Deadlifts. Feels good man. End of winter, imma be hot, rich, and have a big stack of awesome paintings.
I know how to do like, 1.5 of these things, but we'll see.
Currently sticking to full body routines; legs, push, pull, accessory to taste, repeat 3xish times. If I continue going to the gym through winter, which is in question, I'll break those back out into a split, when I feel like I'm used to lifting again.
Solid ninety minutes in the gym. It's hard to be sure, since I'm not doing exactly what I was doing back in February, but I feel like if I lost some raw strength in half a year at the calisthenics park, I gained some endurance.
Tfw you respecced your stat points, and didn't even have to pay 200GP/character level to do it 😏
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Painted an alla prima portrait demo during a small event at the Columbus Museum of Art yesterday. Felt a bit strange doing something like that--it's sure been a while--but I'll admit it was a welcome change.
Here's a succession of shots taken through the night. I am faintly embarrassed to relate the number of people that came up and said something amounting to "we saw your start, and thought ehhhhhn this guy's an idiot 😬 but wow! It's amazing!"
Let's talk for a second about portraits and likenesses. I think most people naturally assume getting a likeness is about getting someone's features correct--eyes like so, nose like so, etc. This isn't entirely false, but wait: you can recognize your friend from 200' away.
Let's talk just a little about pricing. Broadly speaking, there are three ways to buy a painting from most artists: directly from the artist, from a gallery they have a permanent relationship with, and from a show they have a temporary relationship with.
My prices--and this is good professional practice--are generally consistent across venues. There can be a little slop, this isn't aeronautical engineering, but essentially, it costs the same to buy a painting from me, from the gallery, or from a show.
The gallery, or a show, will generally take a 50% cut of the sales price, although they may also be handling some or all of the shipping and framing, which mitigates that.
Had a request for a more specific breakout on the costs in producing a painting. It's not necessarily susceptible to an incredibly precise analysis, but let's give it an attempt, taking this 30"x40" figure from a few years ago as our example.
Starting broadly, I'm not paying a monthly studio rental fee or anything, because I work at home. Finding a property that both suited my needs as a studio & my rather modest budget was difficult, but here we are.
If I were starting from zero, and presuming I can't use window light, I'd say I'd need about $150 in a simple, but decent easel, a good medium arm palette is about $100, and $2-300ish in high quality lights. These things will last foreverish, thankfully.
Have an inquiry from an existing collector in my inbox, asking to be kept informed about a pencil drawing I'm working on, so🤞about that. Drawings akin to this have developed a significant role both in my artistic practice, and in the practicalities of my career.
(1/)
Let's talk about studies. Customs vary from artist to artist, school to school, but in general, you don't just put brush to canvas and knock out a complex painting in a fury of inspiration; first you do studies of individual elements.
(Bouguerau examples)
(2/)
This isn't invariable, but I personally--in my larger figures, which represent a good proportion of my work--generally will do a highly worked-up drawing in pencil & chalks before starting on a painting.
This is perhaps among my most basic opinions, but I rarely love a Bouguereau, I wish his work had gotten a little less... gauzy? than it did, but holy moley dude could paint.
I think it's possible, though hardly certain, that Bouguereau had this other amazing painting of a Prominent Jug in the back of his head, Velazquez's Waterseller of Seville.
Part of what I love about this Velazquez--aside from the fact that, speaking of dudes who could paint, wow--is how well it functions both as a literal depiction of a quotidian scene, but also works symbolically as a Three Ages of Man.
A few words on keying a painting, as related to this wonderful Tissot:
When painting, you can't copy directly the value range in nature: the gap between the lightest light and the darkest dark. Your paints aren't bright enough or dark enough to do that. (1/)
Keying a painting is selecting a scheme for arranging your lights and darks such that it allows you to convey the light-effect you want. Consider this Emil Carlsen: he's pushed his darks dark, giving him space to make his midtones dark, leaving space for the highlight to pop (2/
Compare this Emil Carlsen. Objectively, the highlights are brighter than in the previous, but they don't pop in the same way: he's keyed this one such that most of his range of values is consumed by modulating halftones, so there's no space for the highlight to stand out. (3/)