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Below are students from my Oil and acrylic painting class at the Community House during our recent class session. The assignments they are painting include: Fauves (The Wild Beasts), paintings using a limited color scheme with intensity of color, painting buildings in a simplified format eliminating details, and painting an emotional scene (a sense of depressed or difficult times)e.g. the factory buildings.
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Photos left and below  by
photographer  Carroll DeWeese

CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM
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Had a wonderful weekend at the drop in figure class and the Independent Painters portrait session. You can see a few of those drawings added to the slide show on my page, "Figures and Portaits", on this website. Attending always seems to re-fuel my art energies. In the figure class I'm exploring possibilities of drawing and painting mediums I enjoy working with, so although I used my usual graphite stick for the short poses and gesture drawings, I was trying out some new markers I just purchased that are near to a flesh tone in three assorted  values. When I felt like I was getting nowhere very fast, I resorted to the addition of my current favorite medium for the figures, my liquid acrylics, but with a large brush this time. It's my goal with the figure drawings to pare things down to their minimal expression. I'm trying to make as complete a statement as possible conveying it with fewer  lines and a select range of values, so that the viewer needs to  supply the missing information to complete the total image.  I don't mean that the viewer should have to work harder to figure it out. Instead I feel that I can depict a lot about the model by implying it. I've always had a feeling for negative spaces and the idea that I don't need to copy every detail, where I can make the statement without  complexity. In my floral paintings, for example (see the page "Floral Paintings" ), there are often parts of flower petals that I don't complete, or likewise with their stems or leaves. I feel that there is a point where I feel that I've told enough about a subject that feels like a complete  idea of it, and that to convey more is to go too far. 

So in the figure drawings, although I have worked with much more "finish" at times in my career, especially during my years as a graduate student, and am well-equipped to do that, my interest now is in "understating", seeing how much I can convey with "less". (See the figure at top of blog, and click on it to enlarge)
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The past couple of weeks have kept me busy, with no real time to immerse myself in painting, except for last Friday morning and this morning, painting with The Independent Painters from a model. Otherwise my time has been consumed bythe planning I do for classes I teach, the actual teaching of each class, putting some images of my paintings on CD's to use for projects in the future, rewriting documents that are often required when submittingwork to various venues, etc. Beyond that, I had my birthday, 29 again and holding, which is enjoyably still continuing this weekend, and the next week or two, with friends and family taking me out to dinner to celebrate the occassion. Presents are a usual part of that scenario, also. Otherwise, the only ones I usually get are the ones I order from the internet that show up mysteriously at the front doorstep. I love that too, but It's so special when friends bring or send them to me, with great thoughtfulness about what I would like to receive. In addition, I had a day when I woke up coughing, which persisted through the day, causing me to cancel both classes I had scheduled to teach that day. It was a non-productive day in which I slept a great deal, ate sporadically, and did a little reading.

When I was growing up, traditionally I would acquire a very bad cough, so bad that it was embarassing to sit through classes at school. My mother treated it with cough medicine, and more cough medicine. Finally after weeks of this, it would finally disappear. In my adult life I relized that there was a pattern. What I was afflicted by, annually was bronchitis. It's just what I am prone to get. It's treatable with an antibiotic, which invariably cures it. I can recognize the symptoms early in its development, I get it treated, and thus I no longer spend counter-productive weeks with this ailment. Some people get the flu. I don't. It's forever bronchitis. I tell you this because that is why I stayed home from work. I didn't think I could speak two sentences running without coughing profusely, and, since I am getting older (29 is really ancient!) I feel like I need to guard against getting a severe attack of this that could lead to pneumonia. No need for that, if I can help it, I've decided.

So now I'm sure you're glad you tuned in to read this blog. Fantastic! you are saying to yourself. So now the good part. I went to the Independent Painter's session today to continue painting from the model whose portrait I began last Friday morning. I completed it today. That's the painting I've posted at the top of this column today. No, we didn't actually have sheep in the studio today. I've added them in to complete my idea. The model was holding a long staff to help maintain his balance while he was poised on a stool. That's what led me to make him into a shepherd, an acrylic painting entitled "Tending His Flock". You can click on it to see a larger version of the painting.
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Painted in the Independent Painters session this morning, working from a lovely female model. Although others in the group had begun their paintings of her last week, I didn't attend that session. I feel like I accomplished alot in this class today, although I'm not quite finished. I did like what I produced in the 3 hours, and I plan to work on it in my studio to develop it a little more completely. I really was surprised at the colors I used, and also really enjoyed my choices. When I finish the piece, I'll post it here.

I've been taking another look at Toulouse Lautrec's paintings. Their linear qualities relate to what I'm trying to do in the drop in figure sessions that meet on Saturday mornings. I think many of his were painted with gouache in a style that often suggests drawing in lieu of painting as such with the medium. I feel a kinship with that as I use my liquid acrylics in the figure drawing sessions. Liquid acrylic would fall into that category, gouache, although his would have been akin to tempera/ poster paint.

Below I'll show you a couple of the pieces Lautrec painted that are rendered in that way, halfway between a drawing and a painting. If you click on the images they will enlarge for you.
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Decided to post some earlier floral paintings of mine. All the ingredients I enjoy in my work now were already in place maybe 25 years ago (just an estimate). The saving of much white paper, the geometric feeling for space and shapes,  the lack of details, the simplification, and the interjection of my own colors for things in nature rather than their true colors.
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Daylilies
Since I've had my students painting orchids this week, I thought I'd include this painting. A student in my class lent me this plant for a week or two so I could paint from it. It was so many years ago.The plant was truly spectacular. I remember being so afraid I would kill it while I had it in my posession, and couldn't wait until it was safely back in her hands. I don't have a green thumb because I'm not attentive to plants, other than wanting to paint them. Then I'm done. But I did love doing the paintingand extending the plant's leaves to create a foil for the blossoms.
ONE MORE FOLLOWS THE NEXT PARAGRAPH!

The painting below was significant. One of my students, Charles Klingensmith, an older quite dapper gentleman, always dressed in a sportcoat with a colorful handkerchief in his breast pocket, decided to enter the Our Town Exhibit one year with a watercolor he'd done of a location in Scotland. He'd been painting with me for several years by then. Among his close friends were several noted area painters, among them Richard Jerzy. Charles was very attuned to the art scene of this area. That year he amazed himself and won an award for the painting he had entered in the show, which had been painted during the period he studied with me. It was quite an honor, and he was thrilled because it validated what he was doing. When he showed up in class the following week, he entered the room carrying a bouquet of hot pink carnations for me, wrapped in this silky sheened green paper from the florist. I remembered how it felt as I opened them and I wanted to paint that feeling, the thrill of it all for both him and me! The color in the actual painting is more vivid than this shows, because I transferred it from an old slide into my computer, and the process weakened the colors in the image.
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Above is the drawing I did of a model,  the inspiration for the painting below, which I completed in acrylics. I had started it a few months ago, put it aside, and finished it up tonight. Its style and color were influenced by Matisse and his goal of producing work that was beautiful and joyful. That is how I approached the piece as I worked on it.
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Closeup showing texture of painted surface.
The details above and left are to show the bronze metallic paint I used, the very heavy body gel, and the Modeling paste that I used to enrich the surface of this painting. When you click on any of the artwork I show here, it will enlarge so you can see it better.
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Haven't painted at all this week. Too many other things consumed my time. Today's activity today, after teaching my class, was to deliver two paintings to a gallery in order to participate in a competition. Since it's a show pertaining to figurative work, and one that attracts mostly area artists, it was really funny to go there and find myself surrounded by drawings and paintings that were mostly done in classes around here, working off the same models. I don't know if the artists will gain fame, but the models ultimately might. They not only model for classes around here, but at numerous Michigan art centers that offer life drawing sessions as an option.

I did have the opportunity to meet Nora Mendoza, one of the owners/ co-op participants of the gallery. Apparently (based on biographical information on the web) she is of Hispanic and Indian heritage. Her work often relates to current issues, feminism, and themes related to her native ancestry. Although I was aware  of her  as a significant artist in the Detroit metro area, I wasn't familiar with her work, or her  themes . 

This first link has some biographical information.
http://lavozonline.forbesoft.net/articles/2003apr/nora1.asp
The second link will take you to some images of her artwork.
http://www.elmuseodelnorte.org/nora-mendoza.html 
I think you'll find it informative.

Although I haven't painted in recent days, as I mentioned, I've been putting my materials together to paint in the portrait session I attend with the Independent Painters group. It makes me feel great when I go there. It's not only the opportunity to paint from a model that feels great. It's being in the company of other artists, mostly long time painters who have worked as artists in varied fields over the years, and are still interested in testing their abilities, and honing their skills. It is a lifelong pursuit.
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K.Halpern, Art Interior Systems LLC