Painting Accepted to Salmagundi Club Show

Yesterday I got great news that my Parrot Tulip painting was accepted into the annual non-member Painting and Sculpture Juried Exhibit at the Salmagundi Club in New York. I'm thrilled to be in this very prestigious show. This is my first attempt, so I'm a bit worried about the logistics of getting the painting there and back.

First Attempt - Liberace

This was my first painting from the Liberace workshop. I remember thinking that I did this quickly in an hour or two, but I didn't. I forgot a whole day. How do you forget a whole day? So, in recalculating,I think I took about 5 hours. I really should have gotten further along.

It was fun to paint him. Loved the long hair and with the costume, he really looked like a gentlemen from Velasquez's time. His photograph here is not the view I had from my position, but I liked it better, I had more of a profile, obviously.

I feel I made the core light and shadow to high in value. As a result, I didn't have much room for variance without going darker in large areas, which is way harder than it sounds. I'm not sure I'm a fan of the limited "earthy" palette. As stated before, it makes everything look more like a monochromatic study. I have to say on this painting, my favority is the nose. I followed the Burt Silverman hot-nose-underpainting thing and it totally worked to make the nose realistic.

I got two pieces of advice from Rob: one, to make the nose stronger as I lost the shape when I blocked-in the paint. I made the nose edge extremely sharp as a response. The other piece of advice was to make the lip stronger, I really didn't know what that meant, but I repainted it and Rob said--it was right.

My attempt - Liberace Workshop

Here is one of my attempts at painting a la Velasquez. I would love to redo the nose, my least favorite part of the painting. I completed this study rather quickly, in about three hours (I must be wrong about that because the class was longer although I did goof around for an hour at the end). I liked the loose effect. It is different than the way I normally paint. I left it very sketchy on purpose given that I almost can never do this. If I worked on it longer it would have gotten too tight with not enough time to render the entire painting.

I wish I had taken a picture of the "finished" piece at the workshop, because my hot lights at home are terrible for getting accurate color or value. Despite the new camera from my husband, I still suck at photography.

Can you see that I originally started the face and then wiped it out and flipped the canvas. Sometimes you have to know when to start over. Thank god I knew when in this case--but it was very obvious to me. The first attempt was way off and there was no real way to salvage it. In the end it was a good decision. I really liked the final drawing and, in fact, didn't want to apply paint.

I started with a much darker core light and shadow than I have in the past and I liked it. It gave me a much larger variance in values to play with. I think I will do that again. I should have underpainted the nose in a "hot" color then painted cool over it, as Burt Silverman does. It always works to make the nose look realistic and pop off the canvas. But, I didn't do it here. Big mistake. The nose looks waxy. Drawing looks slightly off. Now do I have the stomach to mess it? Probably not.

Liberace - Velasquez Workshop

I took Robert Liberace's workshop over the weekend and provided a write up for my blog, but I posted it to the wrong blog...oh boy. So instead of retyping everything, please check out the posting from 6/20. psofaambassadorpostings.blogspot.com.

I will be posting more in the next few days from the workshop in case anyone is interested.