Il Papa

Il Papa, 9"x12", watercolor on paper. 2017.

Got a commission from a friend to do a watercolor for his mother's birthday.  It is a pretty straight- forward picture of the pope. This was an easy commission, given my Catholic upbringing.

It's photo-based so there is not a lot to write about. I did make an active effort to make the pools of watercolor rhythm across the page. My illustrator skills are getting stronger.

I did get to see Pope Francis last year when he was in New York. I do like the general change of direction he represents. Plus, he's a Jesuit and St Francis is a great namesake AND the subject of an amazing Bellini painting.

“In the face of unjust and painful situations, 

faith brings us the light which scatters the darkness.”

Pope Francis

LCC Sun Drawing 07/16/16 - Jay

Jay 07/16/16 - Pose 01, 9"x 12", Watercolor on Paper

Heading from New York to Honolulu, I wanted to do more watercolor work. I was in a watercolor fit, working with my two favorite complementary color mixes -- purple and yellow. The dioxazine purple's exceptional depth creates pretty shadows and darkens the Naples opaque yellow in a nice way.

I was trying to make the contours work, making a strong silouhette. I made pools on the page which gives the edges a strong quality where the pigment collects. I was trying to use it carefully where it explains the form and lightens in the center.

Jay 07/16/16 - Pose 02, 9"x12", Watercolor on Paper

American Museum of Natural History - Tyranosaurus

So I have some bad news.  The Amathyst Paint

American Museum of Natural History - Styracosaurus

I'm having so much fun doing these.

Having flashbacks of Smithsonian collection dinosaur models that I would feverishly horde.

The blue background is painted with an Azurite watercolor. There is a slight patterning to the surface that is fascinating me. Although its actually pretty mild.

This fossil within a foam or plaster mold. You can see it here at the museums official site.  So it made me wonder how to resolve the surrounding areas of the painting.

I like what I did although it leads me so question the white boarders of the page.  I actually am thinking of really defining the boarders so they look like a comic boarder.  Its a debating I'm activating thinking about currently.   I may have to try and experiment or two.

American Museum of Natural History - Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus, Watercolor on Paper, 9"x12"

So I realized something as I was doing copies of things at the MET. I could be doing the skeletons over at the American Museum of Natural History. The Next day I was there. Throughout the week I have been working on these watercolors.

Daniel Smith makes a line of watercolors that use semiprecious stones as pigments. I have been fascinated by them as they dry with an uneven/semi patterned finish to them.  So I have been slowly collecting and using various tubes of them. It kind of scratched that itch of a dorky kid who grew up with a rock collection.

The dark purple in this painting is an Amathyst pigment. I was surprised that when it dried it had a sparkly finish to it; like I sprinkled glitter on the painting as it was drying.  I was doing this with a two color complement in mind so the amethyst paint was in the entirety of the stegosaurus, almost all the yellows were darkened with the purple amethyst paint.

I was actually kind of horrified looking at it on my wall.  It looked really silly but as I looked at it a bit more it began to grow on me.  So I decided to do a few more in this purple/yellow method Making a series of sparkly dinosaurs.

I'm kind of on a roll with these paintings my end goal is to do 10 of these dinosaur watercolors before I head back to Hawaii for the summer.

Painting around the House

Staircase 03/03/16, watercolor on paper, 9"x12"

So the day before Tribeca Ball, the school is undergoing a radical transformation to get ready for the event and I want to be nowhere near the chaos. I have been wanting to do watercolors around the place I'm living. I am happy with how this came out.

I hope this will be one of a few of these I am able to complete.

Classwork - Structual Anatomy - Watercolor

Classwork - 11/11/2015, 18"x24", watercolor 

So, the écorché exercise went well this morning. In the afternoon, we had to do drawings of the back of our model. I did the above watercolor. The focus was on the large muscle groups of the back.

I think the painting works, but I think I'm moderately successful at defining the muscle groupings. The value of the ecorché exercise and learning anatomy is being able to add that knowledge to a piece when the visual information is lacking. 

Classwork- History/Compositon - Day 2 - Rayne

Rayne-09/08/15-Pose 2 , Watercolor, 11"x15"

"Are you going to work from the model today?" A classmate asked me.

"Of course," I said simply, "I always work from a model if given a choice."
 
Day 2 for History/Composition. We got to see some of my classmates work and I was impressed not only with the dedication but the commitment to ideas that I saw.

I was ill-prepared for class today. I forgot my watercolor at home so I had to run out to the store and buy a tube of burnt sierra and cobalt blue.

So fresh tube of paint in hand I began to paint furiously. I had a little trouble on the first pose. The painting above was second pose of the class.

I exaggerated the pose a bit to make it a bit more dynamic. I managed to pull a lot more range of tones in the flesh in this painting. I really like this painting.  There is a nice mood to it.

Rayne-09/08/15-Pose 1 , Watercolor, 11"x15"

Above is the first pose of the class. It's okay overall, but there are some problems.

I don't like how static the pose is. It is a little stiff and I have some areas of the body that need a bit of resolution. I think got a little distracted by the face in this painting. Is is resolved well but it is at the expense of the rest of the body. I wish I defined the chair shape a little more. It's a little amorphous, in a distracting way.

I was not able to get a varied a range of tones into the figure of the pose. I think I was getting used to the two color painting. It takes a bit to get used to, but this was a great warm-up.

Overall, this was a great session with Rayne.

Re: INVITATION: Drawing @ the academy | Thursday September 3 |

Reign 09/03/15 , Watercolor, 11"x 15"

Day 3

Opening my email.

Hello Students Staff and Faculty!
The Operations and Student Services Departments would like you to join us for an evening of a long pose drawing, painting or sculpture and beat the heat. Thursday evening September 3rd!
We will be setting up 2 models in the air conditioned Wilkinson Hall starting at 5:30 pm going until 8:30 pm tomorrow night, One pose for the duration of the evening.
Ice Cold drinks to be served along with music. Come on down to the hall and have some fun, make some work and cool off for a bit. See you there.
Hope to see you there!

"In a 3 hour pose I can get a pretty good watercolor going," I said as I read the email. 

The event was a great community building activity centered around figure drawing. 
I went and was impressed by the number of people who came out and their skill level. It was also neat to see many members of the staff there drawing, too. It's nice to know that this place is not only home to a number of great artists but also administered by a number of great artist too.

I am pretty happy with my painting above.

The model was Reign. She wore a collection of necklaces and ornamentation that I thought would be a blast to render in watercolor. I think I managed to get some of the shine and glare right.

I was dreading painting the parasol. Japanese and Chinese brushpainting is full of great renderings of these that look effortless. It is a complicated but delicate form.

She took a pose that was very stiff, both feet planted on the floor, It makes sense from her perspective-- it's a three-hour pose and she has to get comfortable. But I improvised the feet of this pose to make it a little more dynamic.

Classwork- History/Compositon - Day 1 - Cyrus

Cyrus 09/01/15 Pose 1, Watercolor, 11"x14"

September 1, 2015

So day one at the New York Academy of Art. My First class was History and Theory of Composition which is one  part history class and one part studio. The work today was to gauge our ability levels. The space we are working in is newly-renovated, so there was a bit of time spent getting the area ready for drawing. 

The model in the afternoon session was Cyrus. He was either Persian or Sikh, I will ask him next time he sits, but either way his body type was a real insight into a class I had a long time ago at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, the Art of Ancient India. 

During that class and looking at slide after slide of statues of the Buddha and other Hindu deities, I always thought the shoulders were exaggerated oddly. But Cyrus's body type really illuminated the body shape those artists were trying to capture. As I'm writing this, this seems like an odd point to be making, but it was a real "Ah Ha" moment even though the realization was rather silly upon reflection.  

The afternoon session was two hour long poses. I know from experience I can get a pretty good watercolor in this time frame.

I worked really systematically the first 20 minutes of the pose on the sketch/outline. The next 20 minutes on blocking in the dark light fields and building the dark. I then spent the last 20  Minutes working on the lighted section for the drawings.           

I am pretty happy with this painting, It's spontaneous; it's well-rendered and has a nice mood to it.

Cyrus 09/01/15 Pose 2, Watercolor, 11"x 14"

Pose 2 was a little rushed and the last pose was collapsed to 5 minutes. As such my same plan fell a little short. I kind of like the effect it made though. I'm finding the incomplete/stylized parts of the form is kind of appealing. I may have to experiment with this and specifically how much of the shadow can I define and still have the form readable.

Speaking of Indian art, I think Cyrus was intentionally making a mudra in this pose.

Honolulu Museum of Art Figure Drawing 6/08/2015 - Sergio - Long Poses

Sergio 06/08/15 - Pose 2, 9"x12", Watercolor

These are the long poses from this Monday's figure drawing class at the Honolulu Art Museum School. Each of these are the 20 minute poses from the session.

Above is my favorite of the night. True to form it was the second pose of the night. I have been finding the second drawing/painting of the night is my favorite. It is becoming a very common trend.

I like extreme foreshortening in reclining poses. I actually usually move to the floor like with this drawing. I like how most everything reads except the left leg, it bugs me a little. I do like the other leg and foot.

Sergio 06/08/15 - Pose 1, 9"x12", Watercolor

This was the first pose of the night. I think there are some elements that are really working, but there are some elements that are really not working.

Sergio 06/08/15 - Pose 3, 9"x12", Watercolor

This was the third pose of the night. I do not thing is came out that good. I may reuse this page.

The Honolulu Museum of Art Figure Drawing class is every Monday at 7 PM. It is located at 1111 Victoria Street. There is a $10 class fee.

Honolulu Museum of Art Figure Drawing 6/08/2015 - Sergio - Short Poses

Sergio 6/08/15 Short 03 , 9"x12", Ink on Paper.

These are from the Monday drawing class at the Honolulu Museum of Art

I just bought some new watercolor brushes and was really desperate to try them out. So I was using Burnt Umber and Cobalt Blue watercolor for these. I like these two colors because they create a nice range of warms and cool tones and they cancel each other out very nicely to create a chromatic gray.

I really like these three short poses. So much so its that I wanted to make a separate post for them on the blog.

Above is the 10 minute pose. It was a pretty straight forward watercolor technique. I did a quick contour line drawing of the figure then added the watercolors starting from light then working to the darks.

The left hand is a little big. But other then that I really like this painting.

Sergio 6/08/15 Short 01 , 9"x12", Ink on Paper.

For the two 5 minute poses I drew a contour line drawing and then added the watercolor on another day. These actually came out very nicely. I may have to try this technique in the future as I am really satisfied with these two paintings.

This painting shows a lot of what I like about using the burnt umber and the Cobalt blue. The warm of the figures shoulder and face contrast nicely against the cool of the cobalt blue shadows. The chromatic gray that is created when the mix really makes for interesting shadowed tones.

Sergio 6/08/15 Short 02 , 9"x12", Ink on Paper.

This is the second of the 2 minute poses. I think i spent too much time getting the ears just right in the drawing phase. The watercolor looks great.

The Honolulu Museum of Art Figure Drawing class is every Monday at 7 PM. It is located at 1111 Victoria Street. There is a $10 class fee.

LCC Sun Drawing 3/30/14 - Sergio - Long Poses

Sergio 03/30/14 - Pose 01,  Watercolor and Ink on Paper, 9"x12"

I had a really good Morning at LCC on the 30th. Sergio was the model and I am very happy with this set of drawings.

I have been doing Tombow drawings at the Sunday session and oil pastels during the Monday sessions.

It was hard to pick a favorite of the morning, but this first one I really like. Sergio took this pose, to which everyone's reaction was, "Are you sure you can hold this for 20 minutes?" He said, "I'm all locked in here, I'm thinking of writing a book on this."

The pose is beautiful and I like the drawing that resulted.

I will have to spend a little more time on this drawing, but there is a lot of potential here. When I complete it expect another update on the blog.

Sergio 03/30/14 -Pose 02,  Watercolor and Ink on Paper, 9"x12"

This was the second pose of the night. He took a reclining pose because the last pose was rather difficult. This drawing is basically completed in my mind. There is a great spontaneity and I like the contrast between the defined legs and the less defined torso. I also like how the legs look.

Sergio 03/30/14 -Pose 03,  Ink on Paper, 9"x12"

This was the third pose of the morning.

As I was drawing this I started to realize how difficult the chair was to render. There is an elegant natural curve to the armrests and the bottom of the chair is falling through in places.  After i was done with it I asked Mike, "Do your students hate this chair?"

Before he could reply, one of his students in the session chimed in, "The chair is the devil."

I guess that answered that question.

I spent the break drawing the chair in more detail. I am very happy with how this came out.

Sergio 03/30/14 -Pose 04,  Ink on Paper, 9"x12"

What... a 4th pose?

Normally these session only have three long poses, but there was enough time to squeeze in a 4th. It is another drawing that needs a few hours of work afterwards. We will see what I can come up with.

The LCC Sunday Drawing Session is at LCC's Drawing studio. It runs from 10:30 AM until 1:30 PM. There is a 10 dollar class fee. 

"I don't know if I can convey the postman as I feel him ... 

Unfortunately he cannot pose, and a painting demands an intelligent model."

Vincent van Gogh

Zwick Studio - Martha 12/21/13 - Week 2

Martha - 12/21/13 - Week 2, Watercolor, 9"x 12"

This was the second week with Martha at the Zwick Studio. I arrived late because of some poor planning on my part.

I took a seat on the floor across the room from last week and began to work.

I am very happy with this watercolor. It has so many things going for it. The page composition is interesting; I really tried to keep it amorphous, so the attention was on the figure.

The figure looks great too. I managed to get a very good flesh tone.  The purple in the shadow also looks very good.

"Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts."

~ Rita Mae Brown

HMoA Figure Drawing 12/16/13 - Sergio - Long Poses

Sergio 12/16/13 - Pose 01, Ink and Watercolor on Paper, 9"x12"

I had a great night on Monday with the long poses.

I used the tombow pens and then added watercolor to the pages. I was able to get a neat couple of drawings.

Above is the first drawing of the night. I think this is the weakest of my three drawings of the night. I do like how the torso was rendered and I am enjoying the cool shadow against the warm wall. Everything is rendered pretty well and the wash is hiding a lot of the details, giving it a painterly effect.

Sergio 12/16/13 - Pose 02, Ink and Watercolor on Paper, 9"x12"

When Sergio took the above pose I was struck by the light dark contrast he was standing right under the spotlight and the harsh shadows were very dynamic. I decided to exaggerate the highlights in this drawing.

The end result is a drawing that looks almost like a marble statue. The purple and the blue are creating a neat mood. I am really happy with this sketch.

Sergio 12/16/13 - Pose 03, Ink and Watercolor on Paper, 9"x12"

This was the last pose of the night and I am amazed at how well it came out.

I had a great night with the long poses. I wish every night could be like this. 

"Creativity goes beyond what you already know. 

What you know is just knowledge."

~ Ernie J. Zelinski

Zwick Studio 12/14/13 - Martha - Week 1

Martha - 12/14/13 - Week 1, Watercolor on Paper, 9"x12"

After going back last week I really wanted to get back into the habit of going to the Zwick Studio on Saturdays.

The model for this session was Martha. I just drew her over at Leeward Community College on Sunday.

I decided to do something a little different for this set of poses: Every week I will do a completed watercolor of the scene and move around the studio week to week.

I was all ready to do a watercolor painting today, When I got into town and looked at my things, I had forgotten my watercolors in the car. Luckily, Fishers was nearby and had a sale on watercolors.  The colors were a little off, but they are doing what they need to.

The background is a landscape quilt Billy has put up behind her.

I am pretty happy with this painting. Beside the problems with the color mentioned, it still is pretty strong. It is a very good portrait of Martha. 

"Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm."

~ Earl Nightingale

HMoA Figure Drawing - 12/02/13 - Kat - Long Poses

Kat 12/2/13 - Pose 2, Ink and Watercolor on Paper, 9"x12"

Monday was drawing at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Kat was the model and I had a great time and have some great pages from the night.

Above is my favorite of the night. It was the second pose of the night and it came out really nice. I really like how I rendered her skin in this picture. The pen strokes and brushstrokes are free but still defining a lot of the form. I love the blue and the red.

The maroon pen I bought on a whim in North Carolina is running out of juice. I had a great run and did some great pictures.

Kat 12/2/13 - Pose 1, Ink and Watercolor on Paper, 9"x12"

This was the first pose of the night. It is good but a little too static for me. I also thing the color of the yellow was a little off from Kat's skin tone.  It is still a good drawing 

The way I rendered her knee in this drawing looks very good.

Kat 12/2/13 - Pose 3, Ink and Watercolor on Paper, 9"x12"

Reclining poses are always a challenge with the foreshortening and the unusual perspective. I am pretty happy with this one. I like how I rendered the bedding in this drawing.

I have been playing with how to render the bedding, chairs and other elements in these sketches. I do like the outline with selective shading and shadows. I do think it works well because I can get a contour line drawing of the bedding in during the time frame but often cannot render there shadows properly. It allows me to define the shapes quickly and plays into my strengths, contour line drawings.

The torso and the legs look a little separate. Looking at them individually, it is even more clear. Although I think it is more the product of the well defined torso and the not as defined legs. The watercolors ran oddly in the left leg, but that is part of the joy of watercolor. It almost always requires a loss of control, which sometimes works and other times doesn't.

Good night over all. I really enjoy all three of these drawings.

"To create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage."

~ Georgia O'Keeffe

Asheville Trip - Blue Ridge Parkway

Blue Ridge Parkway, Watercolor, 8' x 11"

This is the second painting I did for my Aunt Dana to raise money for the Mustard Seed Mustard Seed Charity. 

This was a great and beautiful day. A truly glorious day in North Carolina. The sky was clear and the sun was beaming. The original plan was to do yard work that day, but Steven, my step dad, looked at me and said, "We have to go hiking."

We drove up the Blue Ridge Parkway. We went up with Kolo and she was in heaven. It was a little crowded on the trail and everyone had their dog.

I sat down for an hour and painted this landscape. The ridges of the mountains were impressive, very different from Hawaiian mountains.

I like how this painting came out. The different depths of the ridges were inspiring and difficult to capture. 

"I never saw an ugly thing in my life: 
for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade, 
and perspective will always make it beautiful." 

~ John Constable

Watercolors left for my mom

Asheville Trip - Bent Creek

Bent Creek -Asheville, Watercolor, 11"x14"

My mom's good friend, Aunty Dana, wanted a painting for a charity auction for the Mustard Seed that does a whole bunch of really cool charity work around the world.

So in an effort to help her out I did a few paintings to give to her for her cause.

This one was a Sunday afternoon trip to Bent Creek in Asheville. That place was a hub of activity with continuous kayaks and canoes launching into the French Broad River. We even saw a white truck hit and run another car.

It took awhile to paint this watercolor, but we had a great seat under the tall trees. The river is really beautiful. I had a lot of fun setting up this drawing and it came out pretty great. 

"Art is as important to the access of knowledge as any text ever written." 

~ Laura Kruger

Quiet Bent Creek Moment

Personal Best: My Favorite Watercolors of 2012

This is a recap of my favorite watercolors from 2012.

Maybe I'm biased on the above watercolor, but it's one of my favorites.  It's of my dad at an Independent Order of Odd Fellows meeting and it is the first time I painted him. I like the looseness of the sketch and how the colors pooled in the shadows.

I am really proud of this one and the likeness. So much so I framed it and it's proudly displayed in my living room.

I do really enjoy doing candid from life sketches of strangers. I really think this is one of my best. Its of a college student studying at the Starbucks near my house.  As it was finals week, he stayed long enough. I had time to really plan out this sketch.

I worked in pencil first, then planned out the lights and darks. I then worked quickly and got most of this done in a half an hour.

There are so many things I like about this sketch. I love the white ear buds and how they look against the background. I love how the shadow on his computer came from a drying paint pool. I really like his backpack and the chair, how simple they appear, done in just a few brushstrokes, and still very defined they are.

This year I really started to regularly paint landscapes and this is one of my favorites. There is a stigma about painting landscapes in most artists minds for a lot of reasons. I really had to struggle a little to get over that feeling.

This is a view of Olomana from Olomana Community Park.. I used it later in a larger painting and was very happy with most of the elements of this watercolor. I love the puddle of red on the left corner that makes the mountains in the background.

Here is a painting of a stranger I painted while between films at the Honolulu International Film Festival. The man in the picture had been to a bunch of the same films we went to at the festival.

I really like the shadows of this picture. The blue gray shadow on his face and the difference between his face and his arms and legs. The purple shadow behind him also looks very good too.

The last of this collection of watercolors is another landscape. I like this because I really worked out a method of painting the mountains in this drawing that created a neat effect and worked well with watercolors.

Here in this watercolor I drew in two colors of ink: brown and red. I used the red to define the highlights and the brown ink to define the shadows. The effect is created especially with the green mountains is also really nice. The red ink makes the highlight areas bounce , while the brown ink blends and melts into the shadows.

The mountains here are the next ridge near my house. So there is that element of familiarity here.

"The only person you have to please, 

with your art, is yourself." 

~ Don Getz