Go figure.

First thing, let me apologize for some of these images...no I'm not talking about the paintings themselves, just the photography. I'm breaking one of my cardinal rules and instead of photographing them outside in natural light I have taken some of these photo's inside. Besides... with these paintings, the quality of the photo is really not going to make a difference.

Once again I'm strolling down memory lane and attempting to gain some perspective on just how far I've come. This time I'm reviewing figure paintings. Even more so than still life, this is a genre which I feel compelled to explore and which I am fascinated by. I am also quite frustrated by it...which is quite obvious form these examples.

These first four were done at Uarts... in this order during my class with Rob Matthews. In some ways I think this very first painting is better than the majority of the ones that follow. It was done with a palette knife, black and white.


Of course once I am given color things start to go downhill. Still working with the palette knife, in restrospect, kept me working broadly which is a lesson I wish I had carried with me later on.





My first self portrait. This was described to me as "nothing more than a colored drawing". At the time, I didn't know what that person meant.



Fast forward a little bit. Here I am, struggling through this all over again at PAFA. These next five are from last semester in my class with Doug Martensen. There are a variety of mistakes in here such as: overblending, virtually no grouping of value, incorrect value relationships, incorrect warm/cool relationships, incorrect brushes for the surface, inappropriate paint thickness (too thin and/or too thick)...etc.



Toward the end here, I started getting better at handling the paint and drawing with it although I was still too tied to the idea of linear drawing.



Here my sense of color seemed to become much more daring and realistic. It may seem a bit chromatic here but, it is a marked improvement over the chalky fleshtones I had been using previously .




I have two figure painting classes this semester. One with Renee Foulks and one with Carolyn Pyfrom. This is the first study of the semester. I think it is a large improvement over the work I produced previously and I expect the paintings that follow to bring larger leaps forward.