Sara

Three-and-a-half hours. 8" x 10". I actually dislike this painting very much and am only throwing it up to remind myself of the importance of measuring. It looks so sloppy because I realized at the 11th hour that my drawing was completely off as a result of not taking the time to measure and check placements. I quickly threw paint on the surface in an attempt to leave with a halfway-decent piece. I'm not a quitter by nature, so this was a real struggle to get through. Oh well, you can't win 'em all. I'll paint smarter next time.

Stacy

Four-and-a-half hours.

Malo

Four hours. Morgan Weistling, Jeremy Lipking, and Richard Schmid swear by Langnickel brushes, so I tried out some brights I bought a few weeks ago. Uh, yeah... I don't know why I didn't switch over to these before, because they're kind of bad-ass. I use much less paint now and have more far control than I ever did with Robert Simmons. Blending is a dream with these babies.

Angela

Twos, fives, and twenty-fives. Whenever I feel like I'm plateauing, I challenge myself by trying out new techniques as a way of forcing my mind to see things differently and to break out of old habits. It feels like I'm walking a tightrope without a net, and my drawings often suffer at the beginning of the transition. In time and after much practice, I know it will get easier, but it can be pretty frustrating to see yourself fall from your usual standards. I have to do this though to keep learning.

Liz

Four hours. Pretty tough painting today since I had to contend with two warm lights, a main and a fill bounced off a gray wall. It also didn't help that the room lights weren't turned on when we started, so I had to fight ever-changing light conditions from clouds dimming ambient light coming in from the skylights above. Still, I learned a lot from this piece - and that was clean your palette often and avoid getting it too chalky!

Margaret

Three-and-a-half hours. I've been watching the hell out of Morgan Weistling's and Jeremy Lipking's demonstration videos to gain some insight into how to paint portraits better. Their preferred method of painting is from the inside-out - meaning, they pick a feature and bring it to a finish, then move on to an adjacent feature and bring that to a finish, and so on and so forth until the painting is complete. I like their approach much better than blocking it in and using average tones, because I spend less time battling a mush of paint that will eventually be corrected and refined later anyway. Plus, this way I can make cool vignettes!

Peggy

Fives and tens. God, I love using brush pens!

Sonja

Twos, fives, and tens. I'm asking Kirk to help break me out of my reliance on shape and tone to concentrate more on form. Old habits die hard. Sometimes I feel as if I'm fighting every single line I put down.

Marci

Three hours.

Lynda

Twos, fives, and a two-hour pose. These were done in Joseph Todorovitch's Portrait and Figure Drawing class at LAAFA. I'll be experimenting in the future with different papers and mediums to try to get to a finish with the time that we have.

JJ

Four hours. My paintings are starting to get a little too soft for my tastes. I'll have to force myself to stop licking the paint from now on. Wish I had time to include all the ornaments JJ was sporting - a feathered headdress, gold earrings, and all sorts of tribal accouterments. I'm just terribly slow at painting right now... sigh. Hopefully all this practice is making me faster.

Amy

Fives and twenty-fives. I blew up one of the longer poses since I kinda liked the way it turned out.

Monochromatic Painting Practice

Three hours. 11" x 14". Photo reference used. Monochromatic painting is a terrific bridge between charcoal drawing and oil painting. I've never painted in this fashion before, but I very much like the look of it, so I gave it a shot this afternoon. Only used one color, Winsor Newton Light Red, and used rags and paper towels to rub out the whites. I'll give this technique more attempts at future workshops.

Karole

Three hours. This was done at The Drawing Club with the film Stormy Weather playing in the background for added inspiration.

Heather

Two-and-a-half hours.

Marisa

Five hours. 11" x 14".

Daniella

Two-and-a-half hours. I had to really bust my balls to bring this one to a decent finish with the time that I had.

Jee

Twos, fives, and tens. God, I felt so rusty today!

Matthew

Three hours. 11" x 14" on canvas board. When I was still taking Sean Cheetham's painting class last quarter, one of my classmates, Uyen Truong, invited me to join him sometime at the workshops held at the Courbet Art Circle studio in Santa Ana. I finally found a block of free time to do so and braved two hours of horrendous L.A. rush hour traffic to get there. I'm glad I made the trek - it's a comfortable and hospitable place to paint and draw. Browsing their schedule for the rest of the month, it occured to me that the Orange County art scene has a pool of models that is different from both Los Angeles' and San Diego's, so I'm really excited about having the opportunity to draw and paint new faces.

They have an open gallery show every first Saturday of the month, and they invited me to put up any work I'd like up on the walls for sale. I'm flattered, no doubt about that, but I've always been somewhat wary about putting price tags on my work. The extra money would definitely help me save up to go to art school somewhere full-time, but I just feel kinda hesitant about selling something I consider merely practice and that I did to have some fun after a grueling day at work. Maybe I shouldn't be so modest.

Anyway, this is my 200th post! Yeah! I'd like to think I've grown a lot since my initial batch of entries. For those of you who have been following along, thank you so much for putting up with so many bad drawings and paintings as I struggle to learn how to see again.

Here's to 200 more!

Lynda

Four hours. After playing around with a dozen or so colors in my last painting class, I felt I needed to get back to the basics, so I've returned to a limited four-color palette of alizarin crimson, yellow ochre, titanium white, and ivory black. It's slightly different from what I was using before (alizarin crimson was substituted for cadmium red). I got the idea to swap reds from Vadim Zanginian, who teaches at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art. I'm a fan of his impressionistic brushwork; him and Aaron Coberly (who also has been painting recently with a similar limited palette) are my two big inspirations right now as far as painting is concerned. Their works brilliantly show just how much you can do with so few color choices.

Sara

Five, fifteen, and twenty-five minutes. I seem to draw better when I'm not listening to fast-tempo dance music. I surmise that it's probably because I slow down and actually think about my mark making.

Sara

Five hours. I was playing around with lost-and-found edges and going for the simple statement with this one.

日外拍笨寶

Five hours? (I honestly can't remember. When you're having fun, time flies by oh so quickly) Photo reference used. Just trying to practice painting heads in Photoshop using only a single brush. I'm aiming to do at least one of these a week.

Brant

Two and ten minutes. I'm trying to break free of old habits and styles, so I'm taking a couple of classes with Glenn Vilppu, who teaches a very different method of drawing the figure than I'm used to. His approach is more classical; akin to the master draftsmen of the Renaissance. These doodles were done in his quick sketch class, which encourages us to experiment with different types of media. The first two pages are two-minute continuous contour drawings - meaning, we use line to feel around the forms we're looking at, and do our best to never lift the pen off the page as we draw. The last two pages of ten minute poses were done with a combination of a felt tip pen and a Pentel brush pen. I admit to have a particular soft spot for brush pens - it was the medium that got me drawing again after a decade, all thanks to Craig Thompson's gorgeous autobiographical graphic novel Blankets, a moving coming-of-age romance and a poignant reflection on his loss of faith. Pick it up if you haven't read it yet; wonderful stuff.

Jennifer

Three hours. Tonight was our last session in Sean Cheetham's Alla Prima Portrait Painting class. My painting turned out a bit rough, but that's to be expected after a three-week hiatus. This class helped improve my oil application, color mixing, and understanding of values immensely. Thanks for everything, Sean.

Jee

Four-and-a-half hours. Jee dressed up as a cowboy for today's session. I don't know about you guys, but the idea of an Asian wrangler is totally awesome.

Moi

Three hours. I don't know who this guy thinks he is, but he has no business being a model. Moves too damn much.

Eaton Canyon

Three hours. 8" x 10". Back to Eaton Canyon, trying to make good on my goal to do more plein air landscapes. This was done at the same spot as yesterday's, facing counterclockwise 90 degrees instead.