What Week Is It?

I’m feeling a little burned out. I think I leave for Porland next week… but there is still work to be done here in NYC. Here’s a few images for you…

This one is from the Painting III class with Steven Assael. It’s a full chromatic palette, direct painting. I think this was the third week we had to work on this painting.

I think it’s interesting to compare that last image with this one. From Alyssa Monks’ Painting the Flesh class. This is a multi-week indirect painting done with a dead palette.

Arguing the merits of direct versus indirect painting is left as an exercise for the reader. Although in truth most of the painting in Alyssa’s class was also done in a direct manner, I just added a couch (thin glaze into which opaque colors are added, wet-into-wet) at the end to unify things and push some of the highlights.

This last image is from the open form exercise in Martha Erlebacher’s History of Painting Techniques class. This was a particularly difficult exercise for me and Martha still claims that my finished painting was too volumetric. Which sounds so odd to my ears, particularly coming from Martha. But if you don’t know Martha or haven’t been to the New York Academy of Art I guess you wouldn’t know what I mean. Trust me when I say the program here is all about modeling form.

That’s really about it for the semester. I’ve got a couple of make up classes next week (Ecorche mostly) and a big group critique this weekend. Then it’s home for a month of decompression and preparation for the final semster. Oh, and I’ve got a bit of computer work lined up for the break too…

– Jeremy