Help make me a better workshop teacher

Last weekend, I conducted a watercolor sketch plein air workshop at Ledgewood Creek Winery...400 acres of beautiful vineyard nestled against the northern California coastal foothills. My students had an awful, awful time as you can plainly see! But with practice, I can get better! :-) So here's my sales pitch: If you belong to an art association or can get a group of friends together, you can hire me to do a weekend (or longer) workshop! To work out the details for a Lobenberg watercolor workshop (outside, en plein air or inside, en inside) for 2011, just shoot me an email at: sushi3@mac.com. Help make me a better workshop teacher!

Fire or no fire, that is the question.

Randall is a very well known chef here in Sacramento, and I have just completed his portrait. QUESTION: How do you paint an interesting chef portrait? I went to his kitchen, and Randall did his famous atomic explosion fry pan cooking trick. Well isn't that just one hell of a cliche image! I took a few snaps to amuse him as testy chefs brandish sharp knives! Then I sat him down and had him hold a bare serving plate and told him DO NOT SMILE. Nary a question passed his lips as to why I took such an obtuse photograph! Artist don't brandish knives, but if you question them, they are wont to sob uncontrollably, and I think he didn't want to travel down that path! A few days later, I had his pastry chef spell Randall's last name in chocolate and marzipan on said serving plate, and I took a snap of that as well. From these two reference photographs, I painted Chef Randall Selland's portrait in acrylic on stretched canvas, 18"X36". Bon appetite!

"High Sierra", Sketch and Full Sheet Watercolor

The sketch took about 30 minutes on a 400 Series Strathmore 140lb cold press watercolor sketch pad. My sketches are drawn with a soft office pencil followed with non-water soluble black ink line over that. Next comes the final watercolor washes. Size: 9"X12". The full blown watercolor is 22"X30" on 140lb professional grade cold press watercolor paper. The painting was completed with a few strokes of various colored conte crayons. That 18th century Conte (a Frenchman) was a great inventor of some artistic mediums such as Conte crayon. Splattering with a toothbrush was added as foreground texture on both pieces. The sketch sells for $100 plus shipping and handling, and the watercolor sells for $400 plus shipping and handling. I haven't got Paypal set up yet, but if you are unterested, email me at sushi3@mac.com.

The Lawnman is back!

On my June 4 post of an acrylic portrait I was working on of a gentleman that owns a large landscaping company called "Lawnman", I received a lot of very complimentary comments. A few comments also included some suggestions and critiques. These people undoubtedly will roast in ever lasting hellfire for for such insensitive comments! :-) Suggestions made were, and I paraphrase, "he looks like he's standing at a podium" and "it looks like he's standing behind a tombstone", and most hurtful of all, "the flowers are distracting". My wife agreed with all of this and subsequently, our divorce papers will be finalized this Friday! :-) Getting back down to reality or as they use to say in jolly ole England, "brass tax", I actually agree with these comments. As you can see, I've discarded the flowers and made the roll of sod he is holding less formally straight up and down. I could paint his fingers in FRONT of the sod, but in reality he was holding onto the inside of the sod (his thumbs on the outside of the sod facing his body and his fingers in the hollow formed by the rolled sod at his chest). I'll being showing him the painting next week, so I think he will be comfortable with the way his hands have been painted. Any way...am I making some improvements here?

Ahh, what the hell.

I have no shame... so here are a few of my recent abstract acrylics on canvas. I'm not much of an abstract painter AT ALL! But I do teach some abstract water color and acrylic painting in my college classes and private workshops. I consider the problems working out a good abstract is ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENT than working out the problems (aesthetic considerations) of a successful representational painting. You have to work with such things as composition, color, value, shape, size, focal point (or lack thereof), texture, edges, etc., etc. Let's face it, to be really good at anything takes lots of energy, practice, and experience... and the challenges can be unending! I know there will be some more abstract painting in my future, and hopefully, baby step by baby step, I'll get better at it. My hat is doffed to all you good abstract artists out there.

California's Gold

Every year, I appear on Sacramento's PBS station to help with their annual live, on-air art auction that raises money for the station. Artists throughout the Northern Calif. region submit art to be juried into the auction. The artists fully donate their paintings and the station keeps all the money made from viewer bids. The viewers call into a phone bank to place their bids as each piece is talked about and auctioned off on live TV. I usually appear with several of the auctioneers as an "art expert" and in from two to four half hour auction sequences to pontificate about the various art pieces. This year there will be an auction sequence called California's Gold. The art from some of the area's top artists (myself included) will be in this section. The name was approved by a very well known PBS host who travels about our state and records it all in a weekly program called California's Gold. He's a big good ole boy original from Tennessee with a winning blue grass twang and an uber southern charm. I was interviewed by him several weeks ago while dabbling at my easel. The interview will be aired to help advertise this year's auction and will also run before my piece goes on air in the California's Gold sequence. Ahh, if I could only have this type of fire power to help sell my art on a weekly, year round basis...and...all the money gets donated to me!

A Grape View! (and your input)

Go ahead...tell me this ain't a grape view. I know a grape view when I see it! Glad we got that settled. NOW HERE'S A QUESTION FOR MY BLOG READERS AND FOLLOWERS: I've got all sorts of small acrylic and water color paintings here at Studio L. What are they doing?... just loitering and taking up space are what they are doing! I need to find them some good walls where they can bring people happiness! My plan is to put them up for sale on this blog every week. WHAT DO YOU THINK?