My paintbrush is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life.

Last week was ROUGH.

I can't help but think of the Rifleman's Creed scene in Full Metal Jacket this week. My paintbrush, without me, is useless. Without my brush, I am useless.

Anatomy studies of hip and ribcage due Monday.
Cast drawing due Tuesday.
2 readings for Thursday.
3 paintings (2 self portraits in different palettes and a still life) Thursday
1 big painting Friday.

All that being sick and having a messed up back, that has to be about as hectic as it can get. I've been keeping a pretty regular schedule of 9am-11pm in the studio M-F and I was also in from noon-9pm Saturday. Pizza and coffee, coffee and Pizza. Sunday was a well deserved football day.

I've already had to paint 4 self portraits for painting class homeworks and 1 drawn for drawing class. Our esteemed painting prof has warned us that in a couple weeks we're going to have to do one small self portrait per day for 14 days. He's trying to kill us off, I'm sure of it, but we're becoming decent fast.


This is the way I left the studio today. The drawing is a little wonky but I think the light is looking pretty good. Pardon the poor iphone shot. It's a red-oxide, blue-black, yellow ochre (dead) palette.




Warm-cool still life in about 9 hours. Red-oxide and blue-black. It's amazing what you can do with 2 colors and white.




This model held this pose for 6 hours! You could tell he was hurting at the end of the day. This is with the iphone, but I'll post a better photo later on. Gotta love the male nude holding a pole.




A close-up of my first painting for History of Composition and Design. I'll get a better photo of the whole thing and post it. The only requirement was that it use Renaissance perspective (single point window). I was having some trouble getting the lamp-lit dark room to come together, but I just put down a glaze of transparent red-brown mix and it worked! The light just all fused and makes sense.




This was the product of probably my fastest painting session ever. I threw this warm-cool self portrait together in about 90 minutes and just decided to keep it loose because I knew I'd just mess it up with time.