latest sculpture

I ran out of time and was not able to finish the hands, feet and face.
I also ran into a problem on this particular pose: bending the underlying armature in the right place. As you can see by the silver wire coming through the knee areas, I overestimated where the legs should bend. I thought I'd estimated correctly, but apparently not!

incomplete

For about a month now I have had this painting on my easel. Soon after I began painting it, I realized the composition is awkward, but I continued on, thinking that I would compensate for that by adding lighting and texture to the far background. After I began to add the lighting and texture, I realized there is just no saving this one.
Maybe I'll put it in the closet and let it sit for a while, take it out in a few months... although deep down inside I know that means it will never see the light of day again, unless I move to a new apartment.
Goodbye strange and dark incomplete orchid painting!
:)

Hummingbird

I had this idea for a character a while ago. I haven't developed it further than this. She started out as a spunky kid and somehow in the witching hours of my sketchbook morphed into a punkier kid. I plan to revisit her soon and develop a few more sketches and paintings. I call her Hummingbird.

Monday Evening Drawing Workshop

5 minutes:

10 minutes:

20 minutes:

Lines

because i am a painter, i usually work tonally on figure drawings. the eye does not see contours around forms; the eye sees masses of shadow and light. for this reason, when drawing from life, many painters choose the tonal approach to drawing over the linear approach. while i agree that learning to see the light as opposed to delineation of separate objects is helpful for painting, after many years of working tonally, i have begun to feel that my work overall has a certain emotional disconnect. ultimately, what the artist is creating is work that expresses his or her own uniqueness, so do i really need to continue along a path in perfecting accuracy? 

American Artist Magazine on the subject:

As prevalent as it has been historically, the contour remains an artificial construction. We don’t see in lines, no matter how accustomed we are to delineating objects with them. When I look out the window and see the edge of a building against the sky, I do not see a line, per se. I see a mass of dark tone juxtaposed against a mass of much lighter tone, and the point at which they meet creates an edge. This edge relationship might be described in an abbreviated fashion with a line, but it might also be more fully described by re-creating the tonal relationship between the two masses whose congruence makes the edge. In tonal drawing, there are edges to masses, rather than lines between them. To substitute a line for the edge of a value relationship is to substitute something that is not there for something that is. That is why linear drawing seems more abstract and intellectual. A line seems intellectual not because it lacks feeling—for what could be more emotive than a Leonardo silverpoint line—but because we don’t actually see in lines and therefore they have to be decoded or interpreted. Juxtaposed tones, being so much closer to vision, seem much more immediate.

i actually like a combination of the two, lines and tone. i hope to develop my drawings much further with the hope of emphasizing expressiveness; less literal, more experimental. 

my lines are brown china marker and white conte pencil on pastel paper

Tribal Masks of the Pacific Northwest

As seen in the Legacy Gallery in Seattle this weekend.

Monday night drawing workshop. The model is Shawnwa - a fantastic dancer/model through the Bay Area Model's Guild.

What does an alla prima painter do when she only has the weekend to paint and needs more time? I don't know.

A Personal Retrospective

For a few years now, I have desired to depart from the personal work I have engaged in since leaving art school, which tends to mirror my mentor and fellow students, who were no doubt a large influence on my painting. In this attempt, I have spent a lot of time at drawing workshops, plein air painting, sculpting, sketchbook experiments, with a few illustration explorations inspired by my job, fully realizing that my blog posts for the past two years have been all over the road. While I believe experimentation is important in artistic development, there comes a time when a person needs to think carefully, assess the results and determine a conclusion.

I put together a few paintings I have finished during this period for comparison. They all seem to lack the design and cleanliness of style I have been going for, and the subject matter is not coming through the way I'd like. They feel...... stalled, controlled, tense, and, interestingly, dark (which is odd for floral still lifes, I think). And do I really want to paint only still lifes? I think I find more joy in other areas, like figure painting/drawing and sculpting.

The past two years have answered some important questions and opened up new inspiration. I feel very ready to begin a more earnest journey to creating richer, more focused work. Somehow, the words "what bliss!" from John Updike and thoughts about the reactionary Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom last week really helped me. 

*** oops - looks like some of the images are getting cut off. I'll work on fixing it... :)

Metamorphica Dance Troupe at Bus Stop Gallery

featuring the costume designs of Bad Uncle Sistah and a dj, whose name I do not remember.

My drawings are red china marker on pastel paper.

 Excellent event.  I feel renewed.