First post

Well, this is my first post on my blog, so I guess I will upload some of  my actual works.

This days I'm doing lotsa' pin-ups. This are more pin up portraits, and they are painted on top of small wooden boxes , which I construct from pieces of wood I find in the the dump yard of where I'm living .

So this portrait is mainly a technical practice for me ...

It started about a year ago, when My friends where kind and gave me my desired birthday gift : the DvD guide of Jeffry Watts  for gesture portraits. I'ts funny how I can imagine the common reaction of many people, when they hear about learning to paint with a DvD guide . But, this is not the case, and before prejudicing  this terrific video one must see it first. (It's easy to find a brief of it in you-tub.) Anyway after watching Jeffry's demonstrations, and starting practicing it I've come to discover that I was not able to complete a "gesture portrait in the time limit of 30 minutes. What took him half an hour, to me was more like 2-3 hours, but the outcome was also very different. Maybe one of the reasons was that my paintings were a lot more tight brush stokes and edges ( he makes it very loose ). Still , to begin a portrait and finishing it  at the same day in one shot of few hours, was something very intuitive for me. (This is a great experience for any artist)

I tried fore about 5 times to limit myself for the30 minutes shot, like in the video, but I was left each time with  the heavy feeling of a mis-satisfaction from the result. Finally I've decided to not stay so strikingly committed to the DvD lesson and to more calmly  continued to work, until I  reach the graduate point of a small  portrait.(even though they were not very gesture.)

However, the basic of this gesture technic  is very resemble in my point of view to the technic  I recognize in classic/golden age pin-ups. This is the idea of  simplifying a sight to a  flat colors patches surface, piled up with brush . I think I once read somewhere this technic is also called the" put on " technic and I guess it relates to the order of the work that starts from putting on first the dark towns, afterwards the flash towns and afterwards the high lights, so the painter puts each level on it's place in order to have it all  together.

This technic is also very different from the glazing way of work that was more common in older days. Many artists are identified with this genre of fast figurative painting as masters of brushes like Zorn, Duvnek and Sargent, but there is something about Manet that to me, looks like the beginning of illustrative pin-up style . It might not be very accurate, to explain it , this way, but maybe,-- why not? -- it is very visible to me and it pops up in my eyes every time I notice how not messy he is in comparison to other  big modernists like Monet, Cezanne or any other impressionist. He doesn't mix many colors and texture in his figures flesh and their hair and clothe, many times might appear as a one color patch .

 I definitely recognize it as the beginning of pop and pin-up illustration. 

These days I try to limit myself  to work with a 5 color plate and I also try to have a less messy textures in my figures , as I find a lot of charm, in this simple and clean pin up style, and I hope with time I'll control it better. Such a qualification is also a big liberty for a painter who wishes his paintings won't look heavily over painted and explored. 

I guess I still have a long way to practice...