I Love "Ugly" Stuff

This trawler was getting maintenance at an Alameda boat yard. It was enormous! I arrived late because of traffic and painted this 18 x 24" acrylic for two hours before returning home and finishing from memory.

Working Small

In the end there is something to be said for small, intimate paintings. This one (11 x 14") was done by the morning light of a window, while teaching Basic Oil Painting at the Richmond Art Center.

Sinking In The Sand

The first half of this 18 x 24" oil was done on location in Alameda, CA. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and the waterfront had many visitors. It took me a long time to find a spot. I was interested in the pampas grass mounds I saw right after getting off the parking lot, but they were so big they covered the entire view. The upper part of the beach was flat so there was no vantage point from which to view them. I gave up and dragged my cart to the sand, where my chair sank. The tide came in pretty quickly, so I only labored for 90 minutes. I finished it at home a week later, from memory.

21st Century Still Life

...at least in subject matter! This oil I started and finished at home, to make myself feel better after having a bad week. The canvas is slightly larger than the previous one, 16 x 12."

19th Century Still Life

This 11 x 14" oil on canvas was something I made while teaching the Beginning Oil class as a way to model some of the skills and approaches. I revised it at home.

Edna and the Cushion

This is a model I had not painted at the Firehouse before. I used oil on a 20 x 20" canvas.

Painting Difficult Surfaces

That was the name of the demo that I gave for the oil painting class. I was saying that if you take the trouble to understand what you are painting (I mean structurally), then this can help you achieve likenesses. So I tackled this trumpet, which I bought from a middle school boy in Antioch, and the flower vase, which was a bit dirty. The canvas was a bit big (22 x 28") for a demo but for me, the bigger the canvas, the easier it becomes to paint. Small spaces force you to have too much control and this is harder, movement-wise.

Rainy Days and Daffodils

These flowers were a gift. My mom likes daffodils and it was raining. I had a lot of paint left over on my palette after working on a landscape, so I took a 16 x 20" canvas and spent a couple of hours painting these with acrylic.

Latino Vanitas

This 16 x 20" acrylic was done during class. I was trying to model the depiction of challenging surfaces in this medium, and arranged a still life in the vanitas tradition. Only that this time I used african and european instruments to symbolize my culture.

Abstraction at the Richmond Art Center

I am teaching a beginning painting class at the Richmond Art Center. Hopefully I have organized an environment that lets us sample different ways to engage in the discipline, which is why we based our abstraction in the observation of an object. I modeled this with a small (16 x 20") painting, mostly because I did not want to be looking over anyone's shoulder. I am also trying to cultivate self-awareness as we paint, so I took note of my ow process. It took a long time to convince myself not to go on my "automatic" mode, which is quite representational. But with patience it slowly emerged. I was pleased I was able to play with the essential elements of this still life, and happier still that I left my internal editor in the dust.

My Friend Jose

He was on a hammock and warned me I only had 30 minutes. It is not a good likeness, but it is a great watercolor. On Lanaquarelle block, 140 lb, 12 x 16"

Jaloguin

This is another 18 x 24" acrylic done from my memories of Halloween. I am not sure if it will stay like this, but I am really liking doing this research into the recesses of my visual memory. It is amazing! I have focused on remembering the mood and light more than anything. In these memories I am the viewer, so none of these children is me. I am not forcing the composition or anything. The revisions I have done have more to do with values and colors than with content.

Ball Games

This 20 x 16" acrylic was done entirely from a collection of memories I have of my childhood in Puerto Rico. The top one is the most recent version. I took some licence with the houses as I did not want to make the background too distracting. I did not want to remember every detail either. After all, the genre is defined by the absence of small details.

The composition came out ok, considering I did not plan it. I find it very interesting to paint something I remember without a set plan, because you never know what's going to show up, it's like planning an impromptu dinner. So although the painting would look more beautiful if I planned it more, I am not sure "the doors would remain open," so to speak, to welcome stray visuals of my childhood.

Poet Karen

At first, one sees the person who is modelling; but little by little, all of the possible sculptures that could be made come between artist and model.
Alberto Giacometti

This is a 24 x 24" acrylic that I completed at the Firehouse in Berkeley. It took me six hours because I had a lot of trouble with the hands, but I like the light and the background. I learned a lot struggling with it!

Bay Street, Crockett

This 18 x 24" acrylic on canvas has an interesting story. Manicured places and objects have never held my interest the way deteriorated stuff does, so I pretended I was painting the view of the bay, but I was painting the house directly in front of me. The boat's owner, I overhead, was leaving the following day for Colorado, so I took a cell phone camera picture and left after two hours with just an underpainting and some quick color notations. The challenge was to finish the painting maintaining the color scheme I had seen. I also wanted to preserve the detail I could have noticed while standing in front of the house, but all I had was my memory and a cell phone pic as references. So the brushstrokes aren't as loose as my other work, but I think the colors came out ok.

Our Friend Adrian

If every person who commissions a portrait was able to pose this well, I would be done in record speed and they would pay less. Adrian had never before modeled for a group of painters. He held the pose extremely well! The result was a decent 24 x 18" painting, with good color. I hope he was not in pain when we ended. Modeling is very hard work and it's best to be in shape.

A Berkeley Figure Painting Session

I was invited to a painting group that meets in Berkeley, at the home studio of a local artist. I have painted the model before, but this time, because of the strange size of the canvas (15 x 30") I extended the view to include a fellow painter hard at work. This palette had Titanium White, Pyrrole Orange, Pthalo Blue, Dioaxine Violet, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, Lemon Yellow and Pthalo Green.

Our Standard Schnauzer

This painting started as a family joke. Kafka, our schnauzer, is a perfectly well-behaved dog until he sees either cats, picas or squirrels. The later seem to flip him into another channel! Standing is his favorite position once he has spotted one. Because I am teaching a basic painting class at Richmond Art Center, I wanted to do this painting completely from references. Thus began a series of life sketches (all interrupted because he is 16 months old and barely able to stand still), diagrams of his muscle system, and a value study followed by a color study. By the time I grabbed this small (20 x 16") canvas, I was feeling much more comfortable working from photos. A friend gave me permission to base the background on a photo of El Sobrante Ridge, and I painted the squirrel from memory. It has this tinge of magic realism, which is what I was going for.

Two Moods, One Lake

We went to Lake Anza in Berkeley for two consecutive weeks and I worked in acrylic again. On the first week it was quite sunny, but on the second week the day was overcast and even dark, with an approaching storm. I revised the sunny painting (24 x 18") on the second week because I thought the water reflections were duller than they should be, and I had time to embark on a second painting (20 x 16") with the same palette: ultramarine blue, pthalo blue, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, pthalo green, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, permanent violet and titanium white. It wasn't exactly a split primary palette or even a colorist's palette, but it worked well for this subject. The woman in the background is a colleague who recently joined our East Bay Plein Air group.

Bruce at The Firehouse

I occasionally visit the Firehouse group on Tuesdays to do figure painting. This 20 x 16 acrylic painting felt wonderful, because it flowed. The model was excellent! I was happy with the light and the modeling of this figure.