DELIVERED AS PROMISED!

Here is the final painting on a half sheet 15 x 21.  Below is how it started out with the collage before I added the faces.  Starting in the upper left hand corner the subjects are: Fellow artist and friend Ted Nuttall, the "stranger", Nephew Scott Zavalo.  Row 2: Nephew Donald Zavalo, Me, Brother in Law David Wacknov.  Bottom row:  Fellow artist and friend Mark Mehaffey, fellow artist and friend Ken Goldman and husband, Jerry Wacknov.  Why the stranger?  Cause I didn't have this totally thought out and I started with that interesting face.  In retrospect, I would have preferred using a another friend in this spot.  It does create an interesting title, however.  If I didn't tell you who everybody was, you might think everyone is trying to figure out who the stranger is.  Kind of a visual "CLUE" game.

SURROUNDED BY FABULOUS MEN!

This is the last segment of the painting.  I placed myself in the center because we are all self centric and our world revolves around ourselves.  I am surrounded by very special friends and family with one stranger.  Perhaps a friend I have yet to meet.

I AM ALL THAT IS LEFT!

Here is the next to the last image.  My self portrait will be revealed tomorrow and the total painting will finish up the year.  Any guesses as to the identity of this great painter?  

I just finished watching a video by Mark Mehaffey painting on YUPO.  I started mine today.  So fun and it looks absolutely nothing like the video.  Funny how that works.

I hope everyone is planning their art strategies for the coming year so you can be energized on Jan. 1.

HAPPY HOLIDAY

I am having trouble posting from my computer, is I will try from my iPad. The painting is completed but I am going to show each panel in a separate post, then the finished work. A big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to today's subject. This one is painted in a more traditional skin tone than a few of the others. I had to go back into four other panels and adjust them so the whole painting was consistent in presentation.

CLOSING IN ON FINISHING THIS PAINTING!

Jerry

I am pleased with the interaction of the background with the foreground in this one.  Two and one half faces to go.  One half?  Yes, I am partially finished with the center panel.

I went to see a fabulous exhibit yesterday at the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.  David Hockney has produced an amazing series of works, both landscape and portraiture, in a wide variety of mediums….watercolor, oil, acrylic, charcoal, video and digital drawing and painting.  Most of these works have been presented by combining multiple pieces, framed as one.  The digital prints have very subtle seaming but most of the canvases are not in total alignment of the imagery and some are actually framed in thin wood and then put together like looking through a window that had multiple panes.  The seams became part of the image.  I don't remember seeing art presented this way before.   The enlarged digital prints were very exciting.  Much of what is being passed around on the internet regarding digital imagery is very photo realistic.  These pieces look like paintings with Hockney trademark strokes and stylization.  If you can't get to the exhibit, there is a video available as well as a book.  I have mine reserved at my local library, on a waiting list.  In the meantime, ideas generated by this wonderful exhibit are swimming around in my head!

ADDING ONE MORE

Another family member to add to the mix.  I started sketching the images onto the collage with a white charcoal pencil/pastel pencil for the lightest values and a charcoal pencil for the darkest values.  I don't know why I didn't think of this idea sooner.  Because the collage paper is coated with acrylic medium, I can easily "erase" the pencil with a damp paper towel  or wet it with a brush and wipe it away.  When I am satisfied, I wet the pastel/charcoal to lift off the excess powder and paint right over it.  I must remember to add these two pencils to my supply list for my students.

ANOTHER FAMILIAR FACE

Upper left hand corner

Not a lot of the original background collage is showing up but it does make for an interesting hint here and there.  I have been preparing my resource material the past few days, deciding which face will go where.  Only one face of the nine is a stranger.  That gave me an idea for a title.  "A Stranger among Us".  Thinking up titles is very entertaining.  

THIRD OF NINE!

Here is the next 5" x 7 " segment of the painting.  Interesting challenge to use just white, burnt sienna and ultramarine.  I am trying to preserve as much of the collaged papers as I can.  This is one of my husband's brothers.