Here’s a quick charcoal portrait, done at a Wackers Academie workshop during the recent realisme art convention in Amsterdam.
Since we’re at it: The portrait month starts up in April – each Friday and Saturday. I’ll try to join again. If you want to volunteer as a model or go paint, check on the announcement or the Portretmaand on facebook.
Charcoal sketch on washi-paper.
These pictures are from September – when it was still sunny here. Time flies, but now that I’m back from Japan (canvases and all), it’s time to put them on the airwaves. It was another of the Redheads get-together in Breda, that I painted at before.
It seems to grow bigger every year. This time I worked together with artist Jos Artens. Was a nice experience to watch how another painter approaches this tough work, I should do it more – but once the clients come there is no choice but to go into tunnel mode and paint paint paint.
Here is another work-in-progress of the portrait mashup I did at the Portrait Month.
That one is over now sadly – still want to finish the image though (see first step here). So maybe one or two portraits will still come. But the next event is planned: I’ll be at the Noordwijk Painting Festival – where lots of artists paint from real life for one week. Expect lots of beach-pictures coming up!
Portrait Mashup - Work in Progress second step
The second week of the portrait month is on.
Painting people for three days in a row really taught me a lot, I should do it more often – else its really just walking in shallow waters. Anyways, here is a work in progress – planning to have two or three more faces on this canvas. And maybe I’ll fill up the white with a dark color so the colors come out more.
Also by the way: good news from the Dutch Government! I mentioned recently their plans to raise sales taxes on art. This has now been reversed – they’ll now lower them back to 6 percent.
Work in progress. Two or three more faces to come.
A new portrait of a friend. And just delivered to the gallery for the Portrait Month exhibition, that will start tomorrow.
It’s done in what is now my new studio – I love the diffuse light, even if it makes it all a bit tougher. So there is more to come from that place. And thanks a million to Elise for offering to sit for this portrait. I know it takes a lot of patience.
'Elise' - oil on 60x40 cm canvas
Here are the remaining portraits (Part 1, Part 2). I did on the Berkendijke Watercolor-Exposition.
Right now there is the Nude-Exhibition going on by the way.
I’ll start with one of the peacocks roaming there. I also went and painted the chickens in the den – I fear though one of brushes fell down and they must have dug it under. Devious gallus gallus domesticus! That was my favorite watercolor brush!
Peacock trying to impress everyone.
One more of the cat - kept coming back to sleep on my brushset.
I’ve posted some months ago a portrait of a girl that wanted a water color painting at a street event once, but the waiting line was already too long then. So now her sister wanted a fitting portrait too.
The model...
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...and the result.
Portrait, water color on 31x23cm paper
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Also recently I’m framing the paintings for the upcoming exhibitions. And I only just by accident read the other day that one should varnish water color paintings too – so I’m a bit behind in schedule. But I’m getting there.
Frames lined up in the Studio - nearly done
Approval-cats approve!
A quick update before I’m off to the game jam. My TV show appearance went well, despite my fears. Funnily most of the things they said about me were wrong (I’m longer than 2 years in Amsterdam for sure, and I never worked in Berlin), but I got some nice shots in there.
And here is Maga, my new house-mate:
"Maga", oil on 40x30 cm linen
It’s an interesting trend now to statistically measure things of our lives, and things that we would before thought are impossible to put in numbers. So this is the perfect moment to: Say happy new year to everyone! And try apply the measuring my last year(s) in art.
One thing I do is to save every art piece with a number per year. So my fifth painting would be called 05_whatevername. And I can use that now neatly to see how many artworks I did every year. It’s not perfect: I used different ways to cluster images (like sketchbooks are not numbered for every page, but have only one number). My “wage output” is also not counted in there. So no 3D objects for example – and neither artworks I made for employers.
Anyways here we go – my trend for the last 10 years:
The gray boxes are when I was hired in games companies. So I did more art in this time, but not of my choosing. Still a curious stagnation. And a good trend now – that is much better than in my first freelance time, where I could have as well been productive.
What’s missing too is my private game projects – I started one in 2010. Not sure how to add that – and I wonder what could be other useful measurements. Could there be a quality trend, even if arbitrary? I’ll figure it out next January 
Until then I’ll have some work to do; I don’t think its really possible to keep up the trajectory – but hell, I gonna try anyways.
And while doing that, I can still post some leftovers from last year.
"Edy" - Watercolor on 31x23 cm paper
I’ve got great reactions to the princess from the last post. You can see it in the comments section, and even more of them in the conceptart.org forums.
They prove that the early planning for a picture plays such a big role. At first it was thought as a mere concept piece for the dress, and it still shows through. To give it more substance, it needs more than just a nice random background.
One critique was the unclear style of where this princess is from. That’s not too big of a deal for a fantasy-concept piece, but if I would have a consistent more historic correct design of the dress, a fitting architecture in the background – and then maybe a palm tree shadow instead of the leaf tree shadow there, it would get much better together. Well… maybe next year somewhere . I’ve got other plans now, but there is no hurry for this piece – and people like it overall, so I will keep at it. Thanks everyone for the input.
Totally unrelated… a new water color portrait.
"Herma" - watercolor on 23 x 31cm paper
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