I went to Nova color and did some damage.  

All eight studies are done and approved. Tomorrow I'll start prepping! I am nervous - issues with getting the supplies on site and parking and just getting used to my new outdoor studio. I hope it takes just a week for each one. Will naturally depend on the weather but I hope the designs go up easily too. 

7

not finished but it's coming

6 and counting

What a week! A ton of students in the studio over the week end. Figure drawing is really shaping up as a class and in the afternoon I now have the help of David Watson who graduated from Mountserrat College in Massachusetts and has a bunch of experience in the contemporary art world. The best was that when faced with an impromptu lesson in two point perspective, he jumped in and did a fantastic job. 

and on top of that Nickelodeon wants to set a reality TV episode in the studio and I called the business school at Pepperdine to pitch the studio as a case study and tomorrow they are both interviewing me.......

But I have the utility boxes pending and have to reach the number eight with really good ideas. Here is #6.

Studies

Here are four studies for the next box . They need just a few touches.

And here's one I did today and will finish tomorrow- then get to work on the 6th.

The Picadelli Apartments at Wilshire and Normandie .

In progress

Progress on the Utility Boxes

In the last two weeks I have been hanging around the neighborhood at Wilshire and Normandie getting a feel for paintings that reflect the neighborhood. I have four studies almost completed and ideas for two more. I have to get eight solid paintings in total

 The painting below is just getting started. I will do the building but have the orange underpainting in place to be a light source inside of the building.

. I think I will have them by the end of the week. Here's what I have so far.

Utility boxes

I'm getting a start tonight on the studies for the 2 boxes at Wilshire and Normandie. 

Addendum

This is Teresa Sun's painting. Great lamp post in addition to a real background and foreground. Good Work!

Photos from Plein Air Sunday

Yesterday was the last Sunday of the month and we met on the grounds of LACMA to get in some fantastic painting. The weather was perfect and it was a relaxing and successful afternoon. I'm amazed at the work. Somehow I missed getting a photo of Teresa's painting but I'll add it when I see her on Tuesday.

Shana

A really beautiful painting in acrylic.

 Aishwarya

The building in the background is excellent in this as the grass in the foreground.

Denise

Great treatment of light and shadow in the foreground and good treatment of buildings in the background.

Elizabeth

I love this painting! Simple, great color and fluent.

Me

Getting ready for Plein Air Sunday

I did this quick demo in preparation for out next Sunday painting session. We talked about the principles of atmospheric perspective. The first rule is that contrast in value diminishes as things recede in the distance. So here I just painted three palm trees  that are lighter as they go back against the white background. Just the change in value makes it seem like the tree on the right is in back of the other two.

Another technique with trees is to pay attention to the negative space and a good technique is to paint the positive space like I did above, then come in and paint the trees again by looking at the negative space. This breaks up the tendency to do cartoon or repetitive trees from your head rather than from observation. SOmetimes you have to go back and forth from positive to negative to ge a tree that captures the actual gesture of what you are looking at.

Saturday Night at fresh stART

I participated in the fresh stART event last night at the Santa Monica Airport  and sold 8 paintings!!!!

It was a wonderful event and I'm not the only one to see lots of red dots next to my work. There was a big crowd of people who were buying art .

But I want to be a little serious about how important it is for artists to be able to find collectors who appreciated and collect their work. It really breathes life into the studio. I'm grateful.

And for all the plain air painters from Sunday,,,, I sold my little painting. I will post the pieces that were sold this afternoon.

Thursday

It's a little harder to teach and paint than one would imagine. I love all the activity in the studio. No kidding. It's a real gift but I've gone some days without doing any work of my own. I worked in the plein air class on Sunday but today there was a little break so I went out on the deck. It was gray and soupy and cold. But we have the  possibility of rain - no complaints from me!

Several opportunities  have come up to show my work. The Long Beach Library has an exhibit of about 20 paintings that were studies for the signal control cabinets I did over the past several years. I think they stand on their own.

And Saturday night I have 10 paintings in the fresh stArt art show and sale in Santa Monica.  The last time I did this event I sold 11 pieces and it's a fun party. 

Here's a link.

fresh stArt

The First Plein Air Sunday

On the last Sunday of every month a nunber of studio students, and friends are joining me to go out painting at various sites around Los Angeles. We went out for the first time today and it was fantastic!

Everyone got something. The weather was a little weird. Sun and warm temperatures were forecast but it actually rained for about one minute- a great reminder to bring along extra clothes.

My batteries died and I didn't get good photos of everyone's work but Elizbeth took a photo of mine. I'll get as many images of the others as I can.

Jennifer did three charming paintings. She tarted out with small canvases to get started. The third image is a painted on a 'toned canvas' which means it was painted with a mid-tone venetian red. This is really a good choice because the red is a contrast to the greens of the trees and hills.  

And here is Shana's painting.  Really good attention to the perspective in the foreground buildings and a good representation of the view she had.

Teresa ( Boying)  painted this in acrylic and it has a modern impressionist style.

Our next meeting will be on February 23 at 1pm. I'll let you know the location by mid month.

If you are not on the mailing list just let me know and I'm happy to add you .

signal control boxes

If you go way back in this blog you can see some of the signal control cabinet murals that I have done over the past several years. I was really terrible at cataloguing the images on my website but since I would like to do more murals and it would help if one has a coherent way of seeing them.... I'm working on my website. Does that count as daily painting? I taught today too. Here's a link to the page that I started today. It will have links to each box and maybe a google map.

Signal Box Murals

This is a photo from the corner of Wilshire and Western with my security detail and docents, 

Officers Rudy and Freddie. 

And here  is a video of \ the finished product.

Night Painting

I've always loved paintings of the night. Charles Rollo Peters is a favorite and also the western night scenes of  Frederick Remington. I use variations of raw umber to get started. Raw umber and blue in the background coming to raw umber and turquoise, green and yellow ochre in the foreground. Then touches of city lights. This is a study I did last summer and there is one larger unfinished painting in the studio. Will get on it this week!

I was invited by my friend Linda Keeler to Palm Springs right before New Years. We went to see the Richard Diebenkorn show at the Palm Springs Museum of Art which was fabulous. The next day we both went out to paint in the neighborhood. I love the mid century houses. We just had a few hours so I did two paintings of the same thing.

Here's another small painting from the same area that I did in 2007.

A little more from Echo Park

I'm finishing up posts on recent Echo Park paintings. This is from November at the corner of Sunset and Maltman, a place I've painted many times with my friend Sarah Arnold.

Someone suggested that I photograph the paintings as they progress so I gave it a try.

 12" x 16"

And here are the last two from the park

11" x 14"

6" x 6"

Maybe I should add that I went back to Echo Park this week and started on a painting of a house in the hills. When I got back to the studio I realized the composition was really wrong, so I scrapped it down. I'm glad but will have something new that works soon!

from Echo Park again

It was a huge surprise and relief to discover that the lake at Echo Park was restored and the lotus were blooming again this summer.