This is the 2nd day at The Lodge at St. Edward Park, where I continue painting a three-foot by four-foot canvas, that was drawn out the day before. Today's job is color and values. I come close to completing the painting. A few more hours and it will be done, and be hanging in the very hallway in which it was painted next week.
Kamela Daniels, Art Program Director for The Lodge at St. Edward State Park, invited me to do a 3 week residency there. Here is Day 1 - A Drawing. Beginning of a large painting, and good food!
Yesterday I decided to do three plein air oil paintings in one day. On this video I take you through the process. Notice the background music (happy birds)
In preparation for my Residency/Workshop I did simple composition studies of the barns around the property. The emphasis is on a simple shape statement. Any detail is the icing on the cake of clear structure of shapes and darks and lights.
I have drawn/painted this barns a bunch of times. It is the giant madrona tree looming over it that keeps me fascinated.
I am really looking forward to this. Three weekends that end in a plein air oil painting workshop. The plein air season begins!
First figurative painting in awhile. There are weekly faculty figure sessions at DigiPen, and I decided to take part. Yes the model is wearing horns…and a mirror dress that reflected around the room like a disco ball. She was super enamored with all the artwork, which let me know that she didn't model very often. The painting was a mad scramble…but when isn't it?
A mural I painted in 6 hours….including coffee break and lots of socializing. It was on the now demolished McFeeds store on Vashon Island; where Vashon Center for the Arts now stands. That was like 8 years ago….and people still wax nostalgic about it. The impact that 6 hours can have.
I live at a place called Green Gate Farm, that is 16 acres of forests, fields, fens, with several frog infested ponds. I have done probably about 20 plein air oil paintings here. This is me talking about painting Frog Pond.
In the Spring of 2021, whilst the pandemic raged, I designed and painted a mural for the newly rennovated St. Edwards Seminary, which was in the process of becoming “The Lodge at St. Edwards State Park”; a destination hotel with an arts and historical preservation focus. Kamela Daniels hired me for the job and worked with me to get the design right. She also curates the multiple art display areas in the building.
Intended to be remeniscent of a WPA mural syle, the mural is a historical depiction of the settling of Kenmore: Featuring the McMaster Shingle mill on Lake Washington, the dugout canoes used by the Sammamish people, the Steamboats that crisscrossed the Lake, the fleet of Kenmore Air Seaplanes, The Red Brick road that was part of the historic Pacific Hwy that ran through Kenmore, the logging industry, and the building of the St. Edwards Seminary itself.
I have worked at Digipen School of Technology for ten years. And over that time there have been a lot of meetings, which I made good use of,…. by drawing the people present.
When I first started working there, i would see other artists do this….which I thought was maybe like, Not paying attention. But I later learned that many of these artists had worked at Disney, and it was actually expected that the artists draw at meetings while there. So I continued that tradition. Not sure I remember much from the meetings though.
Names withheld to protect the innocent.