I have my hands full

I'm doing two shows this summer. An art fair in June (details later) and the open studio tour. I sold 7 pieces during the tour last year and 3 or 4 since. I haven't been doing a lot of 'finish' stuff mostly studies and life work. I think I have to get my butt in gear. I need to do up to 30 pieces before June 1 just to get 15 or so good one for the first show. I don't expect sales to be brisk. The fair market is pretty much a thing of the past. But I need to show my stuff.

Here's number one. sorry quick photo.

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no titile yet Oil on 12 x 9 linen

Heres a 'Work in Progress' called Barn Clock 18 x 24

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Barn Clock  18 x 24 Oil on Linen

I'm so glad I had a flu shot...

Eghh

Patch-a-doodle

Im working on a really tedious painting right now. During a break the other day my studio buddy started his 'I wanna go out' dance. Here it is.

Patch is a 5 year old Decoverly English Setter. As pretty as he is goofy.

Coming back to life

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2 five minute charcoal sketches

The reindeer are all put away and the beard is trimmed. It's time to get back to work, The pieces are fro the first life session of the new year at Yanni's studio. Rachel was our model for the evening. I'm working on a painting of a hanging pheasant and one of some boats. Its tough to get back to a 'normal' schedule . 

Yanni's work

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One thing I did over the last couple of weeks was put together a page of some of my friend and mentor's work.

Please check it out.

http://jimkingston.com/yanni

Turnip

I did this little 10 x 8 color sketch this weekend. I saw this thing at the grocery store. I looks a bit like a puppy belly or a small planet. Anyway it's weird but cool to look at. The holiday season, weather and car repairs have sort of hacked up my painting time. So I'm painting turnips. It's Graham oil paint using the Walnut Oil/Alcyd medium. Nice paint. 

Exclusively for now at ART•FINDER;
https://www.artfinder.com/product/lonely-turnip/

I love art supply stores

There ws a time when I lived in Boston that there was almost nothing I couldn't get at one of the local art supply stores. My everyday store was Newbury Paint on Newbury Street. I was above the paint store. They had really good stuff and I got a nice discount. There was EJ Arden over by Mass Art School.. That's where I got the big stuff. An easel a drafting table and my big Artograph Lucy. There were other stores, Charrette in Harvard Square. The school store at The Art Institute where Mike Driscoll worked. 

After I moved to New York. I lived at 31st and Madison where  within 5 blocks I had 4 top notch art supply stores. Charette, Plaza, Iving Berlin and Sam Flax. I wanted for nothing in the way of art supplies. From the high end architect's tools to a kneaded rubber eraser. There was everything. I could tube down to Canal Street and visit Pearl Paint and climb the rickety stairs to find anything and all things art supply. I could go to NYCentral where they had every part for my Thayer Chandler airbrushes. 

Alas today real art supply stores are as rare as good government. What there is now are well manicured and understocked big box craft outlets where the smell of potpourri is enough to kill a rat and the house brand product just plain suck. Today to get quality supplies we are left with  online mega art supply web sites, Jerry's, Joe's, and a endless list of hard to use online catalogues. A few are rising to the top as far as ease of use but still.. I miss the smells and the creaky floors of Newbury Paint. I miss Louis at Plaza Art Material. I miss fondling the paint brushes. It was such a part of life.

Fear Not! For all you art supply geeks out there here is a great resource for when you need a hot wax or rubber cement fix. The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies. A great trip down to the Canal Street of the internet.

http://www.forgottenartsupplies.com

I have many of the items in the museum and still use some today. In fact I think I'll go use the Proportion Scaler right now. 

The site was created by the mad illustrator Lou Brooks, the lost son of Our Miss Brooks.

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Update Saturday 12.13.14

The impetus for my writing this entry was having had to shop for basic materials on the internet. The art suppled online guys for the most part art pretty clunky in the ordering process. It's sort of like going to the dentist online. Anyway I placed an order which I was supposed to receive Friday via FedEX free shipping on the several hundred dollar order. Now let me explain that I live in the country. Not just the country but the country that high speed internet passed by. Asphalt passed by. We barely have a zip code. I don't expect an art store within even 20 blocks. There aren't any blocks. Here it is, late night Saturday, and no package. The tracking button from the online biggest art supply biz in the land says that the package could not be delivered because of weather conditions. Yes the sun was not shinning. I guess the driver was pissed because he/she had to work while all the pre-christmas bargains were awaiting them at the mall. Anyway I canceled the order. I'll drive to Hobby Lobby on Monday, about an hour away, to get the Gamsol I need. I won't let the political views of the owners of Hobby Lobby get in the way but I will be pissed that they only have third rate products for the most part. Just enough front line stuff to warrant the trip for a quart of thinner. I'll have to wait until I get into NYC after christmas to buy the dozen plus brushes that only this big store sells. After the Hugh Jackman matinee before the sushi dinner. Did I mention there's no sushi where I live either. If I had a time machine I could go back to Plaza art materials on Madison and Louis would have all my stuff for me at a nice professional discount. Then I'd have sushi.

A little show

A little show on this Saturday December 13th. We are a small group of artists who have met regularly for the past 5 months. We discuss, critique and encourage each other to paint from our hearts

Paradise lost

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Me at Cap's Lighthouse Point, FL

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Higgins Beach Resort

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I was just down in Florida for a few days. It's off season and my buddy Jim Higgins had a room for me before things start picking up down there. We did the usual folky scene. Higgins is an old So. Fla. folkie. We saw a old singer, Panama Red, at Cafe Luna in North Miami. An odd little 'coffee house' atmosphere right out of 1960s Harvard Square. Red was great a unique character and musician.

We went to the South Florida landmark restaurant Cap's Place in Lighthouse Point. When I live in Boca for a short while back in 1975 we were there a lot. I did a painting of the Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse back then. I hated it and left it behind. Higgins took it to Cap's and paid a bar bill with it. It still hangs in the dining room 40 years later. Its a pretty good painting. The food at Cap's is still outstanding. The key lime pie is the best I've ever had. www.capsplace.com

I was posting a few thing on Facebook and my old studio mate and publishing partner messaged me that he was just down the coast in Ft. Lauderdale. We had lunch the next day. Hadn't seen him in more than 20 years. He is now a renowned international yacht photographer. Check him out at jimraycroft.com.

The fishing sucked and the the weather was chilly and damp but it was 10° in Wayne County so I didn't mind. Everything was nice and green and the ocean was beautiful and blue. 

Higgins Beach Resort
Deerfield Beach Florida

Repost for Another little oil sketch

This is in a little show this Month 

ART IN SIXES 10th anniversary

At the DVAA Gallery 
Narrowsburg, NY
11/15/14 - 12/23/14
A show of piece no bigger than 6" in any direction

Piece is listed at $125

This is a small, very small for me, oil sketch of some clouds rolling over the fields in Bethel NY near my home. This would be part of Yasgur's Farm off rt NY17B.

I need to loosen up and I figured what better way then painting small. No room for detail just shape and tone and color. Takes about an hour and a half and I've made a painting. Way better than typing away on my blog...

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Clouds Over Yasgur's  Oil on linen panel  6 x 4

A painting of Mary

This week at Johan's long pose life daw/paint session we had a new model. Mary. She turned out to very, very good model. It was a brightish day so the light in the studio was good but at time a bit of and on from the clouds. I've posted my images of Soha that did at Johan's where I started the painting in session and finshed in the studio. In this painting of Mary I thought I'd cram that process of probably 6 to 8 hours into one 2 and a half hour session. I had to work fast and make decisions instinctively. No time for a lot of ifs ands or others.

I had prepared a canvas ahead of time on which I had applied a gray 'stain' (thanks Mark Carder). Once we had chosen the pose from a half dozen or so 2 minute poses, we got to work. The we is a group of three very talented and accomplished artists from the Upper Delaware area, and me. One day I will make a post showing off there work. I don't carry a lot of colors with me to this weekly session. Every Sunday 12 to 3. Go Pats. I had Burnt Sienna (BS), Ultramarine Blue (UB), Cad Yellow (CY), Cad Red (CR) and Alizarin Crimson and of course Titanium White. Just a few brushes medium sized to big synthetic filberts. I had only my portable tin of OMS (Oderless Mineral Spirits) to use a thinner, medium and brush cleaning. I started out with a washy sienna and blocked in the figure and got some quick tones in. I super roughly sketched in some indication of the pillows and fabric pattern on the sofa. 

Over the next hour and three quarters with model breaks, one of which included a piece of spinach knish, I glazed on the flesh tones very thinly lightening as I built out from the darker mid tone stain. I have to say the time constraint help force me into a zone. The only thing that stopped me was sore feet. At the end of the session I looked at the other artists work. Everybody's work was outstanding. Judy had done  a charcoal  drawing that was precise and beautiful. Gloria a mixed media oil and charcoal(?) that would be at home in a story book. Dianne did an acrylic that was wonderfully colored. Johan was well into a giant canvas of a beautifully foreshortened viewpoint in his immediate and whimsical fashion. I feel privileged to be working with such a fine group.

Return to Soha

SO I did the series of Soha posts earlier. A life sketch improved in the studio from a iPhone snap. The result was a burnt sienna under painter that was okay for painting over. The problem was that in fifty year of painting I'd never done that before. Oh well. So I printed the photon canvas from my epson printer. Put it un a drawer and forgot about it. I had a complex painting ready to go on the easel . I didn't want to be hung up for a week so I started putzing around an d found the print.. I taped it to a board and painted it. It's not done but I'm gonna sit on for  couple of days to see if I can find any more boo boos. I like it but I have to give most of the credit to the model Soha.

A little of me

I thought I'd try my hand at smalls a while ago. At 4 x 6 this is about as small as I can get with this type of image. Back when I was doing a lot of illustrations for text book in Boston I did a lot of teeny tiny heads in pen and ink. Some with just a few pen scratches. The most important thing I had to represent was the ethnicity of the pen scratches. I used MGraham walnut oil based paints on this and good sized brushes. Not giant not small. Good size. It went quickly got pinned on the wall and forgotten. Here it is no longer forgotten.

A guy name Denis

I've finished the portrait. I took about a week and a few false finishes but it's done!

Bill Oil on linen 11 x 14

It was done for the now annual portrait swap challenge on the DMP forum. A group of realist painters and want to be painters. Beginning painters to very accomplished painters from around the globe. This is Denis who is from Australia. He will be painting a portrait of me. When they are dried and safe to ship we will swap the painting by mail. It's a novel but not uncommon thing. Last year I did a portrait of Bill. A woodcarver from Las Vegas.

It's a funny thing to do a painting of someone you don't know and to get a painting back from them. All of a sudden you know them, 

A good weekend all in all

Yesterday the Wayne County Arts Alliance held the annual art auction fund raiser. It was a success. It was held in the Dorflinger Glass factory space in White Millls, PA. I'm happy to say that my painting of a Beach Lake Bakery Rustic Loaf was the first painting sold. That is if you don't count my wife's selection of my friend Ianni's painting that was really first.  We also bought two other paintings that we like very much. All tolled we gave the WCAA $1350 in donations and value. 

We also went to the Metropolitan Museum to see the Cubism show on the last day of the members preview. It was mobbed but what a great exhibit. Simply put it show how the heavyweights, Picasso and Braque developed and evolved the style what so many other have emulated. It also focused on Leger and Gris. Two of the better practitioners. Great great exhibit. 

To see that show we had to leave early to drive to the city about 120 miles. It was a beautiful ride. the light was just grand. We got to eat in the members only dining room not as pricy as one might think and way better than Honesdale's best. Sorry. The ride home was equally splendid as the sun set over the Borscht Belt of the Catskills. Oh and I can't forget I all but finished a portrait on Saturday morning.

Oh yes I now have  full sized giclee prints on canvas of the loaf available for $125.

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A Guy Named Denis  12 x 18 Oil on linen

This is a painting done for the annual portrait swap on the Draw Mix Paint forum. A loose group of artists from around the country and globe who share an interest in realistic painting. This is Denis who is from Australia. He is doing a painting of me from an image that I selected and sent to hime. There were about 12 participant that so far have produced some stunning painting. When the painting are dry we swap our paintings. Great fun.