Gesture Painting

Kirk Richards invited me to come paint with his group on Wednesday nights. He likes to start his students with gesture figure paintings as a way of helping them loosen up and get more comfortable with the paint. I brought blue black, transparent oxide red, and titanium white to do mine with. I taped down a piece of 9"x12" Canva paper prepared with shellac and did these two on it in about 15 minutes per pose.

Imprimatura Demonstration

Imprimatura demonstration from the Fall semester, that I did for my Head Rendering course I teach at UVU. I used transparent brown oxide and raw umber over canson canva paper that I had prepared with a double coating of clear shellac. It leaves the surface slick enough to enable me to easily whipe out the lights. I primarily used a fan brush to avoid applying too many details and kept to about 2 hours in painting it between talking about what I was doing and assisting students in their work.

 

A couple things to note, on the left hand side you'll see a darker smudge, I showed what happens if you let your solvent be the only chemical you use at this stage and how it affects the skin of the paint. On the right I showed the difference between using a shop towel to wipe away paint and a kneaded eraser.

Letchworth and Nearby Studies

I spent about a week in the area between Buffalo, NY and Letchworth State Park in the summer of 2010. These are some of my sketches from that time.