Timed paintings

So this week our professor had us do 8 paintings with a time constraint on each.  Normally the professors are asking us to spend at least 6 hours on a painting, this week we were allowed to spend only 45 minutes on one group and no more than 60 minutes on the next group.  The point of the exercise was to hone our skills at capturing the gesture of the pose, seeing large shapes and massing them in quickly, and making color choices quickly.  The academy provided us with photo references to work from and I used a timer to keep myself on track.  I generally set my timer for 5 minutes less than the allotted time and then when it went off I knew I had 5 minutes left to do the last minute details. It was really quite hard, but after a while I began to enjoy it.  I can really see how it helps your eyes to see and evaluate what you are looking at quickly and to take a lot of information and simplify it so you can describe it with paint.

Here are a few of my not so scary looking paintings that I did.  Some were really quite horrific!!! But a few had promise, so I thought I'd post.  Enjoy!

Hudson kicking the can

So here is the next project in my painting class.  It's a painting of my son Hudson playing kick the can down the road at our pool club.  We spend so much time at this club in the summer - swimming and playing tennis, that I wanted to capture that wonderful feeling we have when we drive down this long driveway into the club.

I'm only moderately happy with this painting.  I like the evenironment I placed him and I like how I captured the shadows of the greens on the driveway and grass.  The figure of Hudson does not capture likeness, so I know I have some work to do there.  I will get a critique from my professor and then I will make some changes and hopefully improve that part.  I'll post this for now so you have something to see then I'll repost once I have reworked:)

My Instructor

My Instructor this semester at AAU is Warren Chang.  He is a realist painter in the Fine Art department. According to his biography he started out as an illustrator and did that for many years till he found it unsatisfying doing "other people's ideas" in art.  He moved over to the fine art side and has been very happy and very successful.  I really enjoy his work and his style.

He posted in our classroom a lecture that he gave that made it to Youtube.  Since it's out in the public domain I thought I'd share it with you here in case you are interested.  He talks about his paintings and the influences that came together to inspire him to create them.  It was really fun for me to listen to how he came up with his ideas, his approach to the canvas and ultimately to see the finished work.  I hope you enjoy it to!

It is a two part video so here are both links.

Warren Chang Part 1

Warren Chang Part 2

Situation and Environment

Sorry I haven't been very faithful to my blog lately.  I took a painting class at the Academy this summer and I have been painting non-stop for the last 4 weeks!  I paint two to three paintings a week plus take photo references and create value sketches for each painting.  It has been a lot of work and I'm only half way through!  But I am improving:-)  That's what matters!

The professor I have this semester is a very talented artist named Warren Chang.  He is teaching me to paint figures in their environment.  Since I like to paint people most of the time this course is very appropriate for me.  Also, since I want to do picture book illustration, this course will also be helpful for  doing that artwork as well.  I have a few projects that I am proud of, even though they can be made better...so I thought I'd post them for you to see.  More will be coming very soon as I am working on one of my son right now and then after that I will be doing one of the three children together!

Enjoy these and let me know what you think!