More Nudes
June 16, 2018
Charcoal on gray toned paper heightened with white
June 15, 2018
Last Night’s Life Drawing
April 25, 2018
Nude Portraits
April 19, 2018
Recent Drawings
September 10, 2015
Let’s take a break from posting paintings and post some recent figure drawings.
I wish I had some recent figure paintings to show you, but I’ve been finding it frustrating and difficult to find venues in which I can paint. I’m ready to pay some ridiculous sum–$20 or $25–for the opportunity to paint the model. There’s a place in Somerville but it’s a train, subway and bus ride away. Then I had a brainstorm! There’s an outfit in Boston called “The Realist Academy of Art” that’s a short walk from South Station. Surely they’d have an appropriate venue to paint the model! I called and sure enough they did, at a time that was convenient for me too, and oil paints were encouraged.
I thanked the woman and was about to get off the phone when she said, “One more thing. No turpentine, only odorless paint thinner.”
I said, “You’re kidding. I can’t use turpentine?”
She said, “Some of our students complain about the smell so we don’t allow turpentine.”
I said, “How can you claim to teach traditional academic techniques when you ban the use of turpentine?”
“I’m sorry sir, no turpentine.”
I said, “You do realize that the fumes from odorless paint thinner are just as dangerous if not more so than turpentine, you just can’t smell them?” She said, “I’m sorry sir, that’s our policy.”
So that was that. I wouldn’t clean my brushes in odorless paint thinner, much less smear it on canvas with my expensive pigments. It would be like having to mix dog crap with my paints, completely non-archival, an insult to the noble craft of painting. Plus it’s made from petroleum products instead of being squeezed out of a pine tree like good ol’ turpentine. Nevertheless, turpentine [air quotes] smells bad and [air quotes] makes me feel queasy, so no turpentine only kiddie media that doesn’t make me feel bad.
I hate the modern era.