My Star Wars Art: Visions painting

The Star Wars Art: Visions book just came out and is available from amazon. I was pretty surprised when I saw they used the sketch for my painting "Yobana" on the title page. The book was written by Lucasbooks executive editor Jonathan Rinzler and George Lucas and includes paintings by artists who don't normally paint SciFi subjects. Artist like Jamie Wyeth, Michael Grimaldi, Will Wilson, Daniel Greene are some of the guys who did work for the project.

The subject for my painting "Yobana" is a young female Twi'lek slave.

Heres a mini documentary about the project on youtube

Heres a pic of my 4 year old Jacob painting some strokes on the arm.

The finished piece.

Yobana 14" x 30" oil on linen

Isabella Stewart Gardner Zorn painting restored

I found this interesting blog post by an art conservation student about the restoration of an Anders Zorn painting of a nude woman and child at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I've seen this painting pre-restoration and it looked kind of dull and hazy. Apparently the painting was censored a while ago when someone painted over the woman's pubic hair. The varnish was also in bad shape and needed to be removed, it looks much better now with the more brilliant color. There are more pics on the original blog post.

This is the UV light photo showing the Zorn painting as he intended it to look, the over painting on the pubes shows up because it is non-florescent and is on top of the varnish.

This is a detail of the censored version.

Figure Studies

I just realized I haven't posted any paintings in a while. Both of these pieces are 16" x 6" oil on linen.

Classical Underground

I have to mention this, one of the coolest underground art/music events happening in Los Angeles right now are the monthly concerts at my good friend Alexey Steele's studio. Every month some of the top classical musicians in LA get together in Alexey's 7500 sq ft Grand Atelier to perform chamber music, sometimes until early morning. Last night David Chernyavsky and Serge Oskotsky played Martinu, and the very sexy Yana Reznik played alone on piano a very sexy Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue.

Painting in Maine

This is a little bit of video I shot of some of the guys painting Marshall Point at sunset.

I just returned from a really fun painting trip to Maine. I rented a house with twelve other painters on Marshall Point in Port Clyde Maine. Paul Schulenburg, Frank Gardner, Ernesto Nemesio, Casey Baugh, Logan Hagege, Glenn Dean, Eric Merrell, Colin Page, Lance Walker, Jeff Bonasia, Jerome Greene and Peter Kalill. But before going to Maine, Ernesto and I stayed in NH and VT for a couple days and had an opportunity to visit paint with living master Richard Schmid, Richards daughter Gretchen Schmid was our model.

Ernesto and me with Richard and our paintings of Gretchen. Ernesto painted her too but his painting didn't make it in this shot.

Marshall Point Nocturne 6"x8" oil

I did a small night painting with some of the other guys. Painting at night is always challenging but it's especially difficult when there is no moon out to give you a little extra light and color. You need to use a headlamp to see your palette and your painting, but the light of the lamp is so bright relative to the landscape that when you look up from your painting you cant see a thing until your eyes re-adjust. Eric Merrell and Frank Gardner posted some of their nocturnes on their blogs, and by the way please visit Franks blog and post a comment, I feel sorry for him that he doesnt get any traffic.

Representaional Art in the Film: Local Color

I just saw a screening of the movie Local Color, written and directed by fellow So-cal painter George Gallo. I've never seen the French Easel featured so much in a film or a lead actor dropping names like Nicolai Fechin or John F. Carlson, or even talk about local color. The story is based on the director's life, as an 18 year old in the 1970's wanting to learn to paint representational in a time when the art world considered realistic painting old fashioned and irrelevant. The main character finds a bitter old master Russian painter who he persuades to teach him to paint. In one funny scene Seroff (the Russian master) is asked to judge an exhibition of "progressive" art, and after getting an obfuscating explanation about a minimalist painting by the artist, he storms out and gives the award to the air conditioner because "it's the only F-ing thing that works". In another great scene, Seroff shows some modern art paintings to an art dealer who then goes nuts over them until he's told they were made by Down Syndrome kids. So, if you have an appreciation for representational painting you need to go see it when it comes out December 5th. According to George everything in the movie really happened to him.

Check out the trailer on the apple site. You can also see some clips on the movie's website.

American Art Collector Magazine article and cover

I have an article in the June issue of American Art Collector Magazine Jeremy Lipking Force of Nature. Photographer Jeff Newton came out and took some cool photos of me working. There are some paintings from my upcoming show in Santa Monica including the cover image, a detail of a painting of my daughter Skylar.
My buddy Joseph Todorovitch also has an article in the same issue.

Does anyone know who painted this?

I cant remember where this picture came from but I'd love to know who the artist is. Any artist who can paint eggs and a huge slab of butter that good, I should know about.

Who painted this?

Does anyone know who the artist is? It's a pretty cool painting, it's in Rome at the Museum of Modern Art.

A recent painting

A small portrait of the artist David Tanner
10" x 8"
oil on C#13 linen

Recent Figure Painting

A recent painting I did of model Britni.
oil on #13 linen
size: 12 x 16