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Am slightly more content with the sketch now; a little more shade above the left eye; plus the inclusion of a missing eyelid ( why didn't I notice that before?!) and some alteration to the line of the mouth. It's still not perfect; but I suppose the whole point of sketches is that they are not meant to be just right. I think that they are rather like first drafts of an essay- just the rough outline of an idea to be polished and improved later. 

Am back on form; I think. :) Worked on the Teatro Olimpico (Palladio) painting for most of the day - then sketched out a new portrait in the evening. There's something...wrong with it somehow, something in the proportion of the face and line of the mouth; the result being that while it may be OK as a sketch it is not an accurate likeness.  But at least it is an improvement on my previous attempt; which has now been painted over so that I can re-use the canvas. 

 

Too hot for plein air painting in N.J. on August 1st, 2010

Just sketched out the basis of a new painting- and having done that I think I'll take a break for the rest of the day; read the paper, eat chocolate  etc. and generally be really, really  lazy. Starting to feel a little burned out after painting non-stop for nearly 3 weeks  so I think I need to be lazy for a while.

Hi everyone, I know Banks have a had a bad press the last few years but to borrow a line from Monty Python's, what did they ever do for us Roman sketch.  Well  they did give us Bank Holidays !
I just wish it was next week though and be able to enjoy it. Our hosting company has had a server problem most of the weekend which is causing problems across their network and with todays holiday, it might take unitl Tuesday to get resolved, although i am told they are working on it !!

Enjoy your holiday
Adrian


Don't foget to check out  Septembers Painting Challenge

Try your hand at Plein air painting -SIMPLY SUBMIT a Plein air painting/sketch to the competition and the winner gets free subscription to all 3 of our charged galleries (worth 20$)
www.easelfaces.com
www.travelscapers.com
and our new still life gallery still-life

Just join the group and post your work before the end of September. The lucky 5 runners-up will win a free subscription to a gallery of their choice (worth 10$). which could be travelscapers.com, easelfaces.com or our new still life gallery. So come on get your paintbrushes wet !

I learned today, quite by accident, that one of my favourite songwriters of all time, Will Owsley – has died. Almost all of you will be unaware of this man. He has consistently written some of the greatest melodic pop since The Beatles, and yet remained largely undiscovered. The final, terrible irony is that, following his suicide, his existence is so ‘below the radar’ that I have only just discovered his death, some three months after it happened. Here’s a video of him performing one of his greatest songs “Oh No, the Radio” -in my opinion a perfect pop song.

Will Owsley, quite simply, in the 2 solo albums he left us, plus his work with The Semantics, was worthy of rubbing shoulders with Lennon, McCartney, Ray Davies and Neil Finn. He was that good.

Perhaps, like many Artists, he will achieve the recognition in death he never really had in life.

I am deeply shocked and saddened by his death. My thoughts are with his family and friends. He took his life in Franklin, Tennessee. I was over in that state earlier this year, and I wish I’d had the courage to seek him out and say hi. He was truly an undiscovered genius, and his music will live on. Those who stumble across it by accident will find something that now, has become more rare and precious than ever. R.I.P. Will.

Kev Moore

Have just uploaded a new painting; completed today. Also had something of a 'musical war' with the people in the downstairs flat. The chavvy bass music became too distracting ; so I drowned them out with full blast Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev so that I could concentrate on my work. Seemed to do the trick.

Had to trim Hermias' claws yesterday because she kept getting them caught in my jumper. She sat there with her ears flattened back  growling at me like a miniature steam engine. However, if she used her scratching post as she is supposed to then I wouldn't have to do it. :)

Is it Sunday today? Well, my computer says it is!
Is it so different from any other day?

Since I have been living as an artist, Sundays have ceased to mean anything different to me, apart from the fact that our food supply shop is closed. 
And since I joined the Easelspace Team, about 2 months ago, well, the food supply problem has taken care of itself, as I hardly have any time left to eat!

But honestly: I love my life as an artist, and I love to work for Easelspace.  Always trying to better the place, to find new ideas to keep it attractive for the artists and the visitors (and for us too of course!), to solve the occuring problems, to help our members to reach their goals, this all keeps our brains wonderfully active for about 48 hours out of 24!

Now we enjoy following you, through your paintings and other activities here. We thought you might be interested in following us too. This is why we have decided to regularly let you know, by virtue of this blog, how things stand, what we do, what we feel, what we want,  what we don't want, what we hope, simple human stuff like that.

It would be great to hear your feedback sometimes, we are all human and we all need to know how we stand in this world! :-)

That's all for now, have a lovely (Sun)day!

Easel-ly yours

Miki

As some of you on here know, my primary artistic pursuit is that of a musician, and to that end I am currently entering the mixing phase of my forthcoming album "Blue Odyssey".  After working on many projects with Miki over the years, I've really come to view the creation of new music as 'painting with sound' - particularly when it comes to mixing a track and placing each sound, each instrument, in its proper place. It is very much like the composition of a painting. One element misplaced, and it strikes dischord, disharmony, and offends the ear (or the eye).

I truly believe that observing the creation of paintings firsthand many times over through Miki has informed the way I approach my own work, giving me a greater appreciation of how to create 'the whole'.   It helps me to step back, and perhaps view the piece differently. This is something musicians (and perhaps artists, too) find very difficult, particularly when you are recording a solo album, and every part recorded, every decision made, is down to you. It becomes increasingly more difficult to take a detached view, so close to your creation do you become. Yet it is a necessary evil.

Perhaps even the act of standing back from a painting, seeing how the light falls on it, how it looks from afar, is a great trigger for the mind when it comes to music, for that is how I picture myself when I mentally take a step back from my composition. An apt analogy? -perhaps, but for me certainly a useful one.

Have finished painting early today; and should have this one finished by Monday. Half thinking about the unpleasant influence of what passes for celebrity culture in the 21st century- so I ended up having a shot at Chaucer's House of Fame. I think I'll have to work at this; because I'm more familiar with early modern as opposed to medieval English. But this bit at least made sense; 

 'The grete soun...that rumbleth up and doun/ in Fame's Hous, full of tydinges/Bothe of fair speche and chydinges/And of fals and soth compouned.'

It is interesting to observe that people were considering the deceptive, ephemeral and unreliable nature of Fame long before Andy Warhol appeared on the scene.