Oil Studio

I started my first painting for oil studio this week. My plan for this year with my oil paintings is to make them relate to my sculptures so that I can have a more cohesive body of work. I decided to start by doing paintings that matched up thematically with my current body of work in sculpture studio.



Last year I did the dog head  mounted like a taxidermy head with the candy in its mouth.

I decided since this piece is completed to start out with paintings corresponding to it visually and thematically.

My painting(s) is going to be a close up of a drooling dogs mouth and below it I would like to have a painting of a food item. I would like it to be as though the drool is dripping onto the food.

My  thoughts behind this are on junk food and how we are conditioned to purchase and consume things that aren't directly good for us or our bodies. These junk foods are really only there to appeal to our base instincts. We spend money and even our health on these impulses  because in a way we are trained to. Similar in a way to the experiment Pavlov did with his dog. For me the dog represents this instinct and desire to consume. The drool represents how we have been trained to want what is bad for us and the junk food is what is bad for us.

This entire concept for me  is because of personal issues with my weight and health. Last year when I made the sculpture I was very focused on this issue and this year I am making the painting to go along side the sculpture.
Here are some photos of the first couple days of progress:

Painting size 32"x 34"

This was my under painting layer. I decided to try out painting
just one color at a time layer after layer. (approx 2hrs in)

(approx 6 hours in) Second day of painting. I worked single color
at a time still but started applying thicker coatings of paint. I am
still wishy washy on what I would like to do if anything with the
background as it has to match the food painting I do later. I also
have been putting off working on the lips/drool until later.

New Camera

The school year is starting again and I decided to pick up a used Nikon D70 for taking reference photos as well as better quality images of my work this year. It is an older used DSLR with a couple of older lenses but still functional and nice for what I need it for.

I took it outside and took some test photos with it. It has a couple dust specs on the sensor I am going to try and clean off but otherwise appears to function fine.

Here are some of the test photos I took. I am not a photographer and I dont claim these to be good but they are a fine enough example for me of what the camera/lenses are like.








Taken with Nikon D70.  Nikkor AF 70-210 f/4-5.6 and a Nikkor AF-d 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6
Mostly automatic settings used with both auto focus and some manual focus.

Toy Sculpting

The Art of Portrait Photography (PBS)

I saw this video online and found it to be entertaining. It is about portraits and photography. The video is by PBS Digital studios and features a few different photographers and their take on the modern portrait.