Portrait of my boys
Jun/101
Portrait of 2 boys in red
This is my latest painting. These are 2 of my sons, Eli and Garrett. They both decided to wear red shirts, and I kinda liked the idea. I ended up pushing a lot of green into the fence to compliment the red. I think it turned out pretty well.. although in the painting they look older than they really are.
On this one, I was trying to go pretty tight and really go for the realism. I had been looking at some of the wonderful portraits from the portrait society of America. These get me really excited.
It’s definitely the best skin tones I’ve done so far. I’ve also been looking a lot at Bouguereau lately – the master of figurative painting. Neutral grey is the key to painting convincing skin tones. I have relied too much in the past on burnt sienna, which is a wonderful earth tone red – but is on the orange side. Here I’m mixing naphtol red with b. sienna – and that is better. But you have to temper everything with grey.. that’s the key.
Garrett’s face (on the left) was repainted 3 times, and Eli’s was done twice. It’s challenging because it works best to paint the face in one sitting – while the paint is still wet. So you have to nail it in one shot. It’s really hard to make adjustments later, because you can’t blend into what’s there once it’s dry. I haven’t quite got the blends perfect, but I’m getting closer.
Pictures from the Portland show
Jun/100
Here’s some pics from my show this past week at the Poster Garden in Portland, OR. It was a pretty successful event, with over 200 attending… even though it rained (of course). It was nice to be inside, I felt bad for the artists who were outside on the sidewalks! I understand that if the weather was nice, there would have been close to a thousand visitors! So, maybe it’s worth it to try to do it again later in the summer.
But, met some really nice people, made some new friends – other artists here in Portland, and got lots of compliments! A fun show!
My WebVisions Session: Theming Drupal
May/102
Here are some resources related to my session tomorrow at WebVisions on Drupal theming.
- Drupal Theming: Crash Course (powerpoint slides)
- Adventures theme - (.zip)
Adventures is a theme for a mock website we go through building in the Drupal course I teach at Ai. I’ve tried to keep it real simple and use just the basic files needed, although I do break out the _header & _footer into include files, as well as a _settings.php file I use to handle some variable setting and logic.
Adventures is not meant to be a generic-type theme, the CSS & images are customized. But the php files are useful to start from. You would probably want to totally change the homepage (page-front.tpl.php) and toss out much of the CSS – but it’s there in case you want to see what I did.
Zen theme is probably the most popular way to start a Drupal custom theme, and one of my students (thanks Ky) alerted me to this handy module to make it even easier: http://drupalmodules.com/module/zenophile
For other simple themes to modify, you might try Basic , or Clean, or SimpleWeb
See you at WebVisions!
Upcoming gallery shows
May/101
Avalon Gallery
May 21 – End of June (and maybe beyond)
- A brand new gallery opening in Battle Ground, WA. It’s located in the Battle Ground Village. If you know where the new library is, it’s in the same turn-about there. Nice two story gallery, great space. I’m going to have 5 paintings showing here.
May 21 is the grand opening.. Mayor will attend & ribbon cutting, refreshments, all that. Free date if you’re looking for a nice night out!!
The Poster Garden
June 3 – store / gallery space, downtown Portland in the Pearl. This is a one-night only showing, a first Thursday event. I should have 4-5 paintings there..
630 NW 14th Avenue
Portland, OR 97209
BYU illustration alumni show
June 18 – in Provo, This is a combined show of all the alumni from the illustration program at BYU. We’re each allowed to put in 1 painting… it’s going to be a big show filling 3 different galleries on campus. Supposed to run from June 18 – July 14.
We’ll be traveling out there for the opening on the weekend of the 18th. Love to see any Utah friends in the area!
