Thursday, May 27, 2010

I get by with a little help from my friends

Took some reference photos this past weekend for the painting that is due on June 30th for the submission at Manifest Gallery. I want to say thanks to Reg and Kristen for opening up their house and helping me out with getting the photos taken, which by the way took a lot longer than expected, but that seems to be the way of things. I had a model picked out for this painting, but he wasn't able to make it at the time, and I had a hard time deciding if I should wait for him to be available or just use myself.
Since the deadline is fast approaching and I was dealing with some perishable items in my setup, I decided to use myself. Looking back, I think it was a good result:one, for the fact that I had to kneel on hard floors while photos were taken and I wouldn't want to subject anyone to enduring that, and two, the painting is deeply personal to my life so despite my issues with my own body image, its more fitting for me to be in the painting.
So now it's up to me to get this thing done, and I must admit that I'm feeling the pressure. I don't want to waste too much time with the few hours I have each morning available to work on this, but I don't want to hurry up and do a half-assed attempt at something worth painting either.

So many people have been helping out with this project, mostly in the spiritual and encouraging supportive manner , which is what I need to keep this thing moving.
I have the layout drawing completed now, and now want to do a value study while getting a panel ready for painting. I'll try to post pics of the value study when I get it done.
I'm still trying to decide how large I want to make the piece. I want to paint it as big as possible, but then again my wife and I have small cars, so transporting this might be an issue if I make it larger than what could comfortably fit into our vehicles. Oh well, it will come down to a gut decision at the last minute.

I also wanted to mention that I am going out to a week long art conference in August called the Glen workshop. It's an incredible week where Artists, writers, and poets from all across the continent get together in Santa Fe, NM, to be one community. The are classes offered in the morning by faculty renowned and respected nationally in their own fields of study. Everything from Figure drawing to fiction and non fiction writing classes, to a film seminar. In the afternoons and evenings there are lectures given by faculty as well as time to spend exploring Santa Fe. I went last year as a gift from my brother, and I am excited to be going back again. This time I want to say thank you to two friends of mine (Dan, and Cam,)who contributed funds to help me get out there. I would say that the trip last year was the shot in my arm that made me seriously contemplate moving towards being a professional painter. Last year I took figure drawing with Barry Moser, who is an extremely intelligent man and a font of wisdom and Wit. He's a real character and you can't spend time with him without him making a strong and inspiring impression on you.
this year I am taking a portrait painting class with Joel Sheesley and am looking forward to it.

No comments:

Post a Comment