Drawing Show Art Review

An art review of the recent National Drawing Show in the February/March issue of Art New England mentions my piece A New Day, which was on display at the exhibition and won an Award of Merit. Click on the image above to read the review.

Faces of Spring Exhibition

Self Portrait with Tea, shown above, has been juried into the Connecticut Society of Portrait Artists Faces of Spring 2009 Exhibition. Distinguished jurors are John Howard Sanden, and Robert A. Anderson. The exhibition, which includes about 50 portrait paintings and sculpture will be held at the Goodman Gallery at 90 Old Lyme Street, Old Lyme, Connecticut, and runs from March 6th through April 18th. An Opening Reception will be held on Friday, March 6th from 5pm-7pm. For more information, please see the Faces of Spring web page: http://csopa.homestead.com/FacesofSpring2009.html

Portrait from Black and White Photo

Above is a portrait commission I recently presented to a client. The first image is the main reference photo, a scan of a black and white photograph. Since this is a posthumous portrait, I relied on more recent photographs of the subject and also working with the client in order to get the coloring correct. This was a challenging but very rewarding experience, and I am thrilled that the client was very happy with the result.

Update on My Portrait Commissions

My blogs have been very sporadic lately - I apologize for that, but the reason is that I am really happy to be busy with portrait commissions. I realize that this is a difficult time financially for many of us, and I feel very blessed to have work right now. So, I am devoting most of my time to these commissions in order to do my best work. I just finished one that I mentioned earlier - the client had provided me with old black and white photos from which I created a color portrait. People often ask me which colors I use for portraits, but I do not believe in formulaic methods of creating skin tones - every person has unique coloring and facial contours. For this reason, I relied on referencing some newer photos of the subject at an older age, and also worked with the client to fill in the blanks. I will post this once the portrait has been presented to and accepted by the client.

Right now I am in the planning phase of my next group of commissions, which are more straight forward in the sense that I have color photographs of the subjects. I also have a couple of portraits where I have met the subjects, which is always my preference.

CPSA Exhibition Online

The annual Colored Pencil Society of America "Explore This!" exhibition is now open online at http://www.cpsa.org/.