Jason With A Top Hat
20" x 16"
Oil on RayMar Board


Impressive, isn't it??

I visited Faye Christian Phillips' website recently. (I always love her art, humor and her wonderful quotes). She was talking about this fun link where you can see your photos or your paintings as they would look in a museum. What fun! Go ahead and try it... but come back and make a comment!!! ;o>

This is my latest unfinished portrait from my wonderful Thursday class at LAAFA. The teacher is Johanna Spinks and for this session (or semester) she alternates still life instruction with figurative work. Her emphasis is on values and she feels that by working to help the students to see values and use them correctly to turn the form, it doesn't matter whether your subject is a human or a fruit or a flower. The officials at LAAFA have asked her to separate out the classes for the next session ... teach two separate classes which I think is a pity. Although I prefer figurative work, I have found that being presented with a still life (Okay....... Initially, I was pretty much FORCED to paint one.... ;o<) on a regular basis IS really good for me. I guess I'll have to set up my own still lifes (let's see if I can be that self disciplined!) at home because aside from Johanna's great teaching, having a model to paint is a real plus and I can't do that very easily at home. I think I did very well on this painting although I couldn't get it done in the 3 hour period (minus model breaks, etc.) I worked to get the drawing right and feel that I got a pretty good likeness. I put in the darks and tried to join them together to make interesting shapes and I tried hard to get in the 5 values to turn the forms. I also learned something I didn't know before about putting "air" in my shadows. When I was blocking in the darkest dark shapes I included the shadow so that I could lose edges on the shadow side. Johanna suggested that to make a shadow appear more realistic, it should not have been started in black. She told me to work in more color from the background carpet. (Yes, that's what it was...a carpet... I didn't want to make it seem like much so I included NO detail.) She showed me how to use the color in a vertical stroke to add "air" to the shadows. Cool. I've always had trouble with cast shadows... Perhaps now I will have less. Also another rather good thing for me...... I was able to keep it somewhat loose but still make it look pleasingly realistic.

Just because it's so much fun... Here's another one of my paintings (Caballero Canyon) as it will appear in the next nationally juried show up in Redding in January. (Yes.. for those of you who don't get my newsletter... I had TWO paintings juried in... I'll post more about that later in January.)

Okay... go try it again with your own and enjoy!! Next Thursday in class we'll be finishing up the now infamous "gold vase" painting which caused such an uproar when discussing a deep understanding of values.