I went out to my car and dug around for anything else…

 I found a Verithin pencil….

 …and a ballpoint pen.

 It’d been a really long time since I’d used a pen for life drawing. It’s a good exercise to try to not have an eraser to fall back on. Being as direct as you can will make you quicker.

This one was actually a Pilot Fineliner. It’s cool but not quite as smooth as a ballpoint pen.

Here are a few more 20-minute drawings.

People seem to enjoy the novelty of a ballpoint pen more than the look of it, but it’s definitely one of my favorite drawing tools. Not as much as charcoal(nor as permanent, unfortunately) but worth trying if you are in some sort of rut.

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Hey everyone, here are a bunch of drawings from the last few months. I held back on posting most of these because I had so many paintings to post before, but I am just about caught up with all of that so here are some new sketches.

Have a Happy New Year!

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Merry Christmas everyone! Not that it’s that cold around here, but I hope this painting reminds you of warm days at the beach after a long day of playing, or sunbathing, or watching your dog chase waves around.

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I am happy to unveil my newest series of figurative paintings. These have been in the works for a long time, and actually have been completed since before the “Natural Patterns” series, but they have been difficult not only in getting decent pictures of them, but in deciding how would be the best way to present them.

I have used my friend Nicole for figure drawings and studies many times. She is a former gymnast and dancer who is in incredible shape. Not only that but she’s so giving of her time and talents for my artistic pursuits. I’ve been wanting to use her for a series all to her own for a while now.

This series grew out of my love of depicting the “form” of the “human form”. I love being able to show the solidity and intricacy of the human body. The way things interlock, push, and pull underneath the skin is extremely fascinating. Nicole is the perfect model to explore this with. As with my other series, I like to tie in the subject and background in unique ways. In this series I’ve been attempting to echo suggestions of the form outside of the figure and into the murkiness of the backgrounds.

This series has been one that I’ve been exploring within the actual creation of the pieces instead of how I normally plan everything out. I feel like this series is going to evolve dramatically from these first few shots by the time I am done exploring it. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy these first steps.

“Eternal Braid”Oil on Canvas Mounted on Board

“Void Brightening” 20×14 in. Oil on Canvas Mounted on Board

Which is your favorite piece from the series? http://bit.ly/naturalpatternspoll

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Hey everyone,

I am participating in this month’s group show at the Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco where I had my solo show earlier this year. The show is called Woodland and I created these new paintings for it.

If you are in the area and want to check out the show, you can RSVP for the event here or here.

This is the start of a new direction I am going in with the pattern concept I’ve been working with for the last year and a half. Rather than having the pattern interact with the skin of the model, it is growing out of the cloth and into the background. I hope you enjoy them.

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Hey everyone, Just letting you know that I won 3rd place for this painting I did at the Paint Allied Arts paint-out in Menlo Park.

I spent close to 3 hours on this one which is more than I usually spend on a plein air painting, but since it was  so consistently overcast the whole time, the lighting situation didn’t change much, affording me the time to really make sense of the complex scene.  I started off with a thumbnail sketch to figure out how I was going to group the lights and darks together.

I’ve also been trying to get into using thicker paint. One of the best ways to do it is to shovel on a bunch of paint with a palette knife, then take a brush and spread it out. You get the best of both approaches. I’m not usually a fan of the “palette knife”-look for the most part, so it’s a good way to get a lot of paint on your canvas efficiently.

The way they did the awards were the top 3 people’s choice votes get the prizes. They gave ballots for the public to cast before the stated deadline, so by the time I got mine up, half the people got their votes in. A lot of people told me that they wanted to change their votes after seeing mine! Not a big deal, but more prize money woulda’ been nice… Oh well.

This pretty much concludes the year’s plein-air event schedule for me. I will do another write-up with my thoughts on the year’s events soon. (Link to last year’s review: http://themainloop.blogspot.com/2010/12/this-is-article-i-have-been-meaning-to.html)

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I feel like even in black and white the light and dark pattern holds up:

EDIT: “Industrial Patterns” won 1st place at the Valona Paintout 2011!

This next painting was done from the other side of the factory. I was trying to take advantage of the quality of air that I mentioned. The paint in the sky is much thicker than it looks in this picture.

This painting was done at the end of the factory. I enjoyed the shape of the tree and the composition between the tree and the building on the right. I’ve been trying to push for a more unified color harmony, so I pushed the muted yellows a lot more than how I saw them. It’s pretty fun to push yourself beyond what you see while still making it feel natural.

These paintings will be on display at the Epperson Gallery in Crockett, CA.  The opening reception is from 2 to 5 pm, so if you have Halloween party plans and you’re in the East Bay, there will be plenty of time to check them out before the festivities.

Reception and Silent Auction - 2:00 to 5:00 Pm, October 30th.
Awards Reception - 2:00 to 5:00 Pm, October 29th.

If you want to go check it out earlier, from 11 to 1 there will be a model at the plaza near downtown Crockett which we will be painting. It should be a good day with the weather tomorrow so you should come check it out if you can.

I also heard that the Artist Choice and People’s Choice winners will receive a weekend workshop with Randy Sexton. Sweet!

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Last week I had the opportunity to participate in the Califonia Art Club North Bay Chapter’s annual Limantour Retreat in the heart of Pt. Reyes. It was a good time. I wasn’t crazy about the hostel-sleeping situation but otherwise it was a good time. If you love fog you can’t go wrong in Point Reyes. It was pretty gray the entire time, but the companionship was really nice. I met some interesting painters and caught up with friends.

One thing I think is really tough to paint but never seem to practice enough are waves. Especially from life.  This is the first time I’ve actually set up to specifically paint a wave. I’ve put the seashore in a lot of plein air paintings, but this is basically a “portrait” of a wave. Waves are tough because you basically are painting from life and memory at the same time. Meaning, you have to choose a specific point in the cycle of a wave, wait for it, paint as much as you can, memorize what you can of it, then wait for it again. It was fun to see so much color inside of the wave on even a gray day like this.

This was my second painting. The fog was starting to come in fast at this point. I’m not as happy with this painting because I dont think I established enough of an interesting focal point.  I should have also added more variety in texture and paint thickness.

The last painting I did was along the side of the road back to the hostel. There are these great rows of cypress trees. It was getting close to evening and we caught a beautiful subdued pinkish light along the horizon. I enjoyed painting the silhouettes of the trees of the quiet cloudy backdrop. This one was one that I touched up slightly in the studio. I threw some glazes on top of it and made the light sliver a bit lighter.

I wish I had another day to paint there but it started to rain on Sunday. I knew that a few people stayed to tough it out through the rain, but I had enough of the gray.

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Hello everyone,

I am happy to share my latest painting. This landscape is of Sugarloaf State Park. It’s one of my favorite hikes, and unfortunately because of state budget cuts, it will most likely be closed soon. I found it to be especially important to give the area some honor by recording it for posterity. I also pushed myself to do a painting that is more along the lines of the painters of the past. I am a big fan of Hudson River School Painters, but I never received such type of training, thus here is my best approximation mixed with what I’ve learned from so much plein air paintings. I would like to pursue this vein of painting more, but it is quite the labor of love to paint in such manner. I have learned a lot from doing this painting.

I started off with doing small plein air paintings of what I sort of thought I might like to do. I did a few of these.

I also did some studies of various elements in the scene.

After having a better idea of what I might want to do, I went back to do another plein air study of the area. This is starting to get closer to what I want the picture to be.

After doing the plein air studies, I gathered all of my references, collected inspiration of paintings that were closest to what I wanted my paintings to be, and had everything in order, I did this preliminary study. As you can see, it’s pretty close to what I ended up with as a finished painting. From here I went on to do the finished painting.