There’s been a lot going on.  I’ve been meaning to post about it, but just haven’t gotten to it – until now.  Soooo, My two courses at Pafa and have finally dragged themselves to a close.  There is some interesting results from them, but I’m glad to have that over, and to move on.  Now I’m looking forward to a raft of self-directed paintings this summer.  I’d like to do a series of Philadelphia Cityscapes – a few of the usual icons like Independence Hall, but mostly more intimate subjects like maybe subway station interiors, the cadaver of the old Boyd Theatre, storefronts, stuff like that.

I gave a talk at the Plastic Club Salon on the contemporary art scene in China two weeks ago.  I wrote that up as a nice article that I REALLY want to make available on-line, but I’ve been stymied because I can’t find a way to upload it to this blog or to a website without losing the graphics.  Very frustrating!

Meanwhile:  Last weekend I was at the annual conference of the American Portrait Society.  It was both inspirational and intimidating.  On Sunday there was a “Paint-out” where small groups of people went to Atlanta’s wonderful Piedmont Park for a plein-air painting session with an instructor.  I was with the talented Mia Bergeron, and managed to produce a landscape painting and a quick sketch of the transplanted Canadian, Angela Hoskins.  Click their names to see what they do – it’s good!

My landscape:

Piedmont Park, Atlanta

This painting is the first time I feel that I’ve felt successful in inserting small figures into a scene without having them look really weird.  And without those figures, this whole thing was really blahhhh.

And the sketch:

20 min. sketch of Angela Hoskins

This sketch incorporates some of the stuff from the Conference – an emphasis on values over color, blocking in the big masses and incorporating the background early.

Some of the most interesting programs were the painting demonstrations by leading portrait painters.  I took a bunch of photos from several of these as they proceeded, that you can see here.  The final results were:

David Leffel’s self portrait

Michael Shane Neal’s portrait of his mentor,  Everett Raymond Kinstler

The demonstration by Rose Frantzen

The final demonstration – I didn’t get the name of the painter, but his style was the very antithesis of all the other painters.

For completion, here are photos of Mia Bergeron, and of our plein-air group in the Park: