my setup for a piece. i tend to mix too much paint, so the pieces on the wall (except the paper towel and color chart) are where that goes. allows a more casual, intuitive composition/brushwork space, and as i'm still at a stage where color and brushwork throw me quite a bit, i definitely need it.

close-up of the "blotter" pieces. they also serve as a testing field for compositional impulses. mixed media on watercolor and print-making papers.

finished piece under a pot-light, and my camera sucks. acrylic and oil on watercolor paper.

natural lighting. looks a little better, i think, though the gold is deadened in this shot. originally the composition didn't have any background, so the roughed in cave-mouth and faux sfumato effects (which don't work with gesso, i discovered: too little drying time) were a late addition. the zen patriarch bodhidharma and his moment of spontaneous enlightenment.

Sketchbook page. The model was in a dark room with strong lighting, which i had just read in
"Leonardo's Notebooks" as being a bad thing. Definitely is. Anatomical distortion ensued. Blue pencil with red acrylic ink.

Blue ballpoint pen. The lower half of my face and a leaf from the Great Lady's study.

Blue pencil again.

A 15 min pose at my first ever figure-drawing session, at the WAG. Blue pencil.

A photo of my bedroom and working space. Scattered on the floor are the charcoal sketches from the figure-drawing sessions, an experiment in progress with Yupo paper and acrylic ink, and at the center of the pack, a color-and-texture/composition exercise.

aaaaand go!

This blog exists until i get a website up and running, which won't be for a while. It will hopefully serve as a decent display of the learning curve in my self-imposed art curriculum. Sketchbook pages, sheets from figure-drawing sessions on Wednesdays at the WAG, formalized examinations of anatomy and the clothes that cover it, and final works in a variety of mediums will be scanned and posted without schedule, but hopefully averaging about once a week or so, once i've got the ball rolling. The next post should have a few sketches, hopefully an example of the work from each of the three sketchbooks i have at the moment.