Meeting 5

This week's DPC meeting was another mix of fun, oil paint and dishing. After class we all hiked back out to my place while trying to not fall on our collective glutes on the icy streets of Philly. The dishing started with a dinner served by your's truly of my "World Famous" Curry Chicken. Then we hit the palettes and painted away. Above is Christina's finished still life of Mickey contemplating the void and perhaps the future of the Disney Corporation and our collective fates as well.
Will tried out the Liquin detail medium as he worked more on his painting of David and Mickey.

Here is my go at the still life with a bold block-in, I really want to get back into it soon and hack away at it.

Christina is looking at the new book on the Pennsylvania Impressionists
I picked up at the Michener Museum a few weeks back. I think we'll try and tie this still life up next week and then start something new, maybe a flower arrangement.

Meeting 4--A Birthday & A New Member

We just held the 4th meeting of the DPC this Thursday evening and celebrated our buddy Joel's 35th Birthday and welcomed our newest member Christina Weaver, a fellow classmate from PAFA.


I've always admired Christina's work ever since first semester last year in Professor Grimly's cast drawing class. She did an awesome drawing of the cast of Brustus I am still envious to this day. She an awesome painter too and one of my friends whose work I always look forward to seeing. Christina was welcomed with open arms, dirty palettes and sometimes the dirty mouths of her fellow painters in a fun filled, laugh fest, oil smeared evening at Casa Del Manley.




As soon as my Art history class was done we beat feet for Upper Darby and little Saigon for dinner before we set about to paint away the evening. We also used it as an excuse to give Joel a birthday cake, courtesy of H Mart.

Then fed and happy we set about constructing a quick oddball still life setup on my dinning room table and went at it DP style.

I don't know if we painted more or laughed more, or tortured our new member more in a hazing ritual worthy of any raunchy college fraternity, but we sure had fun.




I think the good spirits in turn turned into interesting paintings which we will go back and try to finish up next week.

The all NEW rotating sketchbook!

We are all about mutual motivation over here at the dirty palette club and with that in mind I present to you my newest project: "The Official Dirty Palette Club Rotating Sketchbook". The idea is simplicity itself folks! All you do is draw in the thing for two weeks during which time you are responsible for: 1.the safety of the book 2.feeding it regularly with fresh sketches AND THAT'S IT. I know, nothing could be easier. It practically sells itself! At the end of the two weeks the sketchbook ROTATES to a new member. Get it? HUH?!

So here's some documentation of the production of one of these high-quality, hand-made, one-of-a-kind pieces of...extra special goodness!









Then you draw something CRAZY!

Iron Giant Still Life

Today we held our third meeting of the DPC at my house, and today we welcomed a new member and fellow PAFA student, Joel Shambe. Today since there we decided to paint a still life so no one would get screwed out of painting by having to pose for the others. So Will, Dave and I grabbed a bunch of stuff from around my house, Dave grabbing my Iron Giant from the studio as the center piece. In a few minutes we had our still life ready to go on my dinning room table. I set up a nice light to give us a good light source and strong shadows that would be interesting to paint. We had to shoo my cat Scavee away a few times as he kept wanting to mess with the fun new toys on the table.
Like old Saint Nick we all set straight to work, above is my block in, I moved quick to try and establish the main values and relate what would be the brightest and darkest areas on the painting.
Here is Dave's awesome atmospheric block-in of the IG.
Here is Will's block-in, I think the composition here is a good set-up.
Joel took the almost opposite angle from me and this was his first time painting since he got back from serving his tour overseas.
The group painted away for a while and the we took a break and ate lunch at my fave resturant, Little Saigon. Below you will see everyone's final painting. I got to work on mine longer than the rest of the guys since the meeting was in house. This will be the last meeting of the group before we go back to school next Monday, but we plan on having another meeting asap.

The Second Coming

the other day we had our second gathering of the DPC at my house, this time Jeff showed up along with my buddy and grand poobah of cartooning, Jamar Nicholas. We had a great time and Judy , jeff's wife and fellow PAFA student dropped in for a visit as well. We took turns posing again, this time Jeff and Dave. I knocked out two quickies, the last one of Jeff was just a quick rough-in.I'm pretty-so-so on my two, but that's the way it goes. I needed to keep to the bigger shapes more, which sometimes I get lost on if I spent a lot of time recently drawing comics--hence drawing detail.
Here is Dave's nice, bold block-in.
Here is Will's nice solid block-in.

Jeff did several watercolors, nice and loose.

Dave and Jamar chat and check out a bunch of art mags.
Will working on a pose of Jeff.
Here is a close up of my painting of Dave. I think the likeness is decent but the drawing got funky and it's too tight in the wrong way, but you know I learn something on each painting I do, even if it's what not to do next time. As always we had a great time and spent at least half the time laughing till tears were rolling from our eyes, that's worth an afternoon with these fine gentlemen alone.

The First Meeting

Welcome to the DPC! Pull up a stool, or a chair, and don't worry about cleaning your brush or palette, you are amongst friends.

The DPC is a group formed mostly of fellow students from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, but also includes other artist, animators and cartoonist from the greater Philadelphia area. The initial impetus for the group grew out of the desire on the part of my fellow students and I to get out of the classroom at school and draw and paint. While we do love working in school, we desired to get together outside or the same classrooms set-ups and draw, paint, sculpt, what-have-you and share and learn from each other as we enjoy the journey of ourselves as artists. I for one, just got tired of drawing or painting the same people in the same studios. So our club is a movable ensemble and we want to take the art to various locations and to the streets.

We however started our first meeting at my house right before Christmas and spent a fun afternoon posing for each other to do short portrait exercises.
Here Dave and Will have a go at painting me as I sit and model.
Here is Will's first painting of me.
Here is Dave's quick painting of Will, who took a turn posing after me.
Here is my painting of Will in the same pose.

One of the goals was to do quicker paintings, to try doing 2-3 paintings per session to get more practice at starting a painting, which is the most important part. to concentrate on blocking in with the bigger shapes and then working to detail as time allows.

After each session then we have a little crit and share, talk and even demo a bit to share what we are learning as a group effort. Leave your ego at the door, if there are any rules, this is the biggest. To really grow you have to be open to listen as an artist, so often people take a critique as a personal attack, when in reality it is people telling you what works, and how to make what doesn't better, or different. The thin skinned artist learns so much slower or not at all.

These quicker paintings also allow for a bad beginning or go at it to easily be wiped out and started over. Sometimes the rag is the best tool.