Teen Painting Intensive 2012

Ryan Finnerty and I designed and co-taught the 2 week Teen Drawing Intensive at the Gage Academy of Art for 3 years now. This year we created the first ever 2 week Teen Painting Intensive. It was a success and a pleasure to work with such talented young students. Here is a peak at some of the work they did in class.

Vienna Webber   age 14

Vienna Weber  age 14

Lucy Johnson  age 15

Kyle Patterson  age 17

Ada Campbell  age 14

Courtney Chaney  age 17

Bronze fountain head

The bronze sculpture "King of the Dead Sea" is a revised version of a simpler sculpture I cast a year before. Here it is mounted as fountain head in the garden of the Nautilus Studio.

Casting Bronze

Bronze casting is fascinating yet painfully laborious. Many steps, and many things can go wrong. But when its all said and done, it was well worth every step....

Here we have the original (left), the cast wax (center), and the raw bronze sculpture (right).

A bronze pour in progress:

                                           - the finished bronze "King of the Dead Sea"-

Self portrait in progress

 It's been four years since I've painted a self portrait. This one is inspired by a small study I saw in what I think was Thouars, France, years ago. It was a portrait sketch of 2 monks in the late 1800's, one 3 quarter view, the other straight on. I loved the simplicity and sincerity of the painting. Here I have transferred a simple drawing, lightly massed in the shadow shapes, and began modeling in oil paint. One section organically progresses into another until the portrait is complete.