A Great Saturday in Eugene

I don't often post photos of events here, but then again I don't get many chances to attend events.  My daughter Grace got us tickets to the Oregon Ducks / Utah Utes game Saturday.  This was only my second college football game and I have to admit, it was most impressive.  What a top of the line program.  The entire complex looked like a Nike ad, and I guess it was.  Ducks started slow but came out in the second half and blew the game open, winning 44-21.  Utah scored a touchdown just before halftime to make it close.  Then on the ensuing kickoff, DeAnthony Thomas returned it for an 85(or so) yard touchdown.  

Adding a few touches to the Max painting before leaving for the game Saturday

At the Oregon Ducks game with my amazing daughter Grace.

 

 

 

 

 

The indoor practice Facility.  The entire building is Matte Black, though the late afternoon sun makes it appear green here.

Oregon State: Jordan Poyer

The slightly corrected version from  the early  Sunday post.

Note:  I am trying the new feature for Google + that links my blog with google plus accounts. These links have a + sign in front of them.
+Oregon State University .  Congratulations to +Jordan Poyer .  Defensive All American.
 I decided to do this watercolor of Jordan Poyer of OSU as a gift for my sister and her husband who are huge OSU fans.  I was hoping to post this watercolor before the game yesterday, but I wasn't where I wanted to be with it.  Then I watched in disbelief as OSU lost the +Alamo Bowl  to that Texas team which shall remain unnamed. This is definitely a painting that I want to make into a slideshow  (my next project today).  At times I felt like I was painting a landscape on a pinhead.    It started to become tedious and I had to back away several times to try  to loosen it up.   I'm trying not to nitpick it to death.  It will never be perfect, I just want to be able to look at it (hopefully years from now) and not regret fixing something. It took me the most part of two days to get it to this point.
My impatience almost hurt me, because I started out with NO Orange on my palette.  I had to mix the Orange about 300 times ( felt like it) as I went along and as you can see, this is an Orange dominated painting.
There were times where I couldn't find my little mixtures of blue for the subtle shadows. My palette started to look like a color hoarder's, with about 14 little puddles of paint mixtures hanging around the main colors
The challenge of getting a painting like this to look loose enough without being sloppy is considerable, because practically everything has to be in proper proportion.  I was working in an 11" X 15"  inch window.  I found out that the brushes I have are not small enough for this, and I was alternating between a stiff #1 (A Grumbacher that I've had for over 20years), and 2 way-too-soft liners.   That tiny Grumbacher saved me, because I had to remove paint in tiny spots several times, and nothing else I have will do that.

This is the slideshow I made to track my progress on this painting.  The software didn't allow me to comment on each slide.  Something I need to do to track my steps.  You will notice about halfway thru I had to wipe out the face and completely overhaul the helmet angle. The funny thing is, that was a huge mistake on the most focal part of the painting.  I remember not having a clear look at the detail of the face.  I had to go back and magnify the face to get a better idea what I needed to do.

Zach. More drawings

Still didn't get much of a better shot, but this shows pretty much the whole drawing.

This Blog is difficult to work with at times.  I wanted to enter this post quickly because I have to go to work.  My usual process is to enter the Title, upload the photo, go to Post Settings and attach labels for the search engines, and then type  my Blog.  I will add a caption in the photo as I think about it.  However, I've noticed that when I enter a caption for the photo before I blog, It won't allow me to exit the caption mode and type in the Composition field.  That is what happened today.  I had to re-post this whole thing.  Now that I'm out of time, I can only say this about the actual drawing.  I did this for my buddy Zach for winning the Season Championship in the Golf Club we belong to. (Sounds expensive, but its just a club that allows you to play around the NW with other golfers).  It started as a sketch, but turned into a rather successful drawing.  I spent some time with the shading, building layers with the 2H, HB, 2B and 4B pencils, but the paper and my patience weren't quite adequate to achieve more of a seamless, 3 dimensional quality.  I will take a better photo of the drawing, and re-post this when I get a chance.  Part of the drawing was cut off in my haste to get this done today.
Overall, I'm very happy with the drawing, but eventually, I want to work with Graphite and better paper to get more of what I'm after.  More later...

Revisiting Yupo

Lutz Tavern  Watercolor on Yupo: the painting as it looks now...to see what it looked like before I tinkered with it, see the link mentioned below.  Hindsight is that the original was actually fine if not better in some ways.

May of 2012 the Lutz Tavern on Yupo original post    I found an artist who has been very successful using Yupo for his Watercolors.  This piqued my interest once again in using this water resistant paper for a water based medium.  The upside to using Yupo is it's resiliency.  You can lift paint with absolute ease, in fact all the

"The Grab" drawing for 49er fans.

I decided to draw a picture of "The Grab". 49er faithful will know what I'm referring to.  It took me some time to get the logistics right.  I may or may not go into further details with the process.  It was pretty straightforward.  Get the angles and dimensions correct and go from there. This panoramic photo sort of shows the progression.  And here is the final, or close to final drawing.

The Yupo Watercolor challenge: Rose Bowl Champions

Congratulations Ducks

For the Oregon State fans...If you despise the Oregon Ducks, my apologies. In the past I have shied away from painting sports action scenes for two reasons.  Firstly, most of the photos from these scenes are taken by  professionals.  In my mind, this somewhat compromises the integrity of the painting because the composition is not entirely my own.  Secondly, there are licensing limitations to what I can do with such paintings. Having said this, I felt compelled to congratulate the Ducks by painting this photo of De'Anthony Thomas breaking away for a touchdown.  I've wanted to do more  action paintings because they can convey such high energy...about this painting...