Richeson 75

I am getting ready to ship my portraits Ethan and Christian to Wisconsin, as they have been accepted into the Richeson 75 Figure / Portrait 2011 International Art Competition. The exhibition will include seventy-five figure and portrait paintings in oil, water media, and dry media, and is put on by the Richeson School of Art & Gallery, a division of Jack Richeson & Co., Inc. I have tried a variety of oil paints, but Richeson Oils - The Shiva Series is my favorite brand, and the one I use almost exclusively. I prefer these paints for their rich color (particularly alizarin crimson, which I tend to use a lot), and more uniform texture. For more details on the exhibition, please see my Events page.

SCNY Award

I recently found out that my colored pencil piece, Smile, received a Certificate of Merit at the Salmagundi Club Annual Non-Members Painting and Sculpture Exhibition. There were over 500 images submitted to the exhibition, and about 100 pieces accepted, including paintings in oil, acrylic, watercolor, mixed media, pastel, and colored pencil, as well as various sculptures.

Art Kudos

My colored pencil piece, Sanguine Expectation, has been selected as a finalist in the 2011 Art Kudos International Juried Art Competition & Exhibition. The online exhibition includes works in a variety of media from 157 artists representing 23 countries. To see the award winners and other finalist, go to www.artkudos.com.

Portrait of Danny Completed

I finished my portrait of Danny a couple of weeks ago, and above is the final scanned image.

Two Still Life Paintings

Above are the final photos of two still life paintings I recently completed working from life in my studio. The setup for the first one, Trio in Blue, was illuminated using a regular (warm) light bulb, whereas I used a full-spectrum light bulb to illuminate the bottle in the bottom painting, Ocean Waves. For both of these paintings, I started with a loose drawing of basic shapes to get the images centered on the board and properly proportioned. From there, I began adding color and contrast, constantly refining until I was happy with the level of detail.