Painting update! (Pretty much) finished!

It's not completely finished, but in terms of posting documentation of it, it might as well be. All the things that remain to be fixed are small enough that they won't be visible at the size I post...I'll wrap it up after I add some hair/facial details, and some stronger direct light on the figures...fiddle with the angles of cast shadows...that sort of thing.

I think I'll be satisfied with it once I've stepped away from it for a while.

Today, if all goes well, I'll go visit my carpenter Greg and give him specs for the next one. Itching to get started.

I've mentioned before that my paintings rely heavily on photographs, combining imagery from different periods of my life. This fall it occurred to me to worry that I might run out of photographic sources--so I gave myself an assignment: to attend a minimum of one event a month that's outside of the scope of my normal day-to-day, with the express intent to document it.

So when my friends Alex and Mary visited in October, I brought the camera along when we visited the Earthships community near Taos...

In November, Lauren and I helped slaughter turkeys for Thanksgiving at our friend Kat's communal farm, Sunflower River...

At the cusp of the new year, Hilary and I drove up to Ghost Ranch for the snow...

And last week, we went to check out a place along the Rio Grande where the bosque had been cleared and burned (near another choice location, the glass fields)...

I'm pleased to have adhered to this so far, and I've gotten a lot of good visual fodder--but while the recent string of landscapes is going to make for very useful sets, I think I'm going to need to go on more character-scouting expeditions in order to people them. As such, my goal within the next couple of weeks is to attend a human-centric event...preferably one where said humans wear strange costumes of their choosing. I'm eager to see what I can find! (SciFi convention, anyone?)

UNM's Land Arts of the American West has finally revamped their site, and it looks great!

Three excerpts from my journal are scattered throughout...along with a few photos, in which I am identified as "Student."

Illustrations, chugging along. I've been revamping some of the earlier pieces I did some months ago, and am so doing am really pleased by the clear improvement I can see with my photoshop skills--what I was capable of then, what I am capable of now. I'm a fair bit away from establishing the perfect balance of painting and digital painting, but I'm pleased to be able to see growth.














A very successful meeting today with both the book's author and the paleontologist she's consulting for accuracy. He was complimentary of the work, but was also able to point out some corrections that needed to be made (mostly in charts and such)--in other words, the perfect balance of useful!

The end of the project is coming up fast. I have two of the 35 left to finish, and after that, only corrections at the suggestions of reviewers and editors.

In an article for the Alibi this past week, David Leigh made a brief list of his favorite art happenings from 2010, "a year of exhibitions, performances and people that have come to define the alternative position our city is carving out in the larger art world."

ROYBGIV and the Anasazi, photograph by John Bear

The list consisted of Patrick Nagatani's show at UNM, 516 Arts' entire year of programming, Dave Hickey's migration to Albuquerque, the Tamarind Institute's 50th Anniversary, Frederico Vigil's mural at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, J. Lynn Johnson's show at Revlis, and the ROYGBIV graffiti controversy. And then, after the phrase, "other noteworthy things": Matt Mullican's paintings at Richard Levy Gallery, and...

....MY show at the Harwood!

It's a small mention, but when included amongst such company, the context is enough.

Now to go marinate in self-congratulation for a while. I mean...work until my Textbook meeting this afternoon.

Sometimes I forget what a real pleasure it is to just draw! Also, how beautiful bones are. I really enjoyed rendering these horse (and horse ancestor) teeth.

This is a good reminder, once this commission is fulfilled, to take some time to do more graphite drawing. It soothes a different beast than the painting does.

The painting continues....

Just people and finishing touches left, now. Hopefully only a few days' work...