When the Spring term ended, I wanted to continue the painting sessions through the Summer if there would be enough participation by the students. To my pleasant surprise, 11 students signed up for it! So here we are, painting on!

The major challenge in my part turned out to be coordinating around everyone's class/work/vacation schedule, including mine. So, for the Summer, it will be Wednesday/Friday Painting Club. We will be painting each other on Wednesday mornings. I am lobbying to get the faculty and staff members to pose for us on Friday afternoons.

Steven, 18"x16", oil on linen

It is so nice to paint people with different skin colors, especially people with deep, dark skin, where there is so much color coming out of it that it can easily be overwhelming. The dark tone of Steven's skin and the cool lights on his face were such a delight to paint.
Overall, I like the outcome of this painting: it seems to reflect Steven's quiet and gentle demeanor while still showing the presence of mass of his head.

A few photos from the end of the semester group critique/pizza party

Every participant put up 1-4 paintings for the session.

The guest models, Carol Luc and Lindsay Harmon, also participated in the event. They collected paintings of their choice(of themselves) at the end of the session.

Tough to look pretty while eating in a photo.

Gabriela offering her opinion on one of the paintings.

Vinny concentrating on the pizza.

Lindsay II, 20"x16", oil on linen

Before the session, I suggested to Lindsay that this time I would like to pose her looking down as if she was reading a book; after all, she is a librarian. She obliged(“I am good at that,” said she).

I started off with her features and planned to spread out to the rest of the head, but I didn't like the way it was developing. So, without completing the features, I reverted back to my usual way of constructing the whole head.

Midway through the painting, I discovered that I had underestimated the size of her head, especially the crown of her head. I think that her having short hair tricked me into not giving enough mass for her head and hair.

At the last stage, I changed my mind and decided to paint in some green from the background to bring out the contour on the front of her head.

Carol 20"x16", oil on linen

Carol Luc, our second guest model from the faculty, teaches various design classes and heads the VisCom department.

Carol was very enthusiastic about posing for us and brought as props more than half a dozen hats from her hat collection from times past, mostly the ’50s and ’60s. We chose the blue-and-black beret for today's session and decided to pick another one for the next time she poses for us.

Similar to the last week, I didn't spend much time on the drawing part of the painting at the beginning. Besides, taking pictures and helping a couple of new members get situated during the session didn't leave much time for an elaborate drawing.

I liked the bright color on her face framed between the darks of her beret and sweater. The light lipstick she wore accentuated the sharp angle of her 'Cupid's bow' upper lip and tied in with the intense red background.

I painted the necklace, after the session was over, to suggest the transition between her neck and chest. The deep dark of her sweater could easily blur the boundary between her neck and torso.

Photos of the students and Sarah Kaiser, a Fundamentals class instructor, painting Carol.

Matt, 18"x14", oil on linen

Contrary to Keith or Spiro, Matt presented with a much gentler transition in the planes of his head, which gave an appearance that probably disguises his actual age. Initially, I painted the shadow plane of his head too dark, with harsh contrast against the light side of his head.

I felt something wasn't quite right until the last stage of the painting, when I realized the mistake. So I re-painted the entire right half of his face in the final 25 minutes. It was a very obvious mistake that I missed.

To go along with the general appearance of his head—gentle contrast between the light and shadow—I painted this painting very thinly and, while being careful not to indiscriminately blend the colors, smoothed out most of the brush strokes with a sable brush once I decided that the right colors were in place.

We used the same red-and-gray background that was carried over from the class because I didn't want to disturb the folds of the drapery that students have been working on for the past 2 weeks. Next week, definitely something other than red will be used as a background color.

Will, 16"x12", oil on linen

I wanted to show Willﾕs slightly scruffy look without making him look old or rough. For some reason, at the beginning of painting, I had a hard time seeing the colors on his face. It might have been the light being too close to him or the angle at which I faced him. Looking at the finished painting, Vinnie commented that he looked like a Nascar fan, whatever he meant by that.

Sophia, 20"x16", oil on linen

I partially toned the canvas with a mixture of transparent oxide red and viridian diluted with paint thinner and let it run freely. Because I used a canvas with rough surface, I had to thin the mixture with much more paint thinner than I usually use. I used this loose appearance as a background and built the structure of Sophia's head on top of it.

Tina, 20"x16", oil on linen

Tina Engels is a drawing instructor at the Academy.
A larger-than-usual number of students turned out for the opportunity to paint their teacher.

For this painting, instead of toning the canvas with a neutral tone as I would generally do to start the painting, I chose to use the stark white of the canvas as it was. I wanted the deep dark of her hair and clothes to show a strong contrast in the finished painting.

In the actual setup, she was surrounded by a brilliant blue background, but I decided to keep the intensity of the blue to a minimum in favor of a darker tone that would tie in with her dark hair and black turtleneck.

When she went back up on the stage after the final break, she was a bit confused as to how her black-and-white-striped scarf had been wrapped over her hair before, so she simply let her long hair flow in front of her scarf for the final 25 minutes. I liked this setup better for the long movement her hair created, so I used it to anchor her hair to the bottom of the canvas and created an entry point to her face.

Keith, 18"x14", oil on linen

Keith is a new member of the club who joined last week, and he agreed to pose for the group in this week's vacant slot. I see him 4 days a week in my class, but once we set the pose I realized how prominent the underlying structure of his head was–clear cut planes of the head, rugged contour of the jaw, broad forehead with pronounced brow ridge and frontal prominences–general characteristics that are often associated with the northern Europeans. He reminded me of characters from the paintings of the great German-American illustrator J. C. Leyendecker. When I asked him later about his ancestry, he said he is German-Norwegian.

Ed, 16"x12" oil on linen

This week, Ed volunteered to pose for the group in place of Vinnie, who posed last week.

I stretched a canvas from a new roll of Claessens Type 880, Medium Rough Texture linen that I just bought. It's a rather heavy and rough-textured canvas compared to my usual taste, but I needed a heavy canvas for a large painting I am currently working on, and I wanted to test out its surface quality before I stretch it for the large project.

Unlike Vinnie last week, Ed presented with quite clear planar distinctions of his head structure– more sculptural appearance without the free-flowing locks of hair everywhere, which can be somewhat distracting. Painting Vinnie with all that hair was fun, but it is also a pleasure to paint a head that shows the distinctive structure of the underlying form.

I pulled back the spotlight slightly away from Ed in order to avoid any disturbingly strong highlights on his head. A spotlight can never match the soft natural light, but I wanted to make it as close as I could.

"Painting is jealous, and requires the whole man to herself."

— Michelangelo

(How true it is! And he wasn't even a painter!!)

Vinnie,14"x11" oil on linen

For the first session after the winter recess, Marcin Sulewski was to pose for the group, but unfortunately, he didn't return to school for the Spring term. Instead, Vinnie, who was scheduled for the following week, volunteered to pose in Marcin's place.

Before the pose was set, Brian Skol suggested the use of a blue-green drapery for the background, and that worked well to balance the red sweatshirt Vinnie was wearing.

I didn't want Vinnie's thick black glasses frames to be too dominant in the painting, but at the same time, that is how Vinnie looks. The same is true of his hair; I didn't want it to become a distraction from his face, but that is how he is known to us. So I decided to go with the way his glasses and hair look–quite prominent and wildly unkempt. I did add the reflecting lights on his glasses in order to avoid their looking lensless, although they weren't visible from my angle.

As the session moved on to the second hour, Vinnie grew increasingly uncomfortable sitting still. The painting seems to show his growing anxiety from physical discomfort and lack of nicotine intake. One side benefit of students posing for each other is that they get to appreciate the difficult work our models do for us.

Anthony,14"x11" oil on linen

Usually, I don't stay with drawing this long when I paintﾑI do not want to separate the drawing stage and the painting stage too much. Rather, as soon as the general proportion of the head is established and the placement of the features are determined, I move on to lay down shapes of color, including the background. Sometimes, though, I like to indulge myself with the drawing aspect of the painting just a bit longer (I enjoyed the building of this drawing). But at some point I had to decide whether I should go further with "tightening up" this tonal drawing or move on to color. I should have finished this painting as more of a transparent tonal painting rather than a full-fledged painting. It turned out that the next stage of the painting didn't develop to my satisfaction. Looking back, it had to do with the fact that I let myself be distracted by an event that was happening during the sessionﾑthere was a school holiday event going on at the time involving gallery reception, food, etc.

I took this picture just before I moved on to lay down colors. Later, I scraped the final painting off the canvas for another use, another day.

A few pictures of the students (and an instructor) hard at painting during last week's session.

Jayce, 16"x12", oil on board

A few days before this week's painting session, I primed a Masonite board with gesso. Onto the second layer of gesso, I created a moderate texture by dragging the brush on the wet surface. After the board was completely dry, I toned it with many random brush strokes using a mixture of mostly transparent oxide red and viridian. I did this to make the background of the final painting suggest the distinctive appearance of Jayce's wildly unkempt hair.
From the beginning, I decided that I would not finish his whole head. Instead, I wanted the color and brushwork surrounding his head to look as if they are a part of him. I started the painting by carefully working on his eyes and made my way down to his nose, mouth and so on. Generally, I would paint the head by first blocking in the larger shapes and then moving on to the smaller details, but sometimes I just want to paint differently. Besides, my main impression of Jayce, particularly from my vantage point, was that of his eyes staring out of the surrounding dark of his hair.

French, 18"x14", oil on board

A few terms ago when I shared my classroom with another painting instructor, I found an abandoned gessoed board in the classroom painting rack. It appeared that a student who was taking oil painting as an elective class while majoring in Illustration had attempted an illustration project on the board but didn't finish it. The board had a small, unfinished painting of a mermaid on the lower right corner, but the rest of the surface was clean. So while I was cleaning up the classroom at the end of the term, I decided to save it and use it later for a painting study or something.

I painted this head study of Steve French on that board during a class early this term while having the students finish their paintings. Time was short (about 2 hours) in between instructing the students, so I decided to take on a simple profile. I am not sure what kind of primer was used to prepare the board, but it had a very unusual surface qualityﾑit was extremely absorbent. From the very beginning, as I laid down the wash, it dried almost immediately. In fact, it felt much like painting in gouache. Not quite a fan of fast-drying media, I quickly realized that my usual wet-on-wet method would not work on this surface. So I tried to lay the pigments with a more direct approach and little brush manipulation. Also, I relied more on dry brush technique than "mingling in" colors to emphasize the texture and alter the colors on the surface.

As far as color scheme is concerned, I exaggerated the color, or "pushed the color" a bit. When I was a student, my painting instructor, Ted Smuskiewicz, used to tell us, "Don't be afraid to use color boldly."

Overall, I am satisfied with the result that came out of the initial challenge of painting on an unexpected surface. Actually, at the end of it, I came to like working wet-on-dry, so I decided to find the same board at the art supply stores, but to no avail. After some experimentation, I discovered that Clayboard meant for watercolor painting comes close to it, but is not quite the same. I intend to look for it more or come up with it on my own.

As for the mermaid painting, when I finished the painting initially I left it untouched. It was where Steve's deltoid is on the painting. Steve being an ex-sailor, I contemplated for a moment leaving the mermaid on his arm as a tattoo, but I decided to cover it up.

Katie, 18"x14", oil on linen

My plan was to capture Katie's strong profile—her pale red skin against the deep blue-green background.

So I positioned myself in a perfect profile spot. But while I went upstairs for a minute just before the beginning of the session, some students in the group decided to turn her head slightly. In some ways, that little bit off the profile worked well to give just enough sense of the unseen side of her head. What turned out to be more interesting to me was a curiously slight lift of her chin forward as if she were engaged in intense listening.

John, 18"x14", oil on linen

John wore his 4-colored hat for the sitting—his trademark of sorts. But I didn't want the hat to overshadow his head, so I decided to vignette it and focus more on the expression behind his glasses. Looking back, I should have carried the vignette farther down to his left shoulder.

Spiro, 20"x16", Oil on board

I enjoyed painting Spiro on a heavily textured board that I prepared with oil primer. I thought that the underlying texture would work well with his character and appearance. I also added some very thick brush strokes on the areas of his beard as well as the background and the shirt.

The painting turned out to be a bit serious looking, unlike his actual demeanor.

Jeffrey, 18"x14", oil on linen

Jeffrey is the first painting of the club's meeting (actually, I turned out to be the first 'model' to pose for the club when we drew numbers from the cup the previous week—I have a strong suspicion that the students set me up).

The most striking thing when he sat to pose was how brilliant the light on his hair and the upper half of the face was, and how much pale blue gray I saw on the lower side of his face.

Jeffrey wore a multi-colored shirt under his vest, but I decided to paint him in a subdued shirt so as not to detract from the color of his face.