The Passing of Oddysseus and the Fate of the Sirens

Been a long time since I posted here. But I thought I would get back into it by sharing a recent oil painting I did for a show I participated in called "Taking Sail" down in San Diego's Little Italy neighborhood a couple months ago. I love landscape painting and I also love figure painting. So I wanted to create something which incorporated that in a nautical setting.

(click image for larger view)

A classical style mythological painting came to mind as a great way to work in all that I wanted to do. There was a lot of planning and research that went into this. First, I decided that that the story of the Sirens might have some potential since it involved the ocean. As you may remember from Homer's The Oddyssey, the Sirens were beautiful women/bird chimeras whose song drove sailors mad and made them steer their ships into the rocky shore. Many depictions of the Sirens throughout history show them as fully human women too, so I thought that would work best for my needs. After some reading, I discovered that, according to some of the myths, if a Siren ever let a ship pass them by, without killing the sailors, they themselves were cursed to die. It struck me as a particularly emotive subject to show the moment when the Sirens realize Odysseus and his men have successfully avoided them. Most artwork throughout history that show this famous passage from The Oddyssey, generally stage it from hero Odysseus' perspective tied to the mast of his ship, and beset on all sides by the malevolent Sirens. After I discovered that the Sirens had their own reasons for doing what they did in the stories, I wanted to flip the traditional perspective and show what the consequences were for these sad creatures.

After deciding on a subject and general composition, I scouted all over my local coastal areas for just the right shape of rocks. Then I did three different plein air studies at the beach location at different times of day to figure out the lighting I wanted (a stormy overcast sky seemed more fitting to the tragic subject). And finally, I got a model to pose for the Sirens themselves. I worked mostly from photos I took while referring to my plein air color studies.

I wouldn't mind continuing to dig through old myths for new inspirations on paintings in the future.

The finished piece is 18 x 24" on stretched linen.

Sakura

This is a little study I did from a photo of a friend's daughter. I hope he doesn't mind! 9 x 12" Fredrix oil primed linen panel.

Here are a few new paintings from my extreme lighting portrait class at the Watts Atelier.

2.5 hours  12 x 16" on gessoed panel under blue lighting

2.5 hours  12 x 16" on gessoed panel under red and green lighting

40 minute gesture painting on 8 x 10" gessoed panel under white and blue lighting

Another 40 minute gesture painting on 8 x 10" gessoed panel under white and red lighting

Extreme Lighting

I'm currently taking a class at the Watts Atelier taught by Jeff Watts in head painting with an emphasis on unusual lighting situations. There's a new model every week where the lighting is drastically different or theatrical. Each study had been a fantastic exercise in helping me break out of formulaic approaches to head painting. When there's a shadow running down the middle of the face, extreme backlighting or colored lights it compels me to take a fresh approach to not only mixing colors for the flesh tones, but how I build up the forms and how to balance halftones with shadows and highlights. Here's a couple 2.5 hour studies from this class.

Small Head Studies

I recently bought a sample pack of New Traditions Art Panels to try out some different surfaces. New Traditions makes fine art canvas panels which can be ordered with a wide range of linens and canvases mounted to them. Since this was my first time ordering from them, I opted for the pack of six different canvas types at a size of 8 x 10" to take each one for a test drive with a small head study. They range from very smooth to very coarse. I really liked almost all of the surfaces, but my favorites were probably the A600 surface and the C15 surface. Both of those are acrylic primed linens.

For the past five years, I have been painting on nothing but smooth oil primed linens like Claessens 13 and Raphael's portrait linen. And I have gotten very used to the ultra smooth slickness of those surfaces. So these New Traditions acrylic primed surfaces were a surprisingly nice change of texture. I've been wanting to loosen up my finished style more lately, and rougher acrylic linens allow for a bit more flexibility because the tooth of the canvas holds onto paint a little more strongly, and I can do more effects like finger swiping, blending and thick impasto strokes at any point during the painting.

Smooth oil primed linens like Raphael's and Claessens oil primed surfaces are a bit more temperamental and require more layering and drying before being able to gracefully smooth out an area. If you brush too hard or try to swipe with your finger, you tend to rub off all the paint back to the original white of the canvas. But these NT panels were a little more friendly to me in that respect.

Check out New Traditions Art Panels here.

Anyways, here are a few of my recent 8 x 10" studies on the NT panels. I spent about 2 hours on each one.

Welcome.

People are probably my favorite subject to paint. I love still life and plein air landscapes, of course. But nothing comes close to the challenge of capturing a likeness in a portrait while still creating a dynamic composition with an instant appeal and impact that makes the viewer want to simultaneously step forward for a closer look while also wanting to stand back to take in the whole effect. That's what I love most about viewing good portrait art by the likes of Sargent, Zorn, deLaszlo, Lipking, Schmid and many others.

I will endeavor to keep this blog updated frequently with my latest works: formal portraits, informal studies, still lifes, landscapes, sketches or whatever else peaks my interest.