A peek at some new work...

Okay, so I've taken my own personal oath that I won't be showing any new work online until the Gamber Center Exhibition next year.  My hope is to give a little incentive for people to come out to the exhibition for some never-before-seen work.  So I'm staying true to that.  However, that doesn't mean I can't show off a few close-up details of new paintings I've been working on.  So here's a little peek:

Detail of "Intermission".  Oil on canvas, 28x22 inches.

Detail of "Man Wearing a Bear Fur Scarf".  Oil on canvas, 24x18 inches.

Detail of "Prayer in the Wilderness".  Oil on canvas, 24x20 inches.

So you'd think that I was dabbling with a bit of non-representational, modern-artsy abstract stuff... but I can assure you I am doing no such thing.  I wouldn't dream of it.  However, these really are close-ups of finished paintings that I've done recently, and ones that will be included in the Gamber Center.  I absolutely cannot wait for everyone to see them.. hopefully they'll rock your socks off.  Stay tuned for more little teasers like this.  I'll also have a few paintings soon that I'll actually be kind enough to fully show you.. Maybe.

The Gamber Center Exhibition, and why it matters

Alright, so in my previous post I mentioned another exhibition announcement that I had, and here it is.
I have been chosen as one of four artists to exhibit work at The Gamber Center in Lee's Summit, Missouri next year, and I couldn't be more excited/humbled/happy about it. 
This will be my first solo exhibition in 3 years, and also the largest, which is what makes this the most important exhibition of my career to date.  The work I'll be showing will include my best work from years past until now, including work I haven't shown yet, and hopefully brand new work that I haven't even made yet!  That all depends on when the exhibition will be.  The details haven't been determined yet, but I am looking forward to sharing it with everyone, and hope to see a whole bunch of friends at the reception... which may or may not include a live demonstration. 
So please stay tuned for more news about the Gamber Center Exhibition as it comes, and be on the lookout for the reception date for sure.  That will be the really important part.  To everyone that is a fan, to my loved ones including friends and family that have supported me as an artist, and to all my artist collegues that have encouraged me - I dedicate this exhibition to you.

New work and announcements

It's been pretty busy lately in the studio, and I'm loving every minute of it.  My portrait painting class is doing so well, and we're all having an awesome time.  I truly feel in my element with it.  We have 3 weeks left and we're getting ready to start alla prima painting, which I am excited for!  And hopefully my students will be as well, especially those that like a more loose and spontaneous form of painting that exploits the abstract qualities of oil. 

This week I did a new portrait called Flamenco Dancer, and just finished it today.  It was basically a 3-day project, and I'm looking forward to showing it soon.

Flamenco Dancer
oil on canvas
20x16 inches

Speaking of showing work, I have a couple of show announcements to share that I am also really excited about.  The first is coming up later this month at Got Art Gallery in Lee's Summit.  It's the Seasonal/Holiday show featuring Summit Art artists, and goes from November 18 until January 7.  I'll have at least two pieces showing, and possibly more depending on how many artists respond to the show call.

I do have another show announcement to make that I am overwhelmed with excitement about, but will save that for its own blog post.. it's a big one!
But getting back to the portrait classes... I am really really wanting to expand it and go another 6 weeks after I'm done with this first 6-week period which ends November 19.  I am thinking hopefully I'll be able to start up again in January after Christmas and New Year's are done.. that crazy time of year.  But there is already interest in it from some folks, so I'll take it as a good sign that I can get it going.  I hope I can.
If anyone... ANYONE.. is interested or knows of someone who might be interested in taking the class with me, please send me a message at ryandelgadoart@gmail.com.  Obviously, Kansas City area residents only.. unless you really want to commute every week from wherever.

That's all for now.. and again stay tuned for my other show announcement, and of course more art!

Festivals, Classes, and Books

When I last wrote on here, I was just getting ready for the Summit Art Festival, and now it has come and gone, and I have to say it was a pretty great weekend.
First of all, the weather was pretty great... a little odd, but hey, that's Missouri.  Friday was really hot, humid, and very windy.  Then Saturday and Sunday were inexplicably colder.  There were some unfortunate incidents with tents blowing around, and particularly for the student pavilion that caught a gust of wind, and an entire row of metal screens went tumbling down like dominoes while some work was hanging on them.  So a couple of pieces were unfortunately damaged.. and just painful to see that.  I felt bad for the school pavilion having to go through that.. there was a lot of great work there.
But for the good news... I pulled off a 2nd place win in the Summit Art pavilion this year.  They even got the mayor to present the awards to everyone this year, so that was pretty cool.

Mayor Rhoads and me next to my work.

While I didn't sell any work, the 2nd place win was great.  And on top of that, all sorts of little cool things were happening all weekend that made up for not selling.  For one thing, the overall Best of Show winner for the festival Andrew Batcheller had some very very nice things to say about my work, and went out of his way to introduce himself and compliment me on my work.  It was an awesome gesture on his part, and he seemed like a pretty cool guy... so here's a shoutout to him.  I don't know if he has a website, but look him up and go check out his work.

I also want to say what a great group of artists I shared the Summit Art pavilion with this year.  I think there seemed to be a much better sense of fellowship than last year.  Although I was told on Sunday that I've been "voted out" of the Summit Art pavilion for next year.  Not that they don't like me, but they want to see me succeed in my own booth next year, which was really encouraging to hear.  So it's probably gonna happen.

Then on Sunday, by the time the festival was winding down and I was exhausted from the weekend and leading youth group stuff at church in the same week, I was having a nice conversation with a couple of the ladies who also had work in the pavilion about various things.  One of the things that came up was the drawing class that I wanted to teach earlier this year that sadly fell through.  One of the ladies mentioned how she wanted to sign up for it, but it just didn't work with her schedule.  So between the three of us in our conversation, we decided to try again with a portrait painting class on our own schedule in our own setting.  I just thought how awesome it was that these two ladies were willing to pay me for portrait painting lessons, and that both of them were willing to open up their homes to host it.  Long story short, within the hour we had a plan for a 6-week portrait class, and I found out that two more ladies in the pavilion were also up for the class.  At that point I realized that we actually had something really cool happening here.  As if that wasn't great enough, I was at a figure drawing session yesterday and just mentioned the class to another person, and just like that we got a 5th person to join the class.  Due to space issues, we're keeping it at 5 for now, but who knows what will happen later.  I am hoping it will expand and that we'll eventually be able to invite others in.  I'm hoping I'll be able to keep the plan for this class as simple and straight-forward as I can, and just keep to basic fundamentals and stick to really simple but effective techniques.

 

Portrait underpainting with Raw Umber

Another fun thing this week was that I just got a new book on the 19th century Russian painter Ilya Repin.  I haven't started reading yet, but flipped through the book and it had a lot of great quality images of his work.  I'm really wanting to familiarize myself with this period of artists and their work, and Repin is definitely one that I'm liking a lot.  I'm expecting two more books later on next month that I pre-ordered on a great landscape painter Ivan Shishkin and figurative painter Anders Zorn.  I'm also eventually wanting to order a couple more books on Edouard Dantan and Jean Leon Gerome, but those are a bit more expensive.

So this was a pretty long update, but there was a lot of stuff to update about.  It was pretty amazing how eventful the Summit Art Festival weekend was, and I'm already looking forward to next year.  For now, it's back to work and I hope to have some more award-worthy work to come.  We'll see what happens.  Stay tuned for more show announcements and more art!

New painting - The Rapids

There are times when I finish a painting and I am completely discouraged, and I keep telling myself, "This should've been better."  Even now, as someone that has been painting with oils for about 16 years or so, I end up with some bad paintings where nothing went right and I hate everything about it.  And then there are those times when I finish a painting and I really like it.  Even though I had quite a few interesting challenges and some rough spots, it turns out well overall.  Maybe I'm not 100% happy, but I like it anyway.
But then... once in a rare occasion... a very rare occasion I'll finish something where even I will question if it was my hand that really did it.  Today, I am happy to say, was such a painting.  I finished this one in 9 days, and strangely everything about it seemed to work out well.  There were, as always, some rough areas and really hard parts that needed more work and correction than others.  But even those corrections and refinements worked out well, and the entire painting came out beautifully.  I am calling this one "The Rapids," and here are some shots of its progress, along with the final piece.  Hope you enjoy:

Underpainting with Raw Umber.

1st layer of flesh tone on the figure using a limited palette of Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, and White.

Painting the bright red drapery using Cadmium Red deep, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue, and Vermilion hue with White on the highlights.

2nd layer of flesh tone on the figure.

Finished with the figure.  Beginning to paint the landscape and background.

The Rapids
oil on canvas
36x24 inches
2013

Time Out

Wow.. this painting has been a whole busy week of ups and downs, and today I finally finished it.  What an awesome challenge though... You really don't have any idea how tough a painting can be until you really get into it.  And for me, this painting became a challenge right from the start.  Actually, the underpainting was one of the easiest parts.  Anyway, here it is without any further ado:

Time Out
oil on canvas
28x22 inches
2013

Unfortunately, this one won't make it to the Summit Art Festival this year, since that's coming up two weeks from today.  But you can be sure I'll be showing this one at some point.  As always, stay tuned for more.. I'm so glad I can put this one aside and move on to the next one!

Rebirth of Venus

Today I finished one of the paintings I started yesterday.  I must admit, about 80% of my time on this painting was spent on the figure.  I often fall into the trap of working really hard on one part, and then just wanting to be done with the painting, so I whip right through the rest.  But, it is what it is, and so here it is for you to see what it is:

Rebirth of Venus
oil on canvas
24x18 inches
2013

This one was pretty hard.  I was actually surprised to see that just over 3 hours had gone by once I had finished it today, and now it's already 5:00pm.  Anyway, so much more to come!  I have project ideas all over the place, and I'm excited to get to work on them.  Stay tuned..

In progress work/19th century realism

It's been a long, tiresome, but great and productive day.  I worked for about 7-8 hours today doing an underpainting and getting a good start on another painting.  Here they are:

The first one is clearly a figure painting that will have something of a "Birth of Venus" theme to it I think.  At this point it's kind of an improvisation.  Anyway, the second is more focused.  It's an underpainting for something fun that I'm calling "Time Out."  The little girl looks kind of scary right now, as my underpaintings typically do.  But I sure hope it turns out much more adorable.  It was pretty hard just getting the underpainting drawn, and I'm really really hoping it turns out well.  I'm probably just going to have to take my time on it, which I'm terrible at.

Lately I've been checking out some work by a lot of different 19th century realists.  I'm still focusing on landscape painting (while also doing these figurative works still), and some of the best landscape painting I've ever seen has been done by some really awesome 19th century painters.  Particularly, a few that I've been looking closely at are George Inness, Emilio Sanchez-Perrier, and Ivan Shiskin.  In addition, there are the great landscape painters that I already love like Frederic Church, Corot, and Pissarro.  But the fun thing particularly about Ivan Shishkin is that he is one of a few painters that is opening my eyes to a number of Russian realists of the 19th century.  When it comes to this generation of artists, I've found out that the Russians are insane with awesomeness.  In addition to Shishkin, there's Ivan Kramskoi and Ilya Repin.  And if that's not enough, I've also been getting more into some other artists of this period such as Edouard Dantan, Jean Leon Gerome, and Jehan Georges Vibert.  Some of these names have been really obscure for me for a while, but since I've been checking out their work, my eyes have been opened a little more to some amazing artists. 

Don't get me wrong, I have heard of a few of these guys, and I'm not totally ignorant of the 19th century realists, but I've really started to appreciate them way more lately, and I kind of like just how basically unknown some of these artists are.  It makes them even better somehow.  So if you're interested in seeing what I mean about these painters, look them up!  I may just do a few entries dedicated to these artists soon, and I'll go into more depth about what I love about them.  In the meantime, stay tuned for some more updates coming soon...

Updates, September, Art Festivals, etc.

Greetings art world, and general appreciators of the art world.

Well, let's see... I last left you talking about landscapes and my pursuit of improving my skill with them.  It's going pretty good.  I've done about 8 landscape paintings so far, and they're looking pretty good.  Here's a shot of some of them together:

 

 

Not too bad.  I'm still well within this project, and still looking forward to more advancement and eventually doing some plein air work.  All of these were from photo references.

 

So the month of August ended with a pretty unexpected and pleasantly surprising bang with the Raytown Artists' Association Invitational, where I was graciously awarded Best of Show for my self portrait! 

 

 

 

So today is September 5, which means we are only a month away from the Summit Art Festival.  There you will see this self portrait, the landscapes, and many more of my best works from this year.  I'm getting pretty excited for it!  So this month is going to be pretty busy getting all those paintings ready, plus maybe a few brand new ones... Maybe.  I've been working hard just about every day getting new work done, and continuing with my effort to pull off my best work yet. 

 

Overall, with the exception of my recent win at Raytown, it's been a disappointing year show-wise.  I was really expecting a lot more out of myself, and out of the shows that I entered.  I've recently submitted an application for the 2014 Gamber Center exhibitions in Lee's Summit, and I'm still not feeling too confident about it.  I should be getting notification of my acceptance or rejection later this month.  I was not accepted last year, but who knows.  Maybe this will be my year.

 

So last night I went to the monthly Summit Art meeting, and I have to admit I don't usually like going to those, but every once in a while it's a good idea to go and get in the loop with everything.  Particularly with the Summit Art Festival, which was my main reason for going last night.  The format of the meeting is typically business oriented, followed by a presentation of some sort by a local artist or art-related organization or something.  I usually duck out after the business part and skip the presentation.  But last night I was actually glad I stuck around, because the presenter was from an organization called Best of Missouri Hands.  It's an art organization that, in a nutshell, promotes artists and helps them take the next steps toward success in matters of publicity, exhibitions, education, etc.  The presentation went by pretty fast, but was quite interesting and informative, and I am thinking of joining this organization pretty soon.  So for all you Missouri-resident artists out there that might be interested, I would recommend checking them out at http://www.bestofmissourihands.org.  The thing that attracted me the most about this was the idea of branching out and expanding my reputation as an artist outside of my little Kansas City bubble (which I still haven't fully conquered), and showing my work in other places, and getting help with promotion.

 

That's all for now.. Stay tuned for more.  And in the meantime, here's a glimpse of something new that I'm currently working on:

 

 

 





Landscapes

Lately I've been thinking about branching out and doing some landscape painting, so that's what I've been working on lately.  My hope is to get out sometime and do some actual plein air painting because that just sounds really really fun.  Even to take a road trip somewhere and paint outside just sounds awesome.  Hope to work up to that, but in the meantime I'm working from photos, and just trying new things with brushwork, paint handling, color, etc. 
You would think that landscape painting would be somewhat easier than portrait/figure/still life because the subject matter lends itself to much more loose, abstract, and spontaneous brushwork, but that's not necessarily the case... at least for those of us that don't do much landscape painting.  I first started out oil painting when I was a kid in early high school years doing Bob Rossian style landscapes.  It was fun, and it taught me a little bit about how oils behave, and a very general approch to manipulating oils.  And long story short, here I am today doing mostly portrait and figurative stuff.  But when it comes to landscapes, I've gotten better, but I still haven't really completely advanced out of the whole Bob Rossy, happy treesy, poofy white cloudsy way of doing landscapes.  It was all good and fun when I was a kid just starting out, but I'm far beyond that now and it's time to get real with landscapes.  So here is what I have done so far.  Each of these was about a 2-3 hour alla prima, and for the most part, lots of fun.

Road Trip
oil on linen
16x20 inches
2013

Hey Hay
oil on canvas
20x16 inches
2013

Mudscape
oil on canvas
11x14 inches
2013

Mighty Oak
oil on canvas
11x14 inches
2013

Hiking Trail
oil on canvas
11x14 inches
2013

There's still much to work on, but not too bad.  Don't get me wrong, I have not abandoned or quit doing portraits and figures by any means.  The best is still yet to come on those.  Like I said, this is just a little branching out (no pun intended) into painting not necessarily happy trees, but real ones.
More to come soon...

St. Sebastian

All done...

St. Sebastian
oil on canvas
32x28 inches
2013

 

 

RAA Exhibition, August 23-24

Next exhibition coming up!

This is my second year doing the Raytown Artists' Association show, and like last year I'll have 3 paintings showing, including the one in this picture called Sfumato.  I'm really hoping for a great turnout this year. 
By the way, there is a People's Choice award at this exhibition, so if you are able I encourage you to come on Friday and vote!  It will be awarded later that evening at the awards reception.

No major news on my newest work, St. Sebastian.  It's almost finished... I'm just waiting for the FedEx truck to get here and deliver my medium that I'm going to be using.  But for now, the painting is on hold.  Tonight is figure drawing class at the gallery, so I'm anticipating this painting will be finished sometime tomorrow, or perhaps this weekend.
All for now.. more to come soon!

New painting progression: St. Sebastian

Three of my biggest heroes in all of art history are Velázquez, Titian, and Rubens.  They all just happen to be connected because Rubens was an influence on Velázquez (and I would imagine vice versa), and Titian was an influence on both.  It makes sense when you look at the work of these three masters, and the strong, painterly Venetian technique exploited by all three. 
My latest work is inspired by these three artists, and I'm doing my best to create a painting based on some of their techniques (particularly Velázquez because he's my favorite as you well know).  The subject is the ever popular St. Sebastian, as far as old master figurative paintings go.  My version is only about halfway complete, but here is a peek at its progression:


In the preliminary underpainting, I started with a raw canvas stretched over a 32x28 frame.  I used an oil-based ground applied with a palette knife and brush.  The ground was quite stiff and had a strong tug, which created a very coarse texture that I didn't intend, but worked out great given the effects I was wanting to accomplish with brushwork, impasto, etc.  After the ground dried, I went over it with a thin, oiled out coat of burnt sienna/raw umber, giving the golden brown ground color.  I brushed in the figure as you see in this picture with raw umber.
 

After the first underpainting dried, I went over the figure with a limited palette of burnt sienna, raw umber, and white to create a basic color/value layer, and basically to finalize the drawing of the figure.
 

 

 

The next step was to add a full palette of color to the figure, which consists of:  Titanium white, lemon yellow, cadmium red, scarlet lake, alizarin crimson, sap green, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, and raw umber.  Some areas will require more layers, particularly the face which will include some highlights and impastos.

This is the current state of the painting (as of 7/30/2013).  The figure is about 90% finished, with final details, touch-ups, and higlights to be completed soon.  I began work on the background, that started with the sky and distant landscape painted with a mix of lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, and white followed by a small layer of lapis lazuli (which didn't have the effect I wanted, so I switched to an ultramarine blue).  I am expecting a delivery in the mail of Velázquez medium and Oleogel medium from Rublev.  The Velázquez medium is an impasto medium of calcite and oil that I am looking forward to using for the final details of the figure.  In the meantime, I will be working on the rest of the landscape and background.

 

Stay tuned for the final painting soon, as well as an announcement for my next exhibition coming up in August.  By the way, here are some pictures from the Summit Art exhibition at UCM Warrensburg, which concludes August 9th.  Check it out!

 

 

 



The glorious discipline of figurative art

I've voiced my opinion before on the tragically mediocre training in drawing and painting that one gets in a typical liberal arts university, so it goes without saying that this reality was the saddest part of my college experience.  But all things considered, with the education I did receive I would say my biggest regret was not taking a single figure drawing class.  I always had an interest in figurative and portrait drawing and painting, but I decided to stick with the bare minimum of requirements for my degree, and it just so happens that figure drawing was not a required class for my degree.  Isn't that sad?  But then again, I question how beneficial a one-semester class, only two or three times a week, would have really been.  Especially when you consider the best art academies in the world that train art students 5 days a week for an entire year just on figure drawing alone before they even get to touch a paintbrush. 
Truly, for the past few years, I have realized how much I love figurative and portrait art.  And in my own self training, I've also realized just how demanding it is... not just in execution, but also in justification.  By that, I mean simply the process of drawing or painting a figure is difficult, of course.  But also convincing others (especially non-artists) that figurative art is a valid art form.  After all, unless you commission an artist for a personal, private portrait for your home, what use is a portrait of a random person that you don't know?  And then there's the nude figure... where do I begin??

Bather
oil on canvas
24x18 inches
2013

I'll admit, I've nevet tried to enter a painting of a nude figure in any art show before.  I honestly have no idea where such a painting would be socially acceptable, except of course a solo exhibition in a gallery somewhere.  But in juried shows such as the ones I've done mostly, it tends to be a general rule of thumb to not enter a nude painting. 
It's a tricky subject, and it's especially tricky to convince folks that it is not obscene/pornographic/whatever.  I get it.  I'm reminded of an old Beavis and Butthead episode where they go to a nude figure drawing class for the sole purpose of seeing naked chicks, and it's the best moment of their lives until they bring out a male model. 
It's funny because I've been to a number of figure drawing classes, and all of them have been a female model.  But still, there is nothing less arousing than a figure drawing class, and I know every artist out there will know what I'm talking about.  Sure, you're looking at a naked body for 3 hours, but you're looking at it as if it was a ceramic pot, or a bouquet of flowers, or some other mundane object.  I won't deny it... Artists objectify the human figure.  We have to.  That's our job as figurative artists.  We aren't looking at the nude body as a nude body, but as an organized series of shapes, forms, shadows, lights, and in the case of painting, colors.  The trick is, in the words of Michael John Angel, to "draw the pose, not the model."  But make no mistake, speaking for myself, the purpose of objectifying the human figure in this manner is not to cheapen the humanity of the model, but just the opposite - to bring honor and glory to God's greatest creation to the best of my ability.

Figure on Linen

I just did a figure sketch on linen canvas for the first time today.  My thoughts:  It's okay.  As long as I can keep getting linen canvases cheap, I'll go with them.  But by no means will I use them exclusively.  Honestly the surface and ground don't matter, but how you manipulate paint on those grounds does.  Linen is nice though, and hopefully I can pull off some good paintings with it.  Here's the figure sketch I just did:

Figure sketch
oil on linen
24x18 inches
2013

These particular canvases are primed for acrylic, so I had to prepare them once more for oil.  I simply did that by working a very thin coat of raw umber heavily diluted with linseed oil into the canvas.  I had to work it in pretty firmly since the clear gesso already on the canvas pretty much rejected the oil.  The reason I did it this way was because the natural color of the linen is a really nice gray color, and I wanted to use that to my advantage.  So with the thin, liquidy coat of raw umber, some of that gray was able to show through.  Really this first linen canvas was to experiment and see what it's like.  Good thing I got these suckers cheap.  MSRP = $50, and I got them for $12.

UCM Exhibition 2013

Here is my next exhibition.  No juries or awards here, just straight up showing off work (although if anyone out there would like to purchase some work, especially mine, that is strongly encouraged).  This is the 2013 Summit Art Summer Exhibition at University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, and I will have 3 paintings showing this year. 
The reception is on Saturday, July 13 from 1-3pm.  I'm not sure if I will be able to make it to the reception or not.  I am leaving for Chicago that weekend, and I'm not sure if I'm leaving on that Saturday or Sunday.  But the show runs from July 13 - August 9, so if any of you feel the urge to take a short road trip to Warrensburg, I hope you can go check out the show.
Here is the announcement, and stay tuned for more.  After Warrensburg, I am hopefully headed to Raytown for the 7th Annual RAA Exhibition, where I took the 1st Place award for my painting The Artist last year.  Looking forward to this year's show!

Cristo Crucificado/Happy Birthday Velázquez

After several weeks of contemplation, studying, and working, the Crucifixion piece is completed with a few minor touch-ups and edits to finish later. 
The complete palette used for this piece was as follows:  Raw umber, burnt sienna, French ultramarine, titanium white, lapis lazuli, Venetian red, and alizarin crimson.

Cristo Crucificado
oil on canvas
40x30 inches
2013

Now, the tricky part will be to frame this piece.  It is on a larger, 1.5 inch stretcher, so a custom frame will be needed, and will probably be pricey.  But we'll worry about that later.  I am just happy the painting is finished, and hoping something good will come of it.  I'm not used to larger canvases like this, and the last thing I want is for this thing to be sitting around and simply being a show piece.  My hope is, and has always been, to sell everything I paint.

So one bit of fun news, to change the subject, is that today is the observed birthday of my favorite Master, Diego de Velázquez.  I just finished a fantastic book about him and his work called Velazquez - The Technique of Genius.  It is authored by Jonathan Brown, the foremost expert of Velázquez as a historical figure, and Carmen Garrido, an expert of Velázquez's technique as a painter.  So the book discusses both the historical context, and the materials and techniques that Velázquez used for 30 of his works.  Like I said, it is a magnificent resource and it was great to learn so much more about him as an artist, and the approach he took in painting those awesome works.

So anyway, more to come soon.  Later on I will be posting my next exhibition announcement, so stay tuned.