Heard of this?

This is an acrylic of a barn and corner of a wheat field I painted on site last summer. Aside from that...ever explore Cooliris.com? Once downloaded onto your computer, it allows you to go to anyone's blog (including your own), click on an icon that pops up on the lower left corner of any of the image posts, and whisks you into a sexy 3D gallery of all the art on the blog. With your mouse, you can "walk" through the gallery at your own speed and stop at any image you may want to click on. Try it, you may like it!

Another tall and thin one (from the high Sierras)

This is an acrylic on stretched canvas (about 16"X36"). It's 95 degrees outside as I write this so I thought I'd cool off. If it's hot where you are, enjoy. The water coming down and around the granite boulders was textured with Golden moulding paste.

Ahoy! Where to send your portraits.

Remember everybody that your self portraits are due end of June, and I'll post them all beginning of July. But where do you send them? Shoot them off to me at: sushi3@mac.com. I'm still researching if all the photo files should be put in a slide form or what. Any ideas on the best and most effective way to display our self portraits on my blog?

Ba ba ba bird bird bird, bird bird's the word!

Last year I posted this NY City pigeon painted from a reference photo from Paz's wonderful "New York Minute" photo blog. It was originally done in black and blues against an all white ground. This was also an assignment for my oil/acrylic class I taught. The students hated painting the overlapping feathers. In mine, they looked like some sort of metallic medieval armor...cool! Anywho...I took the painting out from its dusty corner last night and thought "been there, done that...time for a make over!" Oh...I was inspired to paint the pigeon, because I had shown my class a dvd of American pop artist Jim Dine doing a huge charcoal drawing of an owl on a white washed wall in a small German museum.

Four more S.P.s (see previous post for info.)

Sacramento City College Art 300 S.P.s

Yesterday was the last day of my spring semester Art 300 Drawing class with the final assignment being a charcoal self portrait from the student's photograph of themselves. Using the photo as a reference, the students either did a direct drawing from it or first overlaid a grid on top of the photo, made a larger grid on their drawing paper and drew in a contour outline... a similar procedure that a guy by the name of Michelangelo Buonarroti did to get his contour drawings up on some chapel in Rome. I taught them how to smear on mid tones and come back with an eraser and pull out highlights. They also learned hoe to draw their facial features through keen observation and not left brain symbolism. They done good, and here is a sampling.

Ahoy All Artist Who Would Like To Participate!

I have no idea why I used "Ahoy" in my headline except that I like that word. Anyway, brilliant artist Milind Mulick in far off India and I in the golden state of California are proposing a self portrait paint-off. "Paint-off" is somewhat of a challenging and intimidating word. Lets call it a Global self portrait love-in. No matter what your level of artistic ability or what medium you enjoy working in, this is an invitation to do a self portrait to be sent to my blog by the end of June at which time we can show off our efforts. Hey...it's going to be rollicking good fun!...and...what better way to discover yourself visually than doing a self portrait. You are invited! This is a pen and ink self portrait I did about 3 or 4 years ago in a class I taught at Sacramento City College...go Panthers!!

Self Portrait

I have assigned to both my drawing and painting classes that I teach at Sacramento City College) a self portrait from a photograph. I always like to do the assignment with my class, so here is my acrylic self portrait (without my glasses) that I am currently working on for my painting class. I have added a charcoal self portrait I did with my drawing classe about 2 semesters ago. More student and teacher self portrait art to come within the next three weeks.