Acrylic Demo - for Valentine's Day!!

Here's a demo I did a few weeks ago that I just touched up to bring it to a bit of finish - maybe not totally finished - but hey!  I got a Bill Cosby piece to paint, so here it is :).  I wanted to show my class some simple color blocking and dry brush technique. so the steps went like this:
1. Mount a sheet of 140 lb Arches Cold Press to a wood panel, using PVA, and the trim the excess off the edges.  Let it dry for an hour.
2. Paint in a washy sky-y background, draw portrait on top in very, very light pencil.
3.  Block out the face (the shape of the contour of the face) in red oxide (a nice cheap opaque pigment) with a little payne's grey mixed in to give it a slight variation, being careful of the edges.
4. Block out the hair shape and eyebrows in payne's grey, again being careful of the edges.
5. Start into lighter tones to "pull" out midtone highlights.  Basically, stating to shape out the cheekbones, bridge of the nose, ears, back of the neck, and forehead - using dry brush
6. Move up the the value scale being careful to not just keep mixing in white, but using cadmium yellow, napthol red, and light portrait pink to keep it warming - not just lightening, using dry brush.  So far, I've pretty much just used a #6 Filbert.
7. Use light on the sky as a high point for the highlights - in this case, the slightly whited out light portrait pink for the highlight.
8. Descend down into cooler tones and dark from the red oxide mid level, using payne's grey and dry brush.
9.  Use a bit of a napthol crimson wash on the upper left side of the forehead to allow the right side to pop a bit a more.
10. Wash a bit of brilliant blue into the mouth/chin area.
11. Realize you should have been painting the shirt, tie, and jacket at the same time and add them in.:)
12. Throw in plane for extra depressing affect.
13.  Besides prep and background painting, about two hours - not bad, have a cup of coffee.
14. Happy belated Valentine's Day!!

Here's what the end texture looks like.  Pretty pourous - but you can see how the wash on the left side smooths it out a bit.  I want the right side rough - closer the viewer, and remembering that rough surface come forward, smooth surfaces recede.  And - if you look close, you can see the bad photoshop highlights in the eyes I tossed in before I painted them in the finish above.  eeesh.

Funtown USA!!!

Have you been to Funtown USA? All you need is a passport, driver's license, 34 dollars, a penchant for skeeball,  and you may want a grown up diaper.  Happy Birthday to me!  Thanks Michelle!  Funtown is way better than Snacktown!

PS - That's me on the left hand seat.  You are not able to hear me scream, yet I assure you, I did.

Losers

The Times ran a little story about the amazing losing capacity of New York teams, including my beloved Metroploitans along with a nice little photo gallery.  As the snow falls, and the Mets gear up for a "rebuilding" year, I'm taking another long deep breath.  I'm wondering if it's possible to hibernate through summer . . .

Let's go Mets.

Aahh . . . Brooklyn

Got to spend last night on Kiersten Essenpreis' and Wes Cox roof in Bushwick with our friends Jen and Jed Heuer to eat some lobster and celebrate my beloved Michelle's blank-ty something birthday with lobsters and cupcakes. (Hard to phrase that so it doesn't sound awkward but I want to link to everyone's site - they're all so damn good!) It was a lovely evening emotionally and physically with the great sunset and breeze coming in. Jen and Jed are headed off to Portland for the year next year, and there's the looming possibility of Kiersten and Wes eventually moving to Chicago, and I had the feeling I've had a couple times in the past ten years - things are going to change. Roof time with great people in the Borough of Kings seems just a little too nice to last.

I hate to say I told you so . . .

Hate to repost, but since the oil is still flowing, I thought I'd throw up my 30Reasons.org poster from 2008. The week this got poster to the 30Reasons site (Nov 08), Obama drastically weakened his stance on offshore drilling which was quite a disappointment. I was really excited when he initially planned to put a hold on drilling new areas and reassess the current leases held government's incredibly corrupt Materials Management Office. Would it have stopped the current crisis? Probably not. Preemptive tactics may have disastrous results in foreign policy, but as far as environmental policy goes, it's a pretty good idea. It also made me realize what a theme it's been in my own work and especially the "Pink Gold" book I made in 2005.

Dinobot!

I know a dinobot when I see one, and Autobot "Sludge" was outside my house all weekend. He had been tearing up the street on Vanderbilt using his foot-stomping earthquake thing disguised as a loud metallic chewing up of the concrete. He would have been tired, which is why he didn't try to contact me. I did not, nor should any one ever, attempt to feed a Dinobot luring them with hand held energon cubes! Their primitive minds will not distinguish your hand from the cube!

All things being sequel . . .

This is one of my favorite, although puzzling, NY phenomenons. I've seen many examples of these sequel-esque restaurant names around, almost always with Chinese restaurants, but now in my neighborhood there's a new entry. Apparently, there is a bar somewhere named CHANCE. The owners, owing to apparent success, decided to open up a second bar located on my block. In doing so, they decided to pass up the myriad of applicable titles that maintain the congruity using the original name: Second Chance, Another Chance, or any other phrase involving chance (I'm sure you can think of a few) . . . and decided on CHANCE II. Is it the propensity of pop culture? Of too many over promoted sequels? Do people not know enough words? It's probably some sort of tax thing. Even so, I'm disappointed. The "II" will always be attached to a sub-par, uncreative, over hyped version of the original that should take place on a boat, in space, fifteen years in the future - OR as I would advocate, never at all, and certainly, never on my block.

This American Life Sighting . . .

While we were headed upstate last week, Michelle and I stopped at the Plattekill rest stop to eat some road food, which turned out to be the infamous Roy Rogers, along with it's Fixins Bar. Generally I abhor the idea the of a "Fixin's Bar" but we were feeling frisky, and starved to the point of Fixin's. As we sat there, Michelle said,"Is that who I think it is?". I turned to look at a nerdy, but kinda hip dressed guy and thought it must be someone from Pratt. . . some other teacher, or former student. I turned back around thinking no, but then I heard the voice, a birdy thin but emotive voice. And realized it was Ira Glass. I am nerdy enough to consider myself a total NPR Dweeb, and in fact got jumped a year or two ago wearing my pledge drive t-shirt. Whether this was the cause of the beating I will never know, but suffice to say, I was a little blown away by the celebrity sighting. Whenever we see the overblown, fat, Wal-mart saturated world outside the city, we always say one thing - with both love and disdain - "America." And there we were. America. And there was Ira Glass, right where he's supposed to be. So it was fun to hear the episode which was out last week, all taking place at the rest stop.

As for the picture (by Nancy Updike), I took particular notice of these as well. Never drink from anything bigger than a cat and shaped like a bar-bell.