Art Show This Friday, Sept. 28

Jeff Hein and the Hein Academy of Art students will be having an art show this Friday night at the Hein Academy (Hein Academy of Art – East Building, 11 E. 700 S. Salt Lake City, UT 84101) from 5:30 - 9:30 pm. Artwork will be displayed and Jeff and some of the students will be drawing portraits during the evening. For more details, visit the Hein Academy blog at: http://heinacademyofart.com/home/blog and see the post from Sept. 21.

There is also a post on the Hein Academy blog (Sept. 23) featuring ME and my current self-portrait adventure!

Why so serious?

Yes, I know I look angry in this painting. No, you aren't the first person to tell me that. Do you really want to know why I look a little put off in this picture? First of all, I had to stare at myself in a mirror for one hundred hours...yes, that's right, 100 hours! YOU try holding a smile for that long. Secondly, it should not have taken me 100 hours to paint this! And third, who smiles in a self-portrait? Seriously (no pun intended), I did a little looking and easily found some examples of artists NOT smiling for their self-portraits...see below. 

I finished my self-portrait last April. It took me about four months to paint it and it was a challenge! I did change the lighting about 20 hours into it so that didn't help, but it took me a lot longer than I expected. I kept painting the same things over and over again each day, trying to get them right. All of those hours could feel like a waste of time, but then I remember that it takes 10,000 hours to get really good at something so it's not a waste when I realize those 100 hours were moving me towards my goal of mastering painting!

I've done a few other paintings since this one and recently decided to re-visit the self-portrait theme to see if I've improved my paint quality and/or gotten faster in the last four months. I started the new self-portrait a couple weeks ago and so far it feels like it's moving more quickly, but time will tell. I've been taking periodic pictures of my progress so it will be fun to see the succession when it's completed.

Rembrandt

Vincent Van Gogh

John Singer Sargeant

Mary Cassatt

Vermeer

Jeffrey Hein

Degas

Details, please.

Hooray, I finally photographed some of my paintings! This is a still life I finished in August with items taken from my mother's bookshelves. It was a challenge because of the structure of the Eiffel Tower, the ellipses on the teapot, and all those darn details! The Eiffel Tower was a bugger, but the image on the teapot was pretty fun to paint.

It took me 70 hours to do this, but that was dragged out over three months! Yikes. It was a fun summer.

Yin and Yang

We started a new model session last week and after the first day we decided to change the pose. Instead of using a new sheet of canvas paper, I just turned the page upside down and started again. The picture on the left shows how it looked on Monday with the two figures. I kind of like it...it reminds me of the pisces sign or yin and yang. I just learned that yin and yang literally means, "shadow and light," which is appropriate for my painting. :)

The picture on the right was taken after the model session today. It's starting to look more like him.

 

I'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille

(5 points for anyone who can name that movie quote)

On Thursday nights a few of us at the academy chip in for an extra model session. Even though I've been focusing on painting for my daily curriculum, I like to draw on Thursday nights to get a little more practice with charcoal and keep up my drawing skills. I did each of these drawings in 3 or 4 sessions (9-12 hours).

Kinda Cute, Kinda Creepy

The title says it all.  I'll just add that I did this in 11 hours, which was good for me.

Slow Down to Speed Up!

I started painting at the Hein Academy almost one year ago, but I haven't posted any of my paintings yet. Mostly because it's hard to photograph paintings without a glare, but I want to post some of my recent progress so please excuse the poor photo quality (these were taken on my phone).

Recently Jeff had me do a couple painting exercises where I focused on breaking down the value shapes into planes. It took me a couple days to get the hang of it, but once I made myself slow down and get the values right I felt like my accuracy and speed sky rocketed! This reminded me of something I've heard Jeff say. He tells us if we want to finish a painting or drawing faster we need to slow down and get it right the first time. So wise, so wise.

Here is an example of my assignment:

 

I started a new painting on Monday using the same technique, but being a little less rigid with the planes. It has helped enormously. With previous paintings I felt like I kept painting over the same area again and again each day to try and get the values (and shapes) right, but by blocking the correct values in at the beginning it saves me countless hours of frustration. It sounds so obvious, but it has taken me a while to really comprehend how to overcome that problem.

By the way, this was one of my childhood toys. I think she's cute, but there seems to be a creepy consensus regarding this little one. I suppose I agree.