Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Since my latest - and best, in my view - portrait sat drying while we were in Florida, I was able to give it a coat of retouching varnish yesterday and work on it again this morning. The main thing was to get Khenti's earring to look plausible and I did accomplish that, I think. Added a bunch of additional highlights, and now it is pretty much finished. Except that I still need to tone down part of that white chair covering, and make the shadows around her a little more intense so she doesn't seem to be floating. At 30" x 40" this is the largest painting I have ever attempted, by far! Anyway, she looks like this (click on the image to enlarge). The thing I especially like about it is that it reads well, both up close (enlarged) and from a distance:
The Shouk Lounge is advertising for artists to contribute to a "gallery-type" exhibition, whatever they mean by that. I copied my paintings onto a CD and will have talk to them and see if they are interested in some of my stuff.
I watched a DVD documentary on Alice Neel last night, and couldn't sleep after that. Her portraits are SO strong, intimate and incisive. I would love to catch some of that in my work. I will have to become much looser - but then that is apparent from all the all other good paintings I am looking at, too. I've asked permission to copy Eakins' portrait of Walt Whitman from the original hanging in the PAFA museum. I think I'll get permission, but may fall short of completing it before classes start again in mid-month.
The Shouk Lounge is advertising for artists to contribute to a "gallery-type" exhibition, whatever they mean by that. I copied my paintings onto a CD and will have talk to them and see if they are interested in some of my stuff.
I watched a DVD documentary on Alice Neel last night, and couldn't sleep after that. Her portraits are SO strong, intimate and incisive. I would love to catch some of that in my work. I will have to become much looser - but then that is apparent from all the all other good paintings I am looking at, too. I've asked permission to copy Eakins' portrait of Walt Whitman from the original hanging in the PAFA museum. I think I'll get permission, but may fall short of completing it before classes start again in mid-month.
