need a cool name

like wordsworth or rockwell (if he was a musician) but for images.

getting back to the figure

decided to take my figure studying up a notch and get ready for class the week after next. which means getting away from the pages of 3" gestures from airports and coffee shops in my moleskine, and back to full figures on a big pad of newsprint. (and the creamy creamy conte crayon)
after the first 20 minutes i realized just how rusty i was and spent the day getting back into the rhythm of things. Which ended up in doing a longer slower intensive study of my face to get re-acquainted with the forms, and this sweet Wolff's Carbon pencil.
(and ended up with a picture for my profile too)

remember gouache?

i was planning on taking landscape painting through the fine art department this spring semester. got waivers and permissions all taken care of and everything, and it turned out to be the same day as digital painting so i had to choose. still love atmospheric perspective though, guess it'll just have to wait.
anyway i finally made use of searching the remote areas of the google earth landscape looking for uploaded photos to give me a sense of the landscapes architecture. i remembered these photos from a hiking trail down in Bolivia, near somewhere called the Refugio los Volcanes, and thought these would be good references for study. Since i can't seem to pull it together quick enough on location.
also dug out the gouache to see if it was still wet, i heard they have a tendency to dry out. So gouache, how to approach it? is it opaque or transparent? those words mean much more now than they did last semester, after semester of practice i should be capable of either.
i wish i had made up my mind on the first one, took all afternoon/evening too. i felt i was fighting the medium and the habits with the brushes. watercolor brushes but not watercolor, if you want?
felt i did better on the second one, less time and paint too. managed to save the white of the board for the lights on the orangey cliff faces in the center.

plein air again

about 2 hours on location, and another hour or so at the house from photo ref.

i felt a bit cheated when i went to go sketch at the beach the other week and it began to rain, and saw an opportunity for a rematch yesterday. A few of us went to stow lake in golden gate park to find and capture a good view.
i'm starting to think this plein air painting isn't as glamorous as i initially thought. capturing the gesture of falling water isn't easy, and being so close to it was really really cold, plus sitting on a rock for a few hours left my back aching today in unfamiliar places.

however all complaints aside, the minor insights into the shapes and essence of stone and water in the short hand of brushstroke felt worthwhile.

Figure Painting

Some class work and the homeworks; NC Wyeth mastercopy, portrait, and indoors 3/4 figure.
I feel the least confidant about my figure, so it was nice to get a chance to practice the forms and get acquainted with some flesh tones. And an excuse to labor over a canvas on the weekends is also well received.