End of the semester group critique and pizza party:
Spring 2011

Many paintings, diverse characters and styles.

We began with James.

James invited his father for an experience and to show his progress. Hope he wasn't nervous talking about his paintings in front of him.


Alex Velazquez; In this term, Alex painted a number of small studies. With the name like his, he'd better produce some excellent paintings.

Nicolas Martinez

Marcie commenting on one of Nicolas's paintings.

Though he started out a bit nervous, Nicolas's soon relaxed and brought some laughters to the group…

…Including to Sherine, one of our guest models for the semester. Joyce couldn't participate due to her travel schedule.

Jacob Sanders

Rachel talking about Jacob's paintings.

Dana making some funny comments about Jacob's paintings.

Rachel Stukenberg; Rachel posed for the group in the previous semester without painting with us.
This semester she started participating in the session as well.

Matt Clymore

Jacob commenting on Matt's paintings.

Dana Olson

Marcie's turn, before she had to make an early exit to run some errands.

Next to the last, Adam's turn

Joyce, 18"x14"", oil on linen

Joyce is an Academy's Administrative Assistant who's been working 'behind the scene' for many years overseeing many administrative responsibilities. Also, she is the person who arranges for us our end-of-semester pizzas and refreshments.

She's been a bit shy about posing for us when I invited her to pose for us for some time. But finally, with the encouragement of other staff members who have posed, she decided to sit for a session.

When I surveyed her pose in the beginning of the session,
I noticed much green in her blond hair so I decided to put a red drapery for contrast. I also wanted to create a graceful flow of movement with her long hair. Looking back, I should have painted the top and back of her hair darker and softened the contrast against the background.

Sherine, 20"x16", oil on linen

Sherine teaches various communications classes.

Sherine was scheduled to pose for us on February 2,
but the infamous Blizzard of 2011 shut down the school
(and the much of the city) and we had to cancel the session. So here she is, rescheduled nearly a month later.

As a guest model, she offered us a fun challenge with her unique skin color of Egyptian ethnicity. Painting Sherine,
for whatever reason, I decided to start off by completely finishing her left eye–the focal point–and then worked my way around it.

After the session, as I was moving my easel back away from the model stand, the painting fell off from the easel, scraped against the edge of my palette and landed on the floor face down. I quickly picked it up and inspected the damage, but the damage wasn't as bad as I feared. I think it had to do with the fact that I painted it rather thinly. But still I had to stay behind after the session and make some repairs from memory.

Theresa, 16"x12", oil on canvas

Seeing the strong tonal contrast between Theresa's face and her hair, I wanted to do a simple head study where the light skin tone of her face is framed by the dark mass of her hair and the brown background. Her deep black hair, under the cool light, gave out some interesting cool blue.

Dana, 18"x12", oil on board

For this session, I had to cut short my painting time to about an hour to take care of some errands. So from the beginning
I decided to paint Dana as more or less a quick sketch.

Nicolas, 20" x 16", oil on canvas

Nicolas seemed to be quite nervous in the beginning of the pose and we sensed he was getting uncomfortable very soon. So I tried to finish the painting quickly without polishing details. I laid down a lot of choppy paint strokes and left them as they were more or less. In the end, I was able to finish the painting with the sense of alertness he carried in the beginning of the pose before he quickly sank deep into the chair.