Hello Again, It's Been Too Long

Did you miss me?

I guess I tried to move the blog over to Tumblr and that didn't work. I wasn't into the interface and now I'm back.

Well there's a lot going on with the painting and such, but it seems to be mixed into some personal issues with which I am currently dealing. In general it's difficult to see why one should keep on with all this, and usually not much gets me down, but right now it's all just harder.

Having said that here's what's on the horizon:
1. I may be getting a commission to do 3-4 portraits as part of a dissertation.
2. I am about to apply to my first Artist-in-Residency program.
3. I have been invited to be an artist a great sculptor group for public installations.
4. I am in the planning stages to start up my own artist group.

I'll speak to each of these in turn over the next few days, hopefully.

Until then, I just finished my latest portrait, and will show it hopefully tmrw, so take care all.

New Blog Home

Well folks, for those of you that have been following my progress, you may have noticed that I haven't posted since December. Well, I'm still working at it, but have moved this blog to a new location. So please enjoy the continuing adventures as I try to figure it out here:

http://colorbyrudy.tumblr.com

Hope to see you there =]

Painting a Full Figure

Ok, so after (and during) the self-portrait I couldn't really focus on another painting. So there was a model in between that time (I worked on her for 2 days) but it's all a haze to me =P That's why this one is called "mck winter 1" time for a reboot.

Anyway, when I finally recouped I had this model. I was going to do a standard waste-up portrait of her, but I couldn't stop focusing on her boots. So I decided to paint her entire figure. It's really the first time I've tried this since, i guess, the summer.

Part of me regrets this choice (because I saw how nice the other portraits of her came out) but I like that I got it done. Actually it is the most detailed-ish painting I've done but difficult to distinguish because all the features are smaller. Either way I'm glad I captured the pose and how funny the boots look on her.

Porcu's anatomy helped immensely getting her proportions accurately. I couldn't have done it without his class.

Enjoy the progression:

mck winter1

Self-Portrait Done! (last month)

Ok it's been a while so I'm going to have to retroactively think about these posts. I finished my first realist self-portrait (on time last month Dec. 16) and, after much thought, I like it =)

I set up in the kitchen, shutting off the light except for the one blaring into my face (there's a sample in my facebook profile pic). I basically painted this from 11PM to about 6AM for like 8 days. I was beat and didn't make it to class, so I missed whatever model was there.

It was the most painful thing, painting this. At one point I wanted to destroy it. But, when placed with the the other self-portraits in class, people really responded to it. MCK said "it came out really good." Fuckin-A, what more can you ask for?

Check out the progression below:

Self-Portrait