Great American Figurative show

I saw the Great American Figurative Artists exhibition at the Waterhouse Gallery in Santa Barbara. I was working the day of the actual reception, but lucky for me I was in Santa Barbara the day before and got to see all the paintings without a crowd blocking me from putting my nose up against them. Too bad I missed the schmoozing oppurtunity, but for the pure purpose of looking at beautiful artwork, it was wonderful. So inspiring!!! It's always cool to see paintings by artists that you've only seen in magazines or online. The real thing is always 100x better. I have to say, this beauty by Jeremy Lipking was my favorite:

Another favorite was this one: "It's Sunday" by Benjamin Wu

Another one that is just WAY better in real life. Just take my word for it. Oh yeah, and obviously Joseph Todorovitch's. I probably should just turn this into a Todorovitch fan site for all the mentions he gets.

Hopefully someday I will have some more of my own art to show you! I moved to a small place, and now I am about an hour away from all my painting stuff. But I'm going to have at least one long painting day a week. I have a couple of big, time consuming paintings to complete, and then I'll probably do some smaller paintings so I can feel the pleasure of finishing a painting more than once every couple of months.

Pet portraits!

Jimmy - oil on canvas - 12"x12"

I am now offering my services for custom pet portraits!

You send me a photograph by mail or email and within 30 days of payment you will receive a beautiful oil painting of your special friend.

This includes, but is not limited to:

Dogs

Cats

Birds

Iguanas

Hamsters

Horses

Snakes

Livestock

Mice

Fish

Turtles

You can find out more on my website here: www.nataliecrittenden.com

On the easel

Alright, well this painting is not exactly on the easel, but I don't know the technical name of the piece of furniture that I keep all my stuff in. I'm working on a 30"x40" painting right now, I'd say about a quarter finished. I'm pretty excited about this one!

I've been kind of negligent lately on making this an interesting blog... but I'll be posting more in-progress shots of my work. The next few months will be spent making paintings for a show, which I don't want to keep under wraps until then, so this will be a happy medium.

Charles Bargue Drawing Course

Yay! Early Christmas! My copy of the Charles Bargue drawing course came in the mail today. I've wanted it for a couple of years now, and I finally decided it was worth it to spend the $80.

It's a beautiful book. I can't wait to read more of it and start on the drawings. Although, I'll admit it's a bit intimidating!

Classes with Joseph Todorovitch are going to be over soon, until January, so this will keep me busy in the meantime! It will be great to start up again next year with a new familiarity of the figure.

The Zorn Palette

Last night was my first stab at using the Zorn Palette. This is a set of colors named after Swedish painter, Anders Zorn.... because that's what he used. It consists of ivory black, white, yellow ochre*, and some kind of obnoxiously bright red (vermillion, or in my case, cadmium red light).

* This is yellow ochre, for the color-impaired.

Anders Zorn Self Portrait

The range of colors you can get with the Zorn palette is pretty amazing, though the study I did (below) doesn't fully demonstrate that. I hadn't used a limited palette in way too long, it was so fun. There is definitely freedom in simplicity. I may have another go with it on Saturday at the five hour class.

3 hour figure study with the Zorn Palette

Fame and fortune

The other day Joseph was being filmed for the Fall issue of the American Painting Video Magazine (www.americanpaintingvideomagazine.com = longest URL ever), and a few of us students were able to paint with him. I may have a .67 second cameo in there when it comes out, so make sure you get your virtual copy!

See me there, sitting on the right? I'm famous. Soon I won't be able to go out in public without hearing, "Can I get your autograph, Blurry Background Painter #4?"

I was really happy with my painting, think it has kind of a Sargent-y vibe. It came out a lot better than the recent stuff I've been painting in class. I don't know if this means I'm improving, or if it is because I was painting during the day, when I was awake. Class is in the evening, at the time of day when I am really tired and want to be vegging out on the couch in my pajamas. I like to think I can be a night person, but mostly I'm just a night person when I am sitting and eating things and don't have to exhibit any kind of skill.

Lynda, portrait study - 9"x12" - oil on canvas

Anyway, I really liked the model. Very pretty, and nice. I always enjoy painting more when I like the model's personality. I recognized her when she came in, as the subject of this is beautiful painting by Aaron Westerberg. He has some great work.

Guy Rose

OK, next week! I promise I will have something good for you.

While you're waiting, here is a beautiful painting by California impressionist, Guy Rose (1867-1925). This has been one of my favorite paintings for awhile.

The Green Parasol by Guy Rose

How to Draw

For about two years I went to one three-hour class each week at Mission: Renaissance art school, in Pasadena. Aside from my recent workshops with Joseph Todorovitch, that's the only training I've had.

When I started there my drawing skills were very limited. I could draw bushes or clouds with relative ease, but I used the ancient art of holding my paper up to a bright window and tracing if I needed something to actually look proportional. Come nightfall, I was screwed. I don't think there is any place that does a better job of teaching the fundamentals of drawing and painting as simply as Mission: Renaissance. I only wish they had a version of their school that was more conducive to full-time study. As perfect as the training is at Mission: Renaissance, it isn't a hard-core academy kind of place, and I'm learning that it takes a @#%load of practice to get REALLY good. At any rate, I'm glad I went there before jumping into figure painting. It's made things a lot smoother than it would've been otherwise!

If you're interested, here is a video from the founder, Larry Gluck, that will tell you how to draw. There is a lot more to be learned, otherwise they wouldn't have three drawing courses. But I think knowing just these couple of fundamentals can make a huge difference.

Oh, and just in case you get inspired: you can see where they're located, or check out their home-study courses at www.fineartclasses.com.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin - 16"x20" - conte on paper

I finished this drawing today, from a couple of photographs I took in Wisconsin awhile back. It was around 10 degrees out that day and my feet were freezing through my rubber rainboots. Unfortunately, being a Californian sometimes has the side effect of wearing shorts in December and not being prepared when shipped off to an actual Winter. But impending frostbite aside, I couldn't get enough of this dog. I took pictures until someone started staring at me suspiciously through the window and didn't respond to my smile and my "Is it OK if I take a picture of your dog?" hand gestures.

Workshop #2, Painting #1

Portrait Study by Yours Truly

I started my second Mr. Todorovitch painting workshop last night, and produced the above. I'm getting a bit tired of being perpetually dissatisfied with my work. The good thing is that I realized I actually am getting better. If I had produced the above portrait a year ago, for example, I'd be giving myself an almost crippling pat on the back (which is hard to do, with your own hand). But my standards always rise higher than my skills.

So... it would be really nice to just be happy with what I do, but the upshot is that I know I will continue getting better until I'm on my deathbed. Even then, I will probably be drawing my deathbed sheets and periodically setting down my pencil so I can shake my fist in frustration and curse the heavens in my little old lady voice, "Yes, I am finally as good as Bouguereau! But why can I not be BETTER than Bouguereau?!"

Joseph Todorovitch drawing workshop #1

So I decided a couple of days ago to do Joseph's drawing workshop as well as the painting one, and the first drawing class was last night. Here's what I did:

I'm pretty pleased, though I know that there is much to be improved. First painting class is in a couple of days, I'll post my work from that soon!

:-/

I don't have anything good to say at the moment. Here's a picture I took of two cute birds in my backyard. :)

San Francisco

I went up to San Francisco for the weekend, to see a traveling exhibit at the de Young museum called "The Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musee D'Orsay." Ironically, I walked by most of the actual impressionist pieces with only a slight pause in step. Aside from wanting a maple frosted donut with bacon on it that I had seen in AAA magazine (mission: accomplished), I went pretty much for the sole purpose of seeing this painting by William Bouguereau:

La Naissance de Venus (Birth of Venus), 1879, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

As I had suspected, it was completely stunning in person. Definitely my favorite that I've seen of his so far. There was another giant painting by him which was also incredible. The sad thing is that they didn't allow sketching, as they had so many people waiting to get in that they didn't want you to dawdle. For the same reason I wasn't really able to get my nose up against the paintings as much as I would've liked to, to really take it all in, as there were constantly new herds of people coming in. I waited about 2 hours to see the exhibit, so I only had about a half hour looking at paintings before I had to drive back home. But it was worth it anyway! Besides my main attraction, there were a few fantastic paintings that I didn't expect to see.

My friend and I took some Polaroids while we were up there and I had fun drawing on a couple of them.

I really need to be careful about what sunglasses I wear, as I tend to bear a rather startling resemblance to a young Roy Orbison. I've made peace with this fact, but sadly, this rules out pretty much every retro-cool type of sunglasses available right now. When I was little, my dad used to sing his song to me: "...anything you want, you got it. Anything you need, you got it!" Apparently that is true, unless what I want is to not look like Roy Orbison.

Ricky Colson

Ravi by Ricky Colson

I found this artist online yesterday through a series of fortunate events, and I like his artwork so much I can even forgive him for stealing my idea. If you look in one of my old sketchbooks you will see a series of undersized-people paintings which I planned out, and still intend on getting around to. Eventually. So Ricky Colson either drove from Texas to California and stole my sketchbook when I wasn't looking, or he is just less of a procrastinater than I am and acted on a good idea. The world will never know. Either way, he is one talented dude!*

Lucky for me every artist has a unique view of things, even if the concept is similar. This is why artists are amazing: Who else would think of drawing a guy sitting on a bar of soap? Not to mention then having the ability to then turn that idea into something so beautiful.

His website is here: rickycolson.com, and his blog is here: rickycolson.blogspot.com.

*Disclaimer for people with an impaired sense of humor: I am joking about him stealing my idea.

I learned a lesson.

Well, I managed to lock myself out of the house, but I still have my beloved iPod, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to do some blogging.

Aside from being stuck in my backyard, with my dog, today is a celebration day. I am finally nearing the end of a painting I've been working on for over four months. That's a long time, for me. I've finished a lot of other paintings in that time, but this one was kind of torturing me. I realized that I had gotten too wrapped up in the the technical details of the painting and it had become more important than the message of the painting, the result being a painting that looked kind of dumb, even if--yes--that furry scarf really looked like a furry scarf.

Once I stopped putting more importance on the technicalities of painting than the message I wanted to convey, it went MUCH easier and faster, and now it actually looks good.

LESSON: Not making technical expertise more important than the painting itself! Otherwise it just looks like paint, without the life and beauty part.

Speaking of life and beauty--here is a painting that I am in love with by my favorite painter, William Bouguereau.

The First Mourning

Morgan Weistling

I really like this painting:

"A Helping Hand" by Morgan Weistling

He has some beautiful stuff, and an exhibition coming up in October. You can see here: LINK!

"Flirtation" time lapse drawing

Yaaayyyy!! I've always wanted to do one of those cool time lapse videos of a painting, and I finally did one. It's a pastel portrait of a friend of mine:

Jean-Leon Gerome exhibit

On Saturday I went to see the most amaaaaaaazing exhibit of works by Jean-Leon Gerome at the Getty. It's running until September 12th, 2010. If you live even remotely close to Los Angeles (and, actually, even if you don't), you HAVE to go see this. Of the small handful of people that I would give my left pinky finger to be in same room with too see how the heck they did what they did, Gerome is definitely on that list. How I wish sometimes for time travel. The astonishingly accurate skin tones and the ludicrous level of perfect detail that he did on these heads the size of your thumb.... (I mean, did he use a hair off a fly to do that, or what?) It's enough to make you cry from jealousy. Or from happiness. I don't know.

Unfortuntely, it's pretty hard to find a picture online that does some justice to any of the originals I saw. For some reason, most of them look like a cheap Kinko's copy of the real thing. (No offense to Kinko's, I use you all the time.) But this one is pretty good:

Carpet Merchant in Cairo by Jean-Leon Gerome

Aaaaagggh!!

I've had "blogger's block" recently, so I thought I should title this blog with something that really expresses how I feel at this time. My inability to write a blog post lately has been due, Number One, to the fact that hardly anyone is actually reading this blog yet. For all this is accomplishing right now, I might as well walk into the kitchen pantry every few days and announce my thoughts on art to the canned vegetables and shredded wheat.

But alas, I will plug on. Why? I am not quite sure.

Today I wanted to do the thing I most enjoy, which is to spend money on art supplies. So without the inconvenience of removing my butt from the couch, I moseyed over to dickblick.com and ordered a set of pan pastels.


Besides just wanting more stuff, I bought them because I've decided to make some drawings. Up until now, most of the drawing I've done has been for the purpose of being a better painter, just practice and studies. Today I was struck with an interest to do some drawings that have no further purpose than to be completed works of art in themselves. I have no idea what they are going to look like... hopefully somewhat respectable. Stay tuned!

Here's a drawing done with pan pastels that I really liked, by Sydney McGinley.

Edouard Dantan: Ridiculously Good Painting of the Day

Chicago pastel drawing

Pretty soon I'm going to make one of those cool speed painting videos where you speed up the painting process of a painting into a few minutes. But for now, here's a short thing I put together. Please ignore the fact that nothing is centered...I have no idea how to fix that!



And here's the finished piece:


Chicagoscape I - 18"x24" - pastel on paper

Today's Thoughts, and Socks

Am I too old to be making a Christmas list in the middle of June? (I'm twenty-three and a half.)

Also, is it a bad idea to choose who I want to date based on their musical preferences?

On that subject, here is a drawing I really like of Mr. Thom Yorke (from Radiohead):


It's by a dude named Matt Cipov. Some of his stuff is a little creepy for my tastes, but I love his style. And he has things that aren't creepy, like owls.

I will either wait until Christmas, or purchase it as soon as an occasion arises where I have an excuse for buying another awesome thing that I don't necessarily need. Maybe as a celebratory present for finally finding a sock that matches one of my other socks.

YOU, with all your riches, can buy it immediately right here. :)

Plein Air painting: Dirt, oranges, and a banana.

So, today I had what I call my first real plein air painting session. For all you painters who live in a hole, and for regular people who don't paint: plein air basically just means painting outdoors. It comes from the French en plein air, 'in the open air.'

Anyway, I call it my first real plein air painting because I thought that I had never done it before, but then I realized I that I actually have. But the other times I was making watercolor sketches and not necessarily trying to make anything look like real life, and this time I was using oils and wearing a painting hat.

I decided not to get too adventurous for my first time, so I headed to Prospect Park in Redlands. I parked, prepared for a long expedition to find The Perfect Spot, and found it in an orange grove after looking around for about 10 seconds. Feeling like I should take this thing more seriously, I wandered around checking out the other options, and eventually ended up back where I started, about 15 feet from the parking lot.

Plein air painting definitely brought a whole new set of Challenges. Namely:

The Challenge of how to not drop your brushes in the dirt a second time.

The Challenge of how to not use unladylike language when the wind is blowing everything goddamn everywhere.

And most of all, the Challenge of what to paint when the lighting is changing every five minutes--from completely overcast, to so-blindingly-bright you can't tell if you are painting with ultramarine blue, or a banana.

But all in all, I ended up having what I would categorize as a really fun time. Which for some reason kind of surprised me. And as an added bonus, I learned some things that are going to help me in the studio. I won't share those things with you. It would be too boring, and useful.

I was out for about 2 1/2 hours, and here is what I came up with:


Love, Nat

Another study

Here's my latest study from Joseph's workshop. Only one more class to go! :(


Nude study #9

Abbott Handerson Thayer

I discovered this wonderful artist today (b. 1849-1921). Not sure how I've never heard of him before. He was a student of Jean-Leon Gerome, which explains some of his wonderfulness. I'm not really up for researching more interesting facts about his life and times, so just enjoy the paintings.

Angel by Abbott Thayer

detail of Angel

Virgin Enthroned

Joseph Todorovitch workshop

I'm about halfway through my 10-class figure painting workshop with Joseph Todorovitch. I met Joseph a few weeks ago at a portrait demo he did, and I was totally blown away. When I look at the huge advances I have made with my own painting since I started, it makes me cringe to think about how close I was to staying home that night and watching Arrested Development. Not to belittle the magical, life-changing powers of Arrested Development .

Here is his website, in case you aren't familiar with his artwork: www.onejoseph.com. He is amazing.

Here's my most recent painting from the workshop!

Capri

This painting is called Capri, by John Singer Sargent.

I love how it completely makes me feel like I'm there, with the wind and the music. It makes me want to travel. Or at least buy a tambourine.



And speaking of very fine accomplishments, here is a picture of a hut I made with my best friend in Santa Barbara. I am probably still more proud of this than anything else.

Cute baby drawing

It's going to be awhile before I have kids, so I am very happy to have found a constructive channel for my baby-brain. This is a sketch I did the other day for my next painting.

Study of Ethan, conte on paper