Adrian and Diana at the Firehouse

I worked on this since we painted Adrian trying to develop a unified feeling and story of the model and the painter.

Adrian, Our Actor Model

I didn't really have a big plan for this picture, other than achieving a likeness. In all of them, I have tried to paint the figure and not necessarily to do a portrait. I did strive to catch the quality of Adrian's body, as he is a thin guy with a well-toned body. I was also into his shirt, which was he most wonderful green color. I used a lot of tranparencies for the skin, and some new (better quality)paints I bought: cadmium yellow deep and pyrrole orange. Rebeca

Adrian

Today I had a yen to draw, not paint. So I was able to do three portraits of Adrian.

The first one, in charcoal, is the best. The second one, in bright colors, gave me a chance to go crazy with oil pastels. It was fun, but the results are only so-so. The third, in pastels, sanguine conte, and pencil, came out okay.

(I don't understand how this blogging program orders the pictures! The first one I posted, the charcoal drawing, came out last when published.)

Leaving out the detail

In both these paintings I tried to leave out as much detail as possible as long as possible. Rain I worked on in the studio afterwards. Adrian I was planning on working on but decided to leave it like it is.

Rain

Rain is an aerialist, young and athletic, so
we asked her to do a standing pose and she
agreed. She held the pose well and did a great
job.

I'm not sure about the background on this one.

The stark black-and-white screen almost overpowers the figure. My favorite part of this painting is the head and torso. It's nice to paint some bare flesh for a change!

Bruce

I agree with Diana that Bruce is an excellent model. This 20 x 16" acrylic painting flowed. A good part of it is that he sat perfectly still, his pose never changing, not even by a centimeter. The other part is that we worked in absolute silence, broken only by Nina Simone and Diana Krall.

Bruce

Bruce really knows how to sit still. Maybe it's because he meditates while he poses. In any case, he's great to paint.

I spent so much time on his face that some other parts of this portrait were a bit rushed. I may go back to the forearms and hands (aargh! those hands!). Also, it seems like the crotch is a bit short, as if it belongs to a smaller person than the upper body. That would be easy to fix. All in all, though, I enjoyed the session and feel happy with the painting.