black pastels. The midtones are done with Conte crayons. I would like to know if there are other compressed charcoals that you prefer. A lot of this was smudging with fingers, but I started to introduce the blending stump more and more as I went along.

SOLD

On this drawing it was basically a combination of every technique that I used on the previous drawings of the night. The blending stump almost makes it look like I am using a felt marker, right?

I finished off the night with a 10-minute line drawing with a slight bit of tone added in for good measure.

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California Art Club: Limamtour Retreat + Sneak Peek

2011-09-30T23:42:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in the Califonia Art Club North Bay Chapter's annual Limantour Retreat in the heart of Pt. Reyes. It was a good time. I wasn't crazy about the hostel-sleeping situation but otherwise it was a good time. If you love fog you can't go wrong in Point Reyes. It was pretty gray the entire time, but the companionship was really nice. I met some interesting painters and caught up with friends.

One thing I think is really tough to paint but never seem to practice enough are waves. Especially from life. This is the first time I've actually set up to specifically paint a wave. I've put the seashore in a lot of plein air paintings, but this is basically a "portrait" of a wave. Waves are tough because you basically are painting from life and memory at the same time. Meaning, you have to choose a specific point in the cycle of a wave, wait for it, paint as much as you can, memorize what you can of it, then wait for it again. It was fun to see so much color inside of the wave on even a gray day like this.

This was my second painting. The fog was starting to come in fast at this point. I'm not as happy with this painting because I dont think I established enough of an interesting focal point. I should have also added more variety in texture and paint thickness.

The last painting I did was along the side of the road back to the hostel. There are these great rows of cypress trees. It was getting close to evening and we caught a beautiful subdued pinkish light along the horizon. I enjoyed painting the silhouettes of the trees of the quiet cloudy backdrop. This one was one that I touched up slightly in the studio. I threw some glazes on top of it and made the light sliver a bit lighter.

I wish I had another day to paint there but it started to rain on Sunday. I knew that a few people stayed to tough it out through the rain, but I had enough of the gray.

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I am working on a new figurative painting series. I don't have any of them finished but I at least have them started pretty far along. I'll just give you these to look at for now. In the next couple of weeks I hope to have some of these done to show. I will be anticipating your feedback!

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Figure Drawing: Switching Surfaces

2011-09-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

I've been using rough newsprint for the last few months. It's ok for certain techniques, but it has qualities that make it not the most ideal surface for drawing. I finally finished the pad and am now on to 1 of 3 of my Canson Biggie sketch pads. I like them, but they have a completely different feel compared to newsprint. There are techniques which you can and can't do with either paper. I shouldn't say "can't" but it's a lot harder to use some tools on one surface compared to the other.

I do this every so often where I switch from newsprint to sketch paper and vice versa. It's always a period of adjustment for the next few sessions. I tend to use a lot of different tools for the sketch paper, whereas I tend to have a set method for newsprint. With yesterday's drawing night, each session I used something different or approached it a different way.

For these 5 minute sketches I used Derwent Onyx graphite pencils. Pencils kind of get me to be more precise and rely on accuracy of drawing to make it pleasing.

This ten-minute drawing used a Conte pencil. Conte pencil feels great on anything.

This 20-minute drawing was all graphite as well. It's not very efficient to use a pencil to try and do a tonal drawing, but I can't help to use some hatching for shading.

This one was a mix of Derwent Drawing Pencils and Conte Pencil. This one was fun to do because I was able to get my idea across, which was to suggest the values using edges and not having to rely on filling in everything.

This one was a mix of vine charcoal, graphite and Derwent pencil. I rarely if ever use vine charcoal so heavily on newsprint. The sketch paper grips it much better, which lets you do more with it. If I tried to use vine charcoal and blending stump like this on newsprint, it would become a mess.

My last drawing of the night was this 15-minute study in graphite. I enjoyed drawing this one because of her pose and the lighting across her ribs.

I plan for next time to explore more tonal approaches. Maybe some compressed charcoal? We'll see.

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Oil Painting - Sugarloaf State Park - The Lost Vista

2011-09-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

I am happy to share my latest painting. This landscape is of Sugarloaf State Park. It's one of my favorite hikes, and unfortunately because of state budget cuts, it will most likely be closed soon. I found it to be especially important to give the area some honor by recording it for posterity. I also pushed myself to do a painting that is more along the lines of the painters of the past. I am a big fan of Hudson River School Painters, but I never received such type of training, thus here is my best approximation mixed with what I've learned from so much plein air paintings. I would like to pursue this vein of painting more, but it is quite the labor of love to paint in such manner. I have learned a lot from doing this painting.

"The Lost Vista" 24x34" Oil on Canvas Mounted on Board.

I started off with doing small plein air paintings of what I sort of thought I might like to do. I did a few of these.

I also did some studies of various elements in the scene.

After having a better idea of what I might want to do, I went back to do another plein air study of the area. This is starting to get closer to what I want the picture to be.

After doing the plein air studies, I gathered all of my references, collected inspiration of paintings that were closest to what I wanted my paintings to be, and had everything in order, I did this preliminary study. As you can see, it's pretty close to what I ended up with as a finished painting. From here I went on to do the finished painting.

This painting will be available to see in person at the Christopher Queen Gallery in Duncans Mills, California. It is for the 35th Anniversary show.

http://christopherqueengallery.com/current-show/

I put up a video that has a preview of the show in catalog format.

I have a bunch of catalogs to give away. I'm sending out some to my mailing list next time I go to the post office. If you would like one, follow this link and enter your info, and I'll send one out at no cost to you.

Click Here

If you'd like to help spread the word, here is a link to the Facebook invite page.

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=208883035843066

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Pacific Northwest Plein Air 2011 Awards

2011-09-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I am pleased to announce that I won an award this year for my painting of The Clock Tower building in The Dalles, Oregon. You can check out the other paintings that won awards as well. My new friend and "roommate" for the time William Hook won Second Place for his skillfully drawn paintings as well. Check them out at the link below:

http://pleinairhoodriver.blogspot.com/2011/09/pacific-northwest-plein-air-2011-awards.html

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The plein air season is still well upon us. I am planning on participating in many local plein air events in the northern California area. Here are some you may want to check out yourself if you are close by.

The Great Petaluma Paintout - Sep. 18th

Limantour Retreat (hosted by the California Art Club - exclusive to members) - Sep. 25th

California Watercolor Club Paintout at the Marin Art and Garden Center in Ross, CA. - Oct. 1st.

1st Annual Calistoga Paintout - Oct. 9th

Valona Paintout - Crockett, CA. - Oct. 15th-22nd.

Paint Allied Arts in Menlo Park, CA. - Nov. 5th.

If you Google any of these, all of their info should show up.

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I also have a few new exciting shows coming up next month.

The Christopher Queen Gallery's 35th Anniversary show opens the 5th of October. I will be unveiling 3 new major landscape pieces. One of which is the painting of Sierra Buttes. I am really excited to be part of such a pivotal show for this gallery. It's a great honor.

I will be showing a few of my remaning pieces from the Painted Roses show at the Katie Gingrass Gallery in Milwaukee, WI. I will post more info once the show is more near, but here is their website if you want to follow them: http://gingrassgallery.com/index.php

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In order to comfortably finance all of these paint-outs, I am urging you to check out my Zatista store and pick up an original drawing if you can. If you buy something, I'll throw in an extra drawing or two for no extra cost, as a thank you (and to give myself some room in my already-too-small studio, heh). I know I don't have international shipping listed in my store, but if you contact me, I'll work something out with you. Just let me know where you want me to ship it to, and I'll calculate the rest of it.

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Pacific Northwest Plein Air 2011 - My Return to the Columbia Gorge

2011-09-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

I am back in California after spending a week in the Great Northwest of the U S of A. I went up to Hood River, Oregon last year to participate in the Pacific Northwest Plein Air event. I had so much fun last year that I decided to return again. I went to a few places that I went to last time to paint, but I also went to a few new areas I had not yet painted at.

Getting my obligatory painting of Mt. Hood out of the way, this was my first painting I did of the year. This was done in the morning. Like 7:30 am. This is a really popular area called Panorama Point, which overlooks much of the Hood River basin and its many wineries. This was a warm-up 6x8 quickie that took about 35 minutes.

After the orientation, I went down the highway to go down to Lost Lake, which is a very scenic river. Think mini-Tahoe, only with an iconic view of the mountain. I did two 9x12"s here to spend the day in the forest. A perfect day if you ask me.

Day 2: One of the "official" locations we painted at was Stevenson, Washington. It was a decent spot, but it felt too "easy." I'm not a big fan of popular tourist locations, because everything is laid out for you and every attempt to deviate from it feels forced. I still liked this painting because I feel like I got the impression of clouds breaking pretty successfully.

I skipped over the river to the Oneonta Gorge. It makes a very dramatic light/dark shape especially when photographed in black and white. To get to the waterfall after a 1-mile hike though, you have to climb this huge treacherous logjam. I consider myself somewhat adventurous, but I value my safety over such things. If I wasnt lugging a heavy backpack with valuable painting gear, I would chance it. Instead I stood in the creek and painted the ravine. I'm not sure if the sense of scale totally translates, but I didn't want to try faking some people for scale, and I didn't have my camera to shoot reference. Still, it's one of my favorite paintings of the week.

I finished the day at Eagle Creek. It's too narrow of a trail to paint from the trail itself, but I veered off into the creek to find this scene. The reflection of the evening light in the water turns it an orange-gold. Very dramatic. Absolutely lovely.

Day 3: I started out at the Mosier Plateau to find this view. Compositionally I like it but overall I feel it's lacking in an interesting focal point.

Ok. This one was a complete struggle the entire time. It was out-of-hand compositionally from the start, plus the values and colors were all wrong. After a while I decided to radically change my approach and mix gray into all of my colors. It sort of helped, but overall I wasn't too happy with it. I did like the trees on the left and some of the reflections in the foreground.

After the heat of the midday subsided I went out towards the Dalles and crossed the bridge to Horsethief Lake, one of my favorite places from last year. I like this painting as a study, but overall it's slightly simplistic. I am going to hold on to this one to do a larger more involved painting in the future. It's quite a fascinating place that deserves proper homage....

Day 4: The next day started off at the Gorge Crest Vineyards in Underwood, Washington. I wasn't too jazzed about painting the area. First of all, it has a lot of vineyards. I HATE painting vineyards, they are monotonous and a pain to paint. Also, the area is too "postcard", if you get what I mean. Sort of the same problem that Stevenson had. There was a cool bunch of trees cropping out from the hill that caught my attention. So I did a super-zoom into the view and composed it in a sort of typically-photographic way. I made it work.

I went down the road and found this view which was much more my style. This is a view of the town of Hood River. I changed the composition a bit to give a bit of "swing" into it to make sure you're kept in the picture. This is actually the unfinished version of the painting. I touched it up before bringing it to the gallery.

......and I finished it up with a bang! This one is by far my most impressive one of the week. I went back out to The Dalles, which has a great historic downtown with lots of cool architecture. One of the most iconic buildings is the home of Clock Tower Ales. I spent about 2.5 hours on this one. I made sure the perspective was working in the drawing before laying down the color. Had I known this one was gonna work, I would have took some progress shots. I actually did less under-drawing than you may expect. I did the usual jump into blocking in everything as quick as I could. Most of the drawing occurred after the block-in. I purposely kept it somewhat loose and sketchy because I knew if I tried to get tight, any mistake would be hugely apparent. I'm racing against time in everything I do outdoors, so in order to get everything to an acceptable degree of finish, sacrifices need to be made.

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If you are in the area and want to see the paintings in person, the Columbia Arts Council in Hood River is hosting the show.

http://www.columbiaarts.org/gallery/2011/09_11/pleinair_2011.html

Gallery Show & Opening Reception

September 2 - 25

"The gallery show opens on September 2 at the Columbia Art Gallery in Hood River and extends through September 25. Artworks created during the five-day Paint-Out will be available for purchase and selections of the writers’ works will be on display.

Opening reception on First Friday, September 2nd from 6 - 8pm. All are invited!

Meet the artists and writers who participated in the event
See art from the Plein Air for Children painting event on display in the studio."

Columbia Center

for the Arts

215 Cascade Street

PO Box 1543

Hood River, OR 97031

541-387-8877

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Figure Drawing - Mind Alteration

2011-08-22T22:40:00.000-07:00

Plenty of factors affect what the end result of your drawings might look like. Anything from what type of music you are listening to, what you ingested, etc. I recommend you don't get too messed up before drawing, if you can help it. Sounds obvious, yea, but it's easy to forget when you're having fun.

These were done in various states of "Fuzziness."

I'd be curious to know which ones you folks like the most.

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I am tumbling daily. Click on the picture to go to my Tumblr. Follow me to get new pics.

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Sierra Buttes + How To Use Photo Reference for Landscape Painting

2011-08-12T01:32:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, I just finished this painting for a major show that I am going to be participating in for the Christopher Queen Gallery in a few months.

"Clouds at the Peak" 30 x 40 inch Oil on Canvas.

I want to use this painting as an opportunity to share my process for using photo reference. A painting this size in such a remote location for me requires that I use photo reference. In a perfect world I would love to paint this entirely from life, but it's just not possible. I've learned a lot about taking my own photos for the purpose of taking them back to the studio and creating a painting from them. I'll share some tips with you about it.

Paint only from photos that YOU have taken. Especially if it's a place you've never painted at before. There's just so much you gain from actually experiencing the area. Also there will be a point you get to where you will want more information about the scene that a single photo won't give you.
Do a study of the scene whenever possible. This will set you up for the painting that you want to end up with. You'll anticipate where you will need more information to draw from, which leads into the next thing:
Take A LOT of photos. You can never have too much reference! Take a lot of photos of not only the scene itself, but of other interesting parts of the scene around you that might work as an element of your composition.
Get as good of a camera that you can afford. A digital SLR is super-helpful for 2 main reasons: you can get good lenses that will greatly increase the quality of the shots, and you get a huge amount of editing capability in camera RAW mode with Photoshop.
Shoot in RAW mode rather than JPG if your camera can do it. If you're afraid of running out of space on your card, buy more cards.
Shoot at a few different exposures: One at balanced exposure, and a couple at +1/-1. One will give you better color in the highlights and the other will give you better definition in the shadows.

My Process:

After importing the photos into my computer, I open the RAW files in Photoshop. Using the sliders on the side you can do some awesome things like change the color temperature, up the exposure, bring more light into the shadows, increase the color saturation, change the contrast, among other things. Those are the main things I use them for. You can drastically alter the same photo and get different pictures out of it.

I try to approximate what I remember the scene actually looking like. When you are painting outdoors you get to see into the areas that you are observing. In a photo you have a limited resolution, color info, etc. Take for instance the clouds I shot. For the most part they are over-exposed in the light areas. Exposing for the clouds makes everything else super-dark, though. You can up the "fill light" slider to compensate, but the color fidelity and sharpness is compromised, and you will get more noise. No matter what you do, you will always come up short, so that's why you need to make studies of the area. The more time you spend there, the better you can approximate it from memory afterwards.

I shot these two pictures at the same in-camera settings, but I used the sliders to change what the end result will look like.

A cool thing you can also do in Photoshop that I use a lot is the Photomerge option. Since I don't have a super wide angle lens, I take a lot of photos of the view then stitch them together to make a panorama.

As you'll see, the process will sort of distort the edges of the pictures. Be careful of that.

I did a study of the painting that was proportioned to the same size as the final painting was going to be. This shows me where all of the compositional shortcomings will be and also what type of reference I might still need.

Breaking Away From The Limits Of Photography

Even taking a photo of my painting degrades the quality of the color somewhat, but you can see what I did to enhance the color of the painting versus the photo in order to show the true feeling of the area better. Using color intelligently will do magical things to your painting.

As I did my study, I was trying to be conscious of what type of color I was going to go for. I basically came to the realization that this was going to be a double-complementary color scheme of red-green/orange-violet. Since it's very toned down this may not be apparent to everyone who first views the painting.

There's something I heard in art school a lot, which was, "as long as you get the values right, it doesn't matter what color you use." Well, yes and no. It's a good way to help students not get overwhelmed, but if you don't try to make your color have some order, the color will feel garish or false.

Something I really enjoy when I look at the California Impressionists is how they handled these incredibly complex color schemes and kept the overall harmony together. You can take a painting, slice it up into a bunch of small parts, and you will see a "painting within a painting" that has its own composition and color scheme within the whole piece. Elmer Wachtel and Franz Bischoff are two painters who come to mind who were particularly good at it. I tried to bring some of it into this painting.

Stroke by stroke, I would consider the color I was laying down. For every stroke that leaned towards violet, I would make sure it was offset by another stroke that leaned toward yellow-orange. Not in equal parts necessarily, but enough to differentiate between strokes.

Also, for every part that was a "collection" of orange/violet strokes, I tried to balance it by interweaving it with red/green strokes. An interesting thing happens when you keep this balance going. You can put down a super-saturated stroke and it won't feel out of place as long as it is tempered with opposing color. You can get away with painting with bolder color without it feeling gaudy.

Although it feels like you're painting at an unnatural amount of saturation if you're not used to it, the overall effect seems to hold together with a certain harmony as long as you are mindful of keeping things looking realistic. So yea, keep everything else you know about painting in mind, such as values, edges, brushwork, etc.

It is very easy to let it get out of hand, as I learned while painting this, so I did tone it back down as I was finishing the painting.

I hope this explanation of the process helps you out in your own painting as well as enhances your recognition and appreciation of the concepts when you look at other paintings.

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Rough Alameda...

2011-07-28T21:50:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. I have been busy working on this mini-series for a show coming up very soon. It's for the Frank Bette Center For The Arts in Alameda.

The show is called

En Plein Air: Alameda and Beyond

and it will run from

August 5 - October 1

Rather than follow what the usual protocol is for a plein air painting exhibition, which is; find the prettiest areas of the location, try to paint the best painting you can in two hours, do it about 5 more times, and hope to walk away with an award and sales; I decided to do something different. I've thought about what is interesting about Alameda to me, and it is the industrial areas with all of the machinery, textures and grit of the warehouses, and the coastal atmosphere. I focused on the broken down areas because I've found that you don't usually see these types of subjects done with a typical plein air technique. All of the intricacies of the industrial subjects allow for an addition of fine detail I don't normally indulge in. These are all 6x8 inch paintings on linen board, done either completely in plein air, photo, or a mix of the two. I did 8 paintings for this series, but the show only calls for six.

Edit: The Votes Have Been Tallied!

If you're in the East Bay and want to check out these pieces and all of the other paintings from the show, here is the info:

En Plein Air:

Alameda and Beyond

August 5 - October 1

Gala Opening and Awards

Friday, August 5

7 - 9pm

See Plein Air paintings

by artists who have participated in past

Frank Bette Plein Air Paintouts

Participating Artists:

Edwin Bertolet; Beth Bourland; Catherine Boyer; Elaine Carpenter; Inna Cherneykina; Linda Darsow Sutton; Dorallen Davis; Debbie Gualco; Susan Lea Hackett; Marilyn Hill; Sterling Hoffmann; Ramona Kennon-Frink; Loreta Landucci; Sergio Lopez; Patris Miller; Mark Monsarrat; Nancy Roberts; Iris Sabre; Stephen Sanfilippo; David Savellano; Julia Munger Seelos; Carol Sideman; Sandra Smith-Dugan; Carol Tarzier; Bart

Walker; Leslie Wilson; and Tom Zephyrs.

View Larger Map

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Figure Drawing - Development of a Technique

2011-07-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

So this new way of working came from two things. One being that I want to improve my drawing skill with a handled instrument(like a brush or a palette knife) to improve my drawing skills for painting. The other reason is that I couldn't find my box of tools for 2 weeks in a row(don't worry, I've found them since). All I could scrounge up were these three tools:

I started off last week's session as I normally do.

I started off using the sanguine chalk overhand.

Ten-minute drawing.

Normally during the 20-minute drawings is when I introduce the blending stump:

As I was drawing this one I was thinking about an idea that I call implied plane changes. I'd say it's most noticeable in the right shoulder. This is a technique where all the modelling happens near the half-tones where the planes change most notably.

Pulling the tones into the un-modeled areas make the forms turn subtly.

Done well, this will give the illusion that you modeled the untouched areas.

I think it's very effective for filling in the light planes without over-doing it and breaking them up, thereby reducing the effectiveness of your value pattern.

This week I started with using the sanguine chalk stuck in the palette-knife-contraption. This was a 10-minute drawing.

This time I introduced the blending stump into the 10-minute drawing. This time I used it to imply the plane changes in the shadow areas.

In this drawing my steps went this way:

1) I blocked in the body using long straight lines that show the placement and angles. I used the knife-chalk combo.
2) I took the chalk out of the holder and drew in the next step of the drawing which would be the core shadows, rough facial features, outlines, etc.
3) I used the stump to model in the half-tones, soften edges, flatten out over-textured areas and spread out the pigment where I want it.
4) I use the eraser to pick out highlights and fix mistakes. I like to alternate 3 and 4.
5) I draw in all of the details with the chalk again. It's a matter of finishing up the drawing from here. I'll jump back to 3 and 4 here as well.

Another 20-minute drawing using the same principles.

I used the same principles in the shadow side on this one. I pulled the pigment in with the stump from the darkest strokes and also in and out from the core shadows.

I like this technique because you can get a lot done quickly. It's pretty effective too. Makes it look like I spent a lot more time on it!

A ten-minute drawing that I rushed in the set-up. The proportions got out of wack. I think I tried to pack in too much in the time allotted and didn't take enough care in getting it right in the first place.

I added a bunch of these to my Zatista store: http://bit.ly/sergiolZatistaStore If there's one you really want and don't see, let me know and I'll hook it up.

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In other news, I've started a Tumblr blog as well. Rather than just post my own work there, I want to do something different with it, where I link to whatever catches my eye as I am browsing the web. I have tons of sites in my Google Reader. I feel like spreading the wealth! Hopefully I turn you on to some good art you might not have seen.

http://themainloop.tumblr.com/

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"Digital Dust"

2011-07-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

12x18 Gouache on Watercolor Paper.

I did this piece as a live painting event called Gallery Wednesdays here in Santa Rosa. It's fun to paint under pressure sometimes....

I'm trying this out, selling the original through Saatchi. If you decide to buy it, let me know how your experience dealing with the site turns out. It's brand new to me so it will help me out.

http://www.saatchionline.com/art/Painting-Gouache-Digital-Dust/152553/144348/view

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Figure Drawing - Efficiency

2011-06-30T23:44:00.000-07:00

Here are the my latest life drawings.

I feel like I am getting better at economy of strokes, especially in the shorter poses.

It comes from getting quicker at identifying shapes more accurately.

It's fun when your strokes do what you want them to do.

You can do more with one stroke than you were able to before.

It translates from painting to drawing and vice versa.

I've been going out to paint a lot lately, and it feels like each one sharpens the other.

I am simplifying things better in all aspects of my art.

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Preliminary Studies - Preparing for Big Things

2011-06-21T01:28:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to be starting on a few new projects. One being of model who I posed at Fairway Falls in Novato. I have been doing a lot of different studies of the waterfall to really get a sense of the colors of the area. These are all 6x8 panels that I finished in under an hour. They're not meant to be framed and sold, they're just "reference cards" I will use when my photos reach the limit of information they can give me. Sometimes they come out OK as stand-alone paintings, but I don't set out to make them great works of art.

As you can see, I like to get as many different viewpoints of the same area as possible. These were meant to give me an accurate sense of the color. I am going to go back to get more details of the foliage in the area.

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Sugarloaf Ridge State Park is a favorite area for me to go exploring. It has a ton of great places to paint. It's a shame then, that it's on the list for one of the places they are planning on shutting down to close the budget gap. I have been making frequent trips to the park to document what I can of it. I plan on doing a few larger-scale pieces of my favorite vistas.

This was a really small half-hour study, like 2x4 inches.

This was an hour-long study of one of the easier vistas to find. It's tough to see the Sonoma Valley from it, but there is a lot of greenery to see from here.

This is one of the views that I'm planning on creating a large piece for. I've been making all types of different studies for it. One of things I've started doing to improve my value arrangements is to use greyscale markers to do thumbnail studies. It's the same idea as doing a pencil sketch, but with markers you save time by having the value numbers worked out for you. I treat them like watercolors: start light and progress to darkness. I only use 5 different values: 10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, and 90%. Keep it simple and refer to it as you are painting and you are less likely to get confused as you work.

This was an hour-and-a-half watercolor that I did yesterday. I was going to do a pencil drawing but I felt like trying out watercolors because it's somewhere between drawing and oils to me. Not worrying so much about the paint frees you up a bit to work on the other aspects. The problem is, watercolor is such a difficult medium to work with. I will definitely need to come back and do some more studies of the area.

There is also a waterfall that you can trek to that's really cool because of all of the big rocks you can explore. It's very picturesque. This was a study I did in a little over an hour. In this painting I tried to cut back on white as much as I could. It seems to make the overall effect much more vibrant. This was done between 6 and 7 PM. The light was just beginning to turn golden. You really have to use strong cadmiums to get that vibrant effect. I am planning on also doing a large piece of this area as well.

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Bonuses! A couple of extra studies that I did for practice.

This was a bike ride away from home. I'm really close to a lot of rural farmland that has a lot of old barns that I've never gotten around to painting because they aren't close enough to walk to and don't have a good place to park around them. I've finally gotten a bike that I can ride to some of these cool spots. I may do a series that I center around these places as a theme. I feel like doing themes makes it extra-fun and more purposeful, plus you want to do more, because who likes a 2-painting series??

This was a study I made at Annadel State Park, another place that's scheduled for closure soon. It's not as dear to my heart as Sugarloaf, but I know a lot of people who love biking here. This is one of the vistas you can see after a long uphill hike.

Here is the marker sketch I did beforehand.

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Good Models vs Bad Models • Q&A • New Oil Paintings

2011-05-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

It's obvious that a good model will inspire you to create better work and vice versa, but what are some of the things that separate models in terms of quality?

Good model: Dynamism in the pose, puts emphasis into key areas of interest to an artist (muscle, bone structure, gesture, weight distribution), variety in the poses.

Bad Model: Just stands there, no dynamism whatsoever, no real effort. Note: This has nothing to do with the weight of the model, I've had plenty of heavier models who can pose well.

Good Model: Action, theatricality, an attempt at story-telling without being too ham-handed.

Bad Model: None of that stuff.

Good Model: Simply put, can hold a pose!

Bad Model: WONT STAY STILL ARRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHH (Notice that lack of imagination in the poses again?) You do the best you can, I guess.

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I've gotten some questions about what I'm planning on doing, plus a few other things that I'd figure I'd answer here.

Q: Are you planning on doing any more pieces for the "Painted Roses" series? What's nest?

I'm not sure. I am definitely not continuing the same exact series as I have done it before. I've completely exhausted the possibilities of that session that produced the paintings from that series. I've yet to determine whether or not it would be interesting to do the same formula of "tattooed girl against patterned backdrop." The idea of that one was relatively spontaneous, and also very personalized to the model's figure and personality.

I have an idea of what my next major series will be (One of three) that involve a female figure, patterns, and different elements merging together, yet completely different than the "Painted Roses" series. I'd love to use Julia again for another series, but I've yet to come up with a new idea for it, plus she's in NYC right now anyways.

Q: How do you get the models to pose for you? It seems like you have to be very personable and skilled to talk someone into taking their clothes off for you.

I am very particular about who I choose to work with. First and foremost, the person has to be enthusiastic about working with me. That usually means they are familiar with my work and want to be part of what I plan on creating with them. I get to know the person before I decide on what I want to use them for, and for the most part it's something based on their unique characteristics. So by the time it gets to the posing, there's no "talking them into it." If they're not comfortable, I'm not working with them. As anyone who knows me in person could tell you, I'm pretty shy and quiet in person, so I have no special gifts of gab, but I like to think I'm a pretty nice person. I also take the sessions seriously and do my best to make sure the person is as comfortable as possible.

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These are 2 new oil paintings that I finished a couple of days ago. These are the first new significant pieces that I have done since the "Painted Roses" series. The reference I worked from is actually over a year old, and I've sat on them for a while. I've just now gotten around to coming up with something interesting to paint from.

Through the magic of Photoshop and some know-how, you can manipulate your reference to whatever you want. You can change the time of day, even. Takes a lot more work than it looks like, but it's worth getting exactly what you're after. There's no reason or benefit to half-assing anything you do.

"Sea of Tears" 12x18" Oils on Canvas Board, 2011.

"Fata Morgana" 16x20 in. Oils on Canvas Board, 2011.

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Plein Air with Mr. Luff

2011-05-18T17:35:00.000-07:00

Fellow artist and podcast-enthusiast Rod Luff came by and stayed in Santa Rosa for a few days with me. It gave me an opportunity to show off some of the lovely areas of Sonoma and Marin counties that I enjoy painting landscapes from.

We went out to Point Reyes, where we had perfectly clear skies that day. I could not ask for a better day. We painted at the northern peninsula past Inverness.

There was a view from Pierce Point Road close the entrance to Tomales Bay State Park. I chose this composition to utilize the large dark mass that takes up most of the canvas. It started off strong, but I think I lost a bit of the strength by breaking up the dark mass with the light tree tops. I'm not terribly happy with the foreground also. I might use it as a study for a large piece. I think those trees could be impressive when you make them 3 feet tall on a canvas :-)

This is a great view looking out towards Tomales Bay, close to the entrance of Tomales Bay State Park. I liked the atmospheric depth of the foreground and middle ground. I think I can push it further by lightening the background hills some more and darkening up the foreground around the tree. One of my new challenges in landscape painting is to tighten up the values further within the major shapes. There is a lot of skill and beauty to be had in learning to put detail and variety within very narrow value steps.

The next day we went out to Sugarloaf Ridge State Park just east of Santa Rosa. This is a great area with a lot of variety. The headwaters of Sonoma Creek originate from here. I spent about 2 hours on this creek. I enjoy painting creeks a lot. I definitely want to make this a larger painting. I can do a whole series on creeks. It's something I am considering doing. For this piece, I like that i was able to keep a lot of the rocks simplified. I think the foreground can stand to get darkened up a bit more, especially in the water. Also, it would be cool to "spot-light" the middle ground a bit as well.

Rod did a lovely study of this area as well. I hope he decides to post it up.

Heading up the Godspeed Trail takes you up to this view. I looked backwards to paint this view. This painting started off very abstract. I tried to simplify it as much as I could in the beginning. I think the middle ground and background needs more clarity in separation on the left side of the painting. Maybe if I darkened and silhouetted that whole side of the painting....

The next day we went to check out the Carmel Art Festival (someone remind me to apply next year!!) to check out the works of some of my friends and view the winners. I also checked out some of the top galleries in Carmel to see what they had in stock. John Burton's paintings were excellent, and Kevin Courter's paintings were great as usual.

Contrary to the forecast, the weather was incredible. We headed out to Point Lobos, which is a magical area just south of Carmel on the way to Big Sur. It's one of those picture-perfect areas that you can't help but want to paint, but it's way harder than you think. You have to find an area that you can tackle in a couple of hours or else it's too overwhelming.

This is a view looking eastward at Carmel Valley. There was a small beach you can see beyond the park. Believe it or not, this little scene took a lot of designing. There was a lot of stretching and squeezing the horizontal "band"/planes that go across the paintings. I like to block these 6x8" pieces in very quickly, I'm talking 15 to 20 minutes. I use a stiff Rosemary&Co. Ivory brush that will move the paint around easily. In my progression I like to go from harder to softer as I go along. When I am finishing the painting, I come back in with a small stiff brush and reinforce the hard edges that I may have lost in the middle of painting.

This was a tough little painting to get through. I was thinking it was going to be easier than it turned out to be. It took some extreme simplification. The values arent quite what I want them to be, but I got some of the color in the shadows that I wanted. The water needs some work too. I think it's a good color study in case I want to make a large painting out of it. I need to draw more cypress trees. They are so hard to get their specific shape if you're not used to drawing them.

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Once again I will be showing a piece at the Randy Higbee Gallery this weekend. They are hosting the Laguna Plein Air Association's "Less Is More" show.

I painted this piece from life on the way to Putah Creek just east of Lake Berryessa. I got lucky with the cows walking by that I was able to put in there. They weren't staying put for long.

"On The Way To The Canyon" 6x9 Oil on Canvas.

For more info about the show click here: http://www.lpapa.org/less_is_more2011/LessisMore2011.html

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Painted Roses: Opening Reception (Photos)

2011-05-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

Here are photos from the opening reception of the show. For all of you who didn't get to go, check out the pictures!

Red dots!

The piece, "Lamarque," is 48x42" which is the largest piece I've done yet.

Here are some shots of some of the guest artists who also showed a piece or two.

The gallery's cool logo:

Opening night!

Attendance in full force:

Myself in front of "Bourgeon De Rose"

With the talented young whippersnapper Rodrigo Luff:

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Even though "Bourgeon De Rose" and "Chromatella" have sold, you can still get prints of them along with some of the other pieces at Inprnt. Click on the pieces.

Chromatella

Bourgeon De Rose

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Painted Roses: Modern Eden Gallery, SF

2011-04-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

I'm very happy to announce that my show at the Modern Eden Gallery is this Saturday, April 30th 2011. It's been a long time coming, but I'm proud to finally have a proper showing of my work in San Francisco. The gallery is very young, but has a ton of potential. The space is lovely and the owners are friendly. Can't thank 'em enough for the opportunity.

For the show, I created a few new pieces.

"Rose Noir" 6x6 in. Oil on Canvas.

"Chromatella" 6x12 in. oil on linen.

"Rugosa Alba" 14x14 in. oil on linen.

"Gemini Molineux" 12x30 in. oil on linen.

I feel like the paintings have progressed noticeably since I started. The newest ones are painted more crisp and vibrant. I think I have exhausted the possibility of this run of the series.

The Modern Eden Gallery wrote up a nice entry on their blog as well:

Painted Roses: Opening Reception: April 30th 7-10
Modern Eden is pleased to announce "Painted Roses", an exhibition featuring a new series of paintings by Sergio Lopez. The opening reception for "Painted Roses" will be held at Modern Eden on Saturday, April 30th from 7-10pm. The exhibition will be on display through June 4, 2011 and is free and open to the public.

“Painted Roses” presents the work of Bay Area artist, Sergio Lopez. Sergio artfully merges the figure in and out of the background playing with patterns of the femininity and delicacy of roses, with the dark, urban hint of floral tattoos and piercings all loosely played around the soft delicate translucence of the female figure. "Painted Roses" demonstrates how our real and perfect beauty is usually not visible or exposed; it is often covered by external facade dictated by the culture we live in, some of which is not easily removed or separated from one's true self.

Sergio's strongest influences include The Golden Age illustrators, Bravura painters, contemporary artists, concept designers, graffiti writers, and photographers. Sergio has been featured in Juxtapoz, artistaday.com, and has won multiple awards for his painting throughout California and beyond.

The April 30th Opening Reception will feature Live Music by DJ Edward Aten. In conjunction with "Painted Roses", Modern Eden will host a group show exhibition introducing artists Lance Hewison, Kristin Kyono, and Albert Ramos.

In addition, a collection of Modern Eden's favorite artists are collaborating on a "Wall of Roses", creating small rose themed works tiled onto one wall. Participating artists include Christine Benjamin, Sarah Vanphravong, Kurtis Rykovich, Daniel J. Valadez, Lacey Bryant, Daniela Lencioni, Layil Umbralux, MJ Lindo, Kim Larson, Grant Gilliland, Michelle Waters, Kieran Collins, Carlos Villez, Emilio Villalva, Leilani Bustamante, Lucia Gonella, Kasia Kra, ELROD, Kevin Sechelski, Mary Syring, and others.

When: Opening Reception: Saturday, April 30, 2011 7-10 PM
Show runs through Saturday, April 30, 2011 – June 4, 2011

Where: Modern Eden Gallery
403 Francisco Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
www.moderneden.com

Can't wait for the show! If you're in the area, here's the link to the Facebook page, I'd appreciate it if you'd RSVP to the event:

http://on.fb.me/hPkbH0

EDIT:

The show is up on the Modern Eden Gallery's website! Check out their store:

http://moderneden.myshopify.com/collections/current-exhibit-painted-roses

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Hand Painted Frame - Group Show: Christopher Queen Gallery

2011-04-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy couple of months!

In addition to the solo show at the Modern Eden Gallery in SF, I have also been working on a major piece for the Christopher Queen Gallery in Duncan Mills for the Hand Crafted Frame show.

"Camelia Roses", 12x24 Oil on Linen Board.

Let's walk through this piece a bit.

It started off as a piece I began painting at the Marin Art and Garden Center in Ross, CA. On the first day I realized exactly how much work was going to be involved. The second day I had it pretty much blocked out. I had taken a bunch of different photos of the section of the rose bush I was painting from, trying to do my best to match in my camera what I saw in front of me. Using Photoshop I was able to get reasonably close enough to be able to do the rest of the painting in studio. I worked a lot like I was painting it from life at home. I spent a few days on finishing it, then once it was dry I glazed over the darks behind the main foliage to reinforce the composition I set up. I also glazed an extra coat of the cool red color over the flowers to intensify that saturated crimson that's almost impossible to achieve through alla prima painting alone.

Ok, now on to the frame!

I started off by taking a used frame from a previous show and basically sanding it down to the wood. I then gessoed the frame with numerous coats of acrylic gesso mixed with wood filler to make sure it was impervious to whatever I was about to throw down on it.

Inner Frame:

Once I gessoed this part of the frame I layed down a burnt umber undercoat and let that dry. Next I blocked in all 40 (count em) flowers that I had photographed for reference. Note: I had to do some plastic surgery on most of these flowers; a lot of the petals were kinda chewed up. Once I finally finished painting the flowers, I masked off the areas I didn't want to cover over with the green undercoat. After that dried, I used Brush 'n' Leaf liquid gold leaf to paint in the filigree and border.

Outer Frame:

I painted on top of the initial gesso a dark earthy red made from acrylic and casein color. This was going to be the base I would lay down the gold leaf on top of. In between the gold leaf I put a layer of Rub&Buff to see if it would be brilliant enough for my liking. As I expected, it wasn't, so I brushed on the adhesive for the gold leaf. If you've never done any gilding before, it can be a pain in the ass. I tried it once for a small piece and failed miserably at it. If it folds up it's super-hard to unfold it and lay it down smoothly again. I just decided to go for a slightly more distressed look since it wasn't going to be perfect. I'd say the best way to do it would be to cut your squares up into small pieces and go slowly but steadily. Once it touches the adhesive it's not coming off. Once I covered the entire surface I wanted to, I used a bit of nail polish remover to get rid of excessive adhesive. Finally I brushed on a couple of coats of sealer and called it a painting....

The show:

When I delivered my piece I saw a few of the other pieces. One of the most clever ones I thought was the one that Paul Kratter did, which is in the flier there. He extended the painting into the frame itself. If you get a chance to check it out, it should be an interesting show.

THE HANDCRAFTED FRAME

Showcasing New Work Embellished By

Antique, Hand Painted &

Hand Made Frames That Create the

Perfect Pairing of Art & Frame

May 1st, 2011

1 pm to 3 pm

Champagne & Music

Show Ends July 10th

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Randy Higbee Spring 6 x 6 Squared - Framed!

2011-04-15T01:46:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, check it out! my 6x6 oil paintings are now in floater frames! Pretty sweet eh? If you're interested in picking one up, click on the link under the painting:

"Pepper Road Vista," $280

SOLD

"Hagrid's Cabin," $280

Contact to Purchase

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6" Mania: Randy Higbee 6 Inch Squared Exhibition II + Castello Di Amorosa

2011-03-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

I just sent out my paintings for the next 6 Inch Squared show hosted by the Randy Higbee Gallery in Costa Mesa. I got the results the other day, and I am pleased to say that 5 of the 6 entries made it into the show.

...and here they are!

"Pepper Road Vista," Oil on Canvas, 6 x 6 in. 2011.

"A Whisper of Spring," Oil on Canvas, 6 x 6 in. 2011.

"Hagrid's Cabin," Oil on Canvas, 6 x 6 in. 2011.

"Penngrove Pastoral," Oil on Canvas, 6 x 6 in. 2011.

"Luther's Fountain," Oil on Canvas, 6 x 6 in. 2011.

Here's the flier for the show, in case you are in the Orange County area.

I will see if I can somehow make it down there for the reception. I will be very busy preparing for a solo show at the Modern Eden Gallery in SF though.

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Rainy day! It was the North Bay Plein Air group's monthly meetup today. I am proud of everyone who braved the rain and painted today. Here are the paintings I did. Neither is totally finished but I don't like to take them a whole lot further from this stage while the paint is still wet. I am starting to enjoy this format more and more. Painting this small has its advantages and disadvantages. I'd say the main disadvantage is the lack of ability to paint precisely in alla prima. If you are using a more bravura technique like I am, it would be best to use a stiffer brush to sort of "carve in" details with a stiff straight brush. Almost like you're painting with a chisel.

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Figure Drawings: Line vs Tone

2011-03-24T01:42:00.000-07:00

These are some new drawings from the last week and tonight. I think you will notice a difference between what I was doing last week and tonight.

Last week's drawings:

This was my favorite, just because I love the gesture she was making.

Thanks to William Wray's blog I came across the Flickr page of Gamlet Koudaverdian who was a previously-unknown-to-me artist with some incredible life drawings. I love what he's doing. So much in fact that I printed out his drawings and took them with me to the life drawing session. I had them tacked up on my board as I was drawing.

Notice the influence?

I kind of liked putting multiple drawings on the same page without having them step on each other. I'm probably going to keep doing this.

There's a difference between the direct drawing I do with the last week's drawing and the tonal approach I used more in last night's drawing. In every life drawing however, I do tend to use a mixture of direct and structural drawing.

I usually use the most rudimentary structure in 5-10 minute poses. I use a slightly more measured approach in the 20 minute drawings. Having some basic structure in a quick pose helps especially if you're planning on using a lot of tone because it will help you keep control of your drawing.

Having a good line quality makes your drawing better when you add in those necessary hard edges to define certain forms and boundaries. Having a reference of what you aspire to helps guide your drawing as you are drawing it.

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Figure Drawing + For Sale

2011-03-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Here are the newest drawings from the recent figure drawing session at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts (Wed. nights) I do my best to go every week. These are 10 to 20 minute studies.

In case you've missed it before, I am selling a lot of drawings on Zatista. I use the money for drawing supplies, fees, etc. Everything it takes to keep making drawings, basically. If you're interested in checking out what I have, click on the button here:

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Edit: Forgot to add these pictures, oops!

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In other news, I have sold a few landscapes at the Christopher Queen Gallery in Duncans Mills, CA. There still are a number of available pieces to check out if you're able to make it out there and want to see these in person.

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2 New Landscape Exhibitions: Colors of the Carquinez + Christopher Queen Gallery

2011-02-26T14:13:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

2 new opportunities to check out my new landscape painting work coming up in March. First one is called "Colors of the Carquinez" and it's going to be in Crockett, CA. Here is the info

Colors of the Carquinez~Art Exhibit

An Exhibit of East Bay Artists, Sculptors, Photographers and Poets

Saturday, March 5 and Sunday, March 6, 2011

Reception to be held Saturday evening 5-8pm

Exhibit Hours-11am-8pm on Saturday and Sunday 11am-4 pm

Location of exhibit: Desmond Victorian, 204 Bay St., Crockett, CA 94525

Free

View Larger Map

Here is one of the pieces I am exhibiting. I found this view off of the 37. It was a nice day to paint. I happened to run into another artist by the name of Gil Dellinger as I was painting the study for it.

"Runs Deep," Oil on Linen Board, 9x12 in.

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The next weekend is the reception for the next Christopher Queen Gallery show.

Christopher Queen Galleries invites

The Frugal Collector

to view

A Collection of Recent Contemporary

Paintings Under $2000

Champagne & Music

Sunday March 13th, 2011

1 PM - 3 PM

Show Ends April 24th

Christopher Queen Galleries

#4 John Orr's Gardens

Duncans Mills, CA 95430

www.christopherqueengalleries.com

View Larger Map

I finally got one of my pieces on the invite: Yay! This was a location along Cataract Falls in Marin County.

"Trickling Down," Oil on Canvas Board, 16x20 in.

"The Perfect Time," Oil on Linen Board, 9x12 in.

"A Stroll Down Lake Elizabeth," Oil on Canvas Board, 11x14 in.

Also, the show at the Epperson Gallery will be up for an extra weekend, so if you are able to make it, check it out while you're in Crockett...

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Charcoal Filling Your Room (Videos + Website Update)

2011-02-03T21:52:00.000-08:00

It took me a little while to figure out my equipment, but I found a way to use my Canon EOS 40D to record into my computer. So I've made a couple of videos that talk about what I use when I draw on my 18x24 sketch pads.

My youtube page

This one's 27 minutes so grab your cup of coffee:

I recommend after finishing the first one that you go on to this one:

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Ok so here are a few drawings with actual concentration put into them... It's really hard to talk and draw at the same time!

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I'm happy announce that I've started up a Zatista account where I'll be selling my charcoal drawings from. I'm really hoping this works out because it seems like a good place to sell artwork. There are no fees to list my work on the site, and you have to be approved to show on the site, bringing a little exclusivity to the site which is not a bad thing in my opinion.

Right now I only have 20 pieces on my page but I plan on adding more in the coming weeks. If this proves lucrative I may expand into uploading other types of art on there. If you want to check it out you can either click on the "Store" link on the top of my page, or you can follow this link:

My Zatista Page

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Epperson Gallery: Five Artists to Watch in January 2011

2011-01-23T00:18:00.000-08:00

I'm participating in a show at the Epperson Gallery in Crockett, California. This is the same gallery where I was awarded best in show for my painting of the C&H Factory. I'm previewing the pieces here; as always, they are so much better in person.... Show will be up starting the 29th of January and will be up all of February.

These paintings are all oil on canvas panel. These were all done from the studio... I've never done so many landscapes in a row that didn't start off as a plein air sketch. A few of these were started from sketches but for the most part they were composed on the computer then painted from the ol' computer monitor.... Nothin' beats working from life, except having a warm room to work in when it's cold and wet out...

"Sunset Harbor", 8x10in

"Lavender Haze", 9x12in

"A Lone Traveler", 9x12in

"Last Hour On The River", 9x12in

"Summer Retreat", 11x14in

"Desert Sky", 11x14in

"Rest is Near", 11x14in

"Beacon Rock View", 12x16in

"Misty Morning", 12x16in

"Navarro Summer", 12x16in

"Young Stream", 12x24in

"The Faster Trail", 14x18in

"Battery Point", 16x20in

"Earned Solitude", 18x24in

Link to the Facebook Event

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My thoughts on "Making It"

2011-01-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

Since putting up that poll I've learned that most of my blog visitors are fellow artists. I don't know where most of you lie in the spectrum of skill level (hence the new poll) but I think this post can be of service to a lot of people whose goal is to one day "make it" as an artist. I have been going back and forth with a young student (19 or 20) and she asked me how it's been going career-wise. As almost any student would agree, parents have a huge degree of worry over their child struggling as "starving artist." Now, I have by no means 'made it' yet, but I feel like I've learned a lot so far, so take it as you will. Here was my response to her:

"I'm not gonna lie to you, it's not an easy thing to be a successful artist. There's no guarantee of anything, and you have to be willing to sacrifice all of your free time to improvement-basically dedicate your life to your craft... Think of it like being a doctor and getting a ph.D and that's pretty much your level of study, only it never stops... With that being said, it's awesome once you get to see all the hard work pay off. I can't see myself doing anything else besides art.

When I first graduated I spent a year working on my portfolio then I worked as a concept artist in San Rafael for almost 3 years. It was a good job while it lasted, and it helped pay off my school debt. Once the company dissolved I found myself scrambling for anything I could find to be able to make rent. I decided then that if I going to be on the brink of pennilessness (sp) I might as well be creating exactly what I want to create. That's when I decided to make a full go at fine art, and that's what I'm doing now.

2010 was very much feast-or-famine, but fortunately I have my parents here to fall back on while I figure the business side of art out as I go along. Thanks to them I've not yet had to consider looking for a job outside of art since. 2011 looks to be a good year. I am starting to get larger shows, and getting more and more accolades. A goal for the end of the year is to finally have my own studio.

So how to avoid being a starving artist? In other words, how do you 'make it?' I think there are 3 main things:
1. Skill
2. Putting yourself out there in as many different places as you can
3. Having a unique voice in your work that is valuable

Fortunately these have very little to do with what school you go to. You can gain skill from almost any dedicated art school. If your main goal is to learn the craft of painting and drawing, I would recommend an atelier if you have the money to spend on it (they're not accredited so you can't really get government grants for them) otherwise accredited art schools are also very good. I judge schools on the quality of the teacher/student work. If you don't like what they do, don't go there, because that's what they'll teach you to do, basically. Nowadays I supplement my education through art books, museums, and websites... I'm constantly finding new art and good pictures to feed my brain and keep me motivated to improve.

Finding a unique voice has a lot to do with skill and practice and is what really separates the herd. Those three things are all inter-connected. Skill is what will get you to that point, and putting yourself out there will get people to recognize your skill and voice. You can make a mediocre living being a mediocre artist as long as you constantly put yourself in front of the right eyes. It's very easy to get to the middle, that's the good news. The further up you want to go, the harder and harder it gets, but the rewards get better and better.

I know I wrote a lot here, but it's all stuff that no one told me when I first started. I was so ignorant, I didn't even know that I would want to know this stuff someday. If I did know, it would have saved me time and stress down the line. Good luck, and feel free to ask me anything else!

-Sergio"

Please feel free to chime in. Add, challenge, ask, etc. Maybe I'll be compelled to add more to it if I get enough feedback.

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Charcoals: New Pencils and Drawing A Dude

2011-01-08T03:14:00.000-08:00

So I am still trying out all these other pencils that I don't normally try. I'm still using the Lyra Giant Colored pencils... I like it still, but yeah I wish they were softer. At least they don't break easily... I was also using a Lyra Aquarell black crayon which feels pretty nice, but I should have checked how erasable it is.

As anyone who frequents a life drawing workshop frequently will tell you, it's pretty hard to find a good male model. Even a decent one is a bit more rare than it should be...

I was also trying some Wolff Carbon Pencils which I haven't tried since art school. I forgot how good they feel. They are a bit waxier than I remember them being.

I found a pretty cool woodless prismacolor pencil(not one of those "sticks" either). Handles ok, gets pretty dark with enough pressure.

I am also using a fat stubby pencil that I think is called a Stabilo Woody. It's not bad. It gets pretty dark and is very creamy and waxy yet not too shiny... Very tough to erase, though.

It's not often that I get to go to a session that's all short poses... The majority of my drawings these days are above 5 minutes. Which is great in its own way, but the balance needs to be there... I'm also really missing regular 3-hour poses, but that's for a different time.

I'm using the tried-and-true Conte charcoal pencils. I think they are still my favorites because of its "creaminess" on the paper, ability to go dark, keep its point and relative erasability.

Next charcoal drawing update I will post up pictures of the tools plus the types of marks they make, how I sharpen them, etc.

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"Bourgeon De Rose" + Inprnt + Artistaday.com

2010-12-28T00:55:00.000-08:00

I am capping off this series with this piece, "Bourgeon De Rose". I'm bringing it full-circle to a more traditional take on these pieces. The amount of blending the pattern with the figure is much more subtle. The only problem in this picture is that the jpeg makes the transitions in tone much less subtle than they are in real-life.

"Bourgeon De Rose." 24"x28", Oil on Canvas, 2010.

This one took me probably 2 months off and on. The painting technique was more traditional than a lot of the other ones I have done. I started with a burnt umber underpainting and worked up color layers from a fully rendered monochromatic piece. I was influenced by the posts on Matthew Innis' blog about the academic ebauche. I can't find a whole lot more about the technique other than his research so if anyone can direct me to any more info that would be awesome.

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If anyone is wondering how the "Painted Roses" prints from Inprnt.com look, you're not alone. I also had to see how they looked, so I ordered a couple of prints for myself.

This one is the 12"x18" print of Ivory Fashion. You can see the border around it.

The fidelity of the detail is amazing! The paper is smooth, so the reproduction isn't exact in terms of texture, but it's still great.

Gotta give the folks at inprnt.com props! I'm happy with the way they look. If you're an artist that has the opportunity to sell your work with them, take 'em up on it!

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Some very cool news: I was the featured artist on Artistaday.com for December 26th, 2010! I was super happy to see that I made it on to the website. I've been a visitor to the site for a while now. The response to my work has been overwhelmingly positive! If you are visiting this site because you followed the link there to my site, well... welcome! So glad to have you here!

If you'd like to see the feedback, click on this link:

http://bit.ly/h55ZzV?r=bb

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Dark Charcoals, Nicole, and The Tall Girl (Figure Drawings)

2010-12-23T01:35:00.000-08:00

I forgot to take a photo of this one from the last session I did. It was pretty dumb of me, since it was my favorite drawing.. It's ok, I'll just pretend I got that much better in 2 weeks...

These next drawings are of my friend Nicole, who continues to be my favorite model to draw. The poses she is able to get herself into are some of my favorites.

I am using a fat black Lyra pencil. I'm liking it a lot. It's got a bit of a feel of the waxy Conte pencils, except without the smudge... Only thing it can improve on is I wish they could go darker. I don't know if there is a softer version of the colored pencils. I'll keep a lookout for them.

Compare and contrast the poses between this model and Nicole.......hmmm how can I get her to do those kinds of poses? Enroll her in ballet? I don't know...

Hands are still my weakness, although I've gotten way better at them since I first started saying that...

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Military Wet Panel Carrier

2010-12-14T19:56:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty cheap, and like to do-it-myself when it's feasible, so I put together this cool little damn-near-bulletproof wet panel carrier. I got the idea from a thread on Wetcanvas. I converted an ammo box that I got from a salvage yard here in Santa Rosa (but I'm sure most military surplus stores will carry them) into a 6x8 panel carrier. I got this steel-framed guy for 14 bucks, so it's even cheaper than one of those 20-dollar cardboard carrier. I would have gotten a bigger one but they get HEAVY, very impractical for carrying into the field very far. I spray-painted it copper for extra coolness factor.

I got a couple of 1/4" poplar rods and cut them to six 6in. pieces, and also took a 3/4"x3.5" board and cut it to 6" pieces.

I used Elmer's wood glue to adhere the poplar sticks to the wood. It's secure enough to just hammer the glued pieces of wood in place.

My box will hold 5 panels in place. You can throw this thing across a field and it will be fine! They're meant to take a beating in war, after all...

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I'd like to share the painting I made on Sunday at our North Bay Plein Air group. This was done at the SF Music Concourse in the middle of Golden Gate Park. Pretty cool building! It was a very gray day with bits of light poking through at the very end. I kept it pretty limited in the palette rather than try to force color into it, which is the temptation when you are plein air painting. I chose to try and enforce the black and white pattern and only used brighter color in the foliage. I feel like it's a bit heavily balanced to the left side, what do you think?

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