Watching the Grandchildren

The working title for this was Leo Carillo, since that is the name of the little ranch where the comp of the painting was done. But from pretty early on I thought of the final title, and had it in mind while painting. Lots of struggles with this one, but in the end it works pretty well I think. Watching the Grandchildren, Oil on canvas, 18 x 24:

Watching the Grandchildren © 2011 L. Lawrence Bispo

I experimented with color temperature quite a bit with this one, push it further than I think I’ve done before. Also a more complex layering process on the red blouse than I normally do. I’ll post the process over at Sunsikell, my art materials blog.

I should have posted these drawings earlier, but I’ll include them now. My two best drawings from last quarter. Next quarter starts this week! Both charcoal on newsprint, 18 x 24:

1.5 hour figure construction from life

2.5 hour figure drawing from life

Arizona Daybreak

Here is the next piece achieving completion… it’s actually an old painting of mine that I’ve just repainted. I always liked the reference and the composition, but I didn’t care for the finish; and I also didn’t consider it to be completely mine, since an instructor of mine had worked on parts of it. I had planned on a do-over for a while, but then decided to save myself some trouble and paint right on top of the old! So here is the new version, with a somewhat reworked composition, plenty of new paint and a new name. Arizona Daybreak, oil on canvas, 18 X 24:

Arizona Daybreak - © 2011 L. Lawrence Bispo

San Diego County Fair awards

Best of news: The two paintings I submitted to the San Diego County Fair – the ones I posted here – have both won awards. “At Ivy Ranch” won First Place in its category:

At Ivy Ranch - Blue Ribbon

And “Worry” won an Honorable Mention, and a Donated Award from the San Diego Portrait Society:

Worry - Honorable Mention, San Diego Portrait Society

I couldn’t ask for a better start to my career!

Life drawings

Here are a few life drawings from the past couple of quarters. They are all charcoal on newsprint. Some are five- and 10-minute quicksketches, some are 20-minute layins, and some are completed sketches done in a couple of hours or so. These are just a few of all the drawings I did in Ron’s classes; one of the great things about publishing in blog format is that I can choose only the ones that I think are worth looking at…

Five- and 10-minute quicksketches:

quicksketches

quicksketches

quicksketches

quicksketches

quicksketches

quicksketches

quicksketches

Quicksketches are vital to learning gesture, structure and focusing on large forms and rhythms rather than details (no time for details). They can go all the way down to three-minute, one-minute, or even thirty-second. Here’s a set of three-minute sketches that represents one of my best days ever:

three-minute quicksketches

A few 20-minute structural layins:

20-minute layin

20-minute layin

20-minute layin

And a few two-hour sketches:

Life drawing

Life drawing

Life drawing

Thanks for looking – more paintings to follow soon!

Submissions to the San Diego County Fair

… known to us longtime California residents as the Del Mar Fair. This will be the first competition in which I’ve entered, and it seems like a good one to start with. The first is one I’ve only just completed a few days ago, and uses a very traditional palette in keeping with my current philosophy. It awaits only a signature, a coat of varnish and a frame. At Ivy Ranch, oil on canvas, 24 X 36.

At Ivy Ranch © 2011 L. Lawrence Bispo

The other is a smaller oil painting that I completed last year: a rancher worried about the land and what’s happening to it. Worry, oil on canvas, 12 X 12:

Worry © 2011 L. Lawrence Bispo

The fair will be this summer. Wish me luck!

Two christmas cards

Pine cone Christmas card

… no more than sketches, really. I’ve threatened to redo the pine cone, but it hasn’t happened yet – and if I wait much longer, Christmas will be over. I have others planned, such as a red cardinal, a traditional wreath, etc. The idea is to emphasize simplicity, tradition and the natural, as kind of a statement pointing away from the overblown commercialism of recent times. I don’t have any problem with selling stuff – obviously, or I wouldn’t be offering these for sale – but when I see the WalMart Christmas ads it seems like we’ve lost the core somewhere.

These are available as cards from my redbubble and imagekind pages. The pine cone is done in homemade walnut ink, and the other is pen and ink, watercolor and gouache.

I promise I’ll get around to personalizing this awful default wordpress theme sometime this year. Happy Hallowe’en!

Edit: I’ve replaced the color blue jay image with the original ink drawing, which I like better. If you liked the color version you can still find it at the Red Bubble and ImageKind links above. Here is the ink drawing:

blue jay drawing

First artwork for sale

Western ink portrait drawing

Hi all, here is my first post! This is the first piece I’ve offered for sale, ever ever – an ink drawing of a rugged and vaguely Western character, drawn from a photo I took of our model Van a year or two ago. I put it up on Ebay for a week to try to sell the original. Now it’s up on Redbubble and Imagekind for sale as prints. I’m still looking for the right venue for an extended offering of my original works. It will be either my own website, or a shop on Ebay or on Etsy.

I’m still not sure about leaving the ear that prominent. It’s supposed to indicate how thin his hair is there, but it might be too distracting. Any thoughts?