Samuel...

All I can say is that my son is a ton of things at the same time...

WPC Still Life

I've been getting more proficient at making these, but the hardest part is definitely "guesstimating" the exposure times. The collodion is soooo slow, lightmeters usually can't make a reading. Mine goes as low as iso 0,8 and it's not even close!

Anyways, here's another effort.

Done!

Well... I'm done with this one. I had varnished this with a glossy varnish and it showed off the saturated colors nicely, but I hated it... I'm just strangely annoyed by rich colors. I don't have a problem when other people do it, but when I paint them, it just doesn't fell right... So I painted a nice, cruddy varnish layer with some alizarin and some transparent ochre, and I lost a lot of the saturation and I got some gloppy waxy areas, but I like it a whole lot more. I guess it's all about feeling comfortable with what one paints...

FucsiaFunkPunk

This is a painting of a student of mine, Lorena. Parts of it are somewhat resolved while others are just blocked in. I'm planning on giving it a warm varnish to try and pull everything together in the end... we'll see how it goes. I'll be posting the finished painting as soon as I'm done.

Wet Collodion

I have been obsessing about Wet Plate Photography for a while now, soon after seeing some Wet Collodion Plates over the internet and in some alternate photo publications. They are so close to what I want and try to achieve in terms of image with my painting that it only seemed obvious, at least for me, to try and pursue this wonderful but cumbersome technique. There's a sort of beautiful imperfect quality to them, and the process is just pure magic. It had been nothing but horribly frustrating but yesterday, after a lot, and I mean A LOT, of trial and error, I finally got an image.

Here's my Dad.

New Painting Blog

It is with high hopes that I start this small blog to inform people of the current state of my painting and teaching. I have to admit it will be hard to avoid not mentioning or posting photos of my son Samuel here and there, but I promise I will try and keep it short.

So please, don't forget to check in here from time to time to check current news regarding my work.

Hope to hear from everyone!