More San Francisco Inspiration!

This week I had time to do a little painting and continue exploring the city.

"Sadie's Orchid", 9x12, oil on linen

My daughter in front of the ferry building.

Maybe it's my Florida roots but I love the graphic quality of palm trees.

Willow trees in Sausalito.

Muir Woods National Monument Park.

The play of light and dark in Muir Woods was incredible. 

I'm amazed at the eco friendly aspect of San Francisco,  everywhere there are compostable paper cups, flatware,  disposable cups, virtually everything is recyclable! Very little goes to the landfill. Garbage is separated into recyclables, compostable and landfill.

(BTW spell checker doesn't know the word compostable, sad day)

Wine tasting tour in Sonoma Valley, YES! 

Bougainvillea on Lombard Street.

Strange public toilet on Castro and Market, it has a sliding door and auto disinfecting toilet, sink and floor  after a 55 second door closing, purchased from France and modeled after public toilets in Paris. 

Found this sidewalk graffiti and thought it was cool, later found it  in other places around the city. Did a little research and found that if is the street artist Jeremy Novy.

A modified Jeremy Novy on Post Street.

A favorite find was a large Scott Fraser painting in the window of the Jenkins Johnson Gallery. John Pence Gallery is museum huge! I saw amazing work by Jacob Pfeiffer, Anthony Wiachulis, Juliette Artistide, Carl Dobsky, Will Wilson, Zach Zdrale... and the list goes on. 

More about other galleries and new artists I've discovered during my lovely San Francisco days, but for now I'm off to explore on my last day in San Francisco.

To Be Continued...

San Francisco Inspires!

I'm lucky enough to be experiencing San Francisco for the first time. Inspiration comes in many forms. Banksy one day,  the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog and on old fortune telling machine another.

Cable Car Cables

Golden Gate Bridge

Banksy

Bay Bridge

Here's some of my favorite art from the De Young Museum.

Cornelia Parker, Anti-Mass, burnt wood from an Alabama Baptist Church destroyed by arson.

Al Farrow, The Spine and Tooth of Santo Guerro, made from bullets and guns. 

 And of course a couple shots of Sargent hands, ALWAYS inspiring.

Sargeant Kendall, Cypripedia, 1927, I don't really love this painting over all, but I do really enjoy the temperature shifts in the flesh tones, and the warm reflected light.

Katie LaMonte, cast glass 2007, I was happy to see her work here, I saw it for the first time last year in Norfolk, VA The missing figure is fascinating to see, or not see?

The room I lingered the longest in was The Art of Illusion room, Trompe L'Oeil Still Life.

William Joseph McCloskey, 1890, oil, doesn't this have a contemporary feel?

Me being impressed by the size of this William Harnett

If there is ever an example of how painting is more akin to sculpture than drawing, this is it. The highlights of this Harnett are actually chunky and 3-D.

Richard Shaw, Ceramic, 1980, fun fool the eye sculpture.

The best painted grapes I've ever seen in my life, Abraham Mignon, 1669-72,
 (the rest of the painting didn't suck either)

Frank Duveneck, Study for Guard of the Harem, 1879.   I love the shadow side of the face being such transparent paint, the eye is not there in a way that is completely believable.

To be continued...

Lines and Colors Blog

Thrilled and honored to see my work shared on Lines and Colors, a blog about all things visual art related. According to the author Charley Parker...

Lines and Colors

Lines and Colors is a blog about drawing, sketching, painting, comics, cartoons, webcomics, illustration, digital art, concept art, gallery art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it's fair game.

I've been following this blog for a while now and it's always interesting and informative, check it out!

Artist A Day- Google Gadget- July 16, 2011

Thrilled to see this when I started up the 'ol Mac this morning!

This is a Google Gadget for customized home pages. I've had it on my desktop for a while and enjoy seeing a new artist every day.

They include a link to my website, one to each gallery that represents me, Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA and Peterson Cody Gallery, Santa FE, NM. Their website is www.artistaday.com

You can also them on facebook, artistaday.com

Black and White Or Shades of Gray?

Does our view of complex issues change with age?

This is my new painting "The Certainty of Youth and the Complexity of Wisdom", 43x49, oil on panel. 

 

 

Both these men are Birmingham artists. You may recognize the wise model, a cowboy in The Incognito Project, in "Yippee Ki-Yay".

"Yippee Ki-Yay, The Incognito Project" 16x16, oil on panel

You may also recognize my youth model from the cover of the novel Olympia Heights, The Pantheon, by Amy Strickland

"Olympia Heights, The Pantheon" a novel by Amy Strickland

Click here to see a post about my cover photo shoot for Amy's book. Thanks Ira and Nick!

Myth Busting One Art Rule at a Time

Yesterday while painting rocks I had an ah ha moment....

"The Certainty of Youth and the Complexity of Wisdom" detail
(diptych in progress)

As I share my knowledge of painting with my students I also delight in debunking ART RULES as they understand them.

The ah ha moment today came when I realized WHY this is crucial to growth as an artist, particularly to a realist artist...drum roll please...

If you have a preconceived idea of what something SHOULD be you can't get to the thing as it REALLY is.

While all the technical stuff I share is important what I really want my students to do is observe nature, really observe nature.

The conversation usually starts when I say something like "Look how warm the shadows are here" then one of my very accomplished students says something like "But I thought shadows are cool and highlights are warm" then I say "That's what I used to think too." And then we are off!

I've come to think of these statements as Art Rules that Hinder. While painting in the solitude of my studio I find myself problem solving ways to help students rethink these rules, ways to shake them up just a bit.

So for my lovely students (you know who you are), I'll be debunking the rules one by one and having fun rocking your world!

Myth Busting Art Rules that Hinder

1. "Shadows are cool and highlights are warm"

Wrong, it's all relative. 

If you are trying to fit what you are observing into a painting formula you cannot see the magical natural phenomenon that is right in front of you.

Example: The hot southwest sun shining on a mesa is warm and the shadows cast by the mesa are cool, but a cool north light will make the highlights seem cool, in comparison to the shadows which will seem warm. 

Think of your paintings as movies, you be the director and set up any number of color temperature scenarios and variations.

Here is the illustration I use in class. This is a small still life I set up in a box, it's a wooden finial I painted flat white and mounted to a canvas board. The light is the same, all that changes is a piece of colored paper on the right hand side reflecting into the shadows.

With  black paper to the right of the box the shadow is dense and fairly neutral.

There is a red-orange piece of paper to the right of the box, notice all the gorgeous hot colors bouncing around. The highlight in comparison to the shadow is cool even though the light source hasn't changed.

Same light, but now with a cool blue paper reflecting into the shadows, the highlight is positively warm. 

Simply shine a light on a white object, put a piece of red paper on the opposite side of the object and really observe the light and shadow. In relationship to the red bouncing around in the shadows the highlights will seem warm. Yes this is reflected light, but it's also the color temperature in the shadow. My point is that it is all relative to the situation you set up or observe in nature.

If anyone knows any Art Rules that Hinder just send them to me. This is going to be fun!