Roberto 11 x 17, oil on canvas

Khrystina, oil on wood

Room 258, oil on panel

North Pond, 12 x 9, oil on canvas

Anne, 11 x 17, oil on canvas

 Recent alla prima portraits, a plein-air study, and a self portrait. I wanted to observe more of the space around me, the warm and cool lights from my friends who were all working on their own paintings. The plein air was done in a 4 hour session in Lincoln Park. There were small patches of snow still left over from the last snowstorm we had here sitting on the tree trunk reflecting in the high sun at noon.

Misha the Sculptor
11" x 17", oil on linen

Misha is a Russian sculptor who emigrated to the US back in the 80's. His website's here, along with his fathers art, which is pretty beast. http://mishafromminsk.com/index.php

4.5 hours at the Palette and Chisel today. Tons of fun, just going, going, going.

Portraits and figure sketches!

9 x 12, oil on canvas

9 x 12, oil on panel

11 x 17, oil on canvas

A couple 20 minute poses done in charcoal

A student from school posed for us and had the entire Pikachu getup! At one point she looked desperately bored, and that's what I wanted, along with that ghastly hat.

11 x 17, oil on panel

A tiny 4 x 6 color study I did for the painting below. Took about two hours and I'm okay with the overall image, just a little too warm for what was actually happening.

This was a daily capture of the process I used to glaze with oils for the first time. I used Liquin Light Gel and a raw umber underpainting. The underpainting was quite bad, it was rushed to try to get enough time to glaze since I only had a little over a week to work on it so I thought I could fix mistakes in the glaze which I luckily was able to. It was a lot of fun playing around with it, slopping it on there, wiping it away, rubbing it in, seeing colors intermingle and lyer on top of each other.

This was done with 4 layers of glazing oils. Trying to figure out how to glaze as I'm so used to painting directly and even moreso, a lot of what I do is done alla prima.

11 x 17, oil on panel

Toussaint oil on panel, 23" x 17"

My good friend Toussaint posed for a group of friends after school for 6 hours straight! Great pose, and great outfit which we needed to undo a bit to get it wild and messy.

"Meg" Oil on board

"Cushman" Oil on linen

 The portrait of Meg definitely came to be by an accident. I had oil primed a wooden panel about a month prior to the painting and since it had been dry to the touch I picked it to start painting on. Thing is from my experience, the room where I leave all my supports to dry makes the oil primer take a very long time to dry. There are stages where it's tacky, then dry to the touch, then completely dry (starts to feel a little gritty). I had started painting and I noticed the oil primer underneath starting to mix in with the oil paint!

Long story short, it had made the paint very difficult to move and it had sunken in and dried completely the next day. Over the course of 4 days I painted and it gave me a very interesting surface texture I'd like to work on in the future.

2 hour foot study.

2 hour head study at the Palette and Chisel.

20 minute form studies.

Coffee and sketch some more.

 17 x 11 portraits in oil from a weekly portrait session.

More sketches while sipping coffee and riding the train

Recent sketches aboard the Metra and in coffee shops

Zespo, oil on linen

One of my friends got into an accident, totaled his car but made it out alive. I didn't see how after looking at the photos of the damage and especially since he only got a few nicks and bruises.

Han, oil on canvas

Portraits

I've been doing quite a few portraits recently. The surge is in part that I've been able to hold a semi-regular session during the week with fellow students. These are all done 3 - 4 hours.