Purple and Red

Pastel Still Life

 Skull with Fruit, soft pastel, 2011

This was part of a pastel demo I created for my juniors- trying to show them how using "planes" of pastel can help you render forms with stylized realism (like Paul Cezanne). Also showing how to unify a scene with color- generally the color you initially choose to lay-in your drawing (in my case, a burnt red-like pastel) will color often permeate the whole composition later on.

Warrior (detail)

This is a detail of a painting that I am working on in Corel Painter. I've been working on it for about 7 months- still trying to resolve some areas. Hopefully I will finish it soon.

Mr. X

Inlet

Inlet, Photoshop

Lately I've been enjoying experimenting with all the different brushes in Photoshop. There are literally thousands of brush combinations in Photoshop, so it's really hard to pick just one. One of my students however showed me a YouTube clip that inspired me to go with a certain kind.

In Photoshop I used a basic brush, but adjusted the brush's angle to read either 0 or 90 degrees. In layman's terms, this made the brushes look very angular...much like a palette knife. While the painting lacks the viscosity of a palette knife-generated painting, and has probably too much detail, I am happy with the results.

This style of abstraction with geometric lines is something that I would like to build upon, hopefully into a my own new style. I like how the angular brushstrokes polarize the composition, giving it unity. Looking at Cezanne's Mount Sainte Victoire helped as a stylistic jumping off point.

Joy

 Joy, Photoshop, 2009

Oftentimes when I paint in Photoshop, I find that using the Transform tool to re-size my images, and the Crop tool really improves my compositions- helping me balance out my positive and negative spaces.

Basically I keep what I need, and get rid of what I don't.

On a side note, I feel like I'm starting to develop more closure or wholeness in my pieces- where I am able to get to a point and stop painting, because everything seems to fit. I feel that way especially about this piece.

Xypheus

Xypheus, Photoshop

Many years ago us an undergraduate illustration student at Syracuse University, we had a visiting professor, Brian Ahjar- who's stylistically very similar to Pete De Seve. Brian gave us a project- take 3+ animals, combine them, and create a new creature. Eleven years later, I still enjoy the possibilities that this project affords my imagination.