Many jobs, many hats, it's monday mish mash

In an effort to save up for my trip to Italy and keep productive and out of the house, I've been working triples. Wake up early, get home late. I taught after effects all last week to grade 9's at one of the CBE art schools. I hd 6 lasses of 30 or more, it was brutal but the impossible was accomplished. I am also teaching all my regular classes as well as working on a mural with Martinho plus I have some commissions on the go see a sneak peek below.

My kitchen table has become a make shift studio once more until I figure out an alternative space.

I do love painting anatomical hearts this way.  I have also keep up a very fulfilling and busy regiment by teaching on my only free day off at Swinton's. Alas, there won't be another for a few weeks but I do love the samplers.

I paint neon pink on all my sampler supplies in the case somebody gets into my stuff. I do a big into at the start and then we mix colours to see how the pigments behave.

I love colour so much and I am always amazed at the colours the participants choose to create during this part of the session.

 We then select an image to pant and go about blocking in the large areas of colour. I love it when the background colour shies through. This landscape is very enticing to me.

 Here is one more refined, all the leaves etc were done with the tip of a palette knife, I really like this artists style and choice of colours.

 Here is this lady's first sunflower painting, she brought her mom who also made a nice piece that day.

 In our cartooning things got wiggy by the end as I crammed tons of perspective drawing techniques and exercises into my 3 hour tour.

hat was really hard but I always aim to please. I hope to deliver the most amount of education I can so that artists walk away having learned so much they can keep running on the fumes for a while and what they learn they can carry with them as important techniques and tools for their artistic success. When I get another break there will be more to come. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. But not me,  I'm not sure I'll ever be dull.

Versus show preliminary stages

So here is some of the work I have done on the collaborative piece for the upcoming versus show.

After re surfacing the canvas and applying black gesso ground, I used a graphite pencil to draw in the initial loose plan for the piece. It is based on a ballistic dummy from an episode of World's deadliest Warrior on the moment of impact. To the left, in gold,  is the test swatch for the national stencil I made.

 On top of the line drawing I plotted in the position of the heart with paint on my scraggliest brushes. I am starting from the internal most level of organs and moving outward, at least that is my initial plan. I scraped the paint level away with an old card before it dried.

 I blocked in the skull and lungs and some of the other details before I start blocking in the body masses. I like how it is floating and the lungs are just barely a hint. The majority of the guide drawing is covered now and I am feeling like a bit of Francis Bacon influence is coming over me, I scrape again.

 I carve in the rib cage with a thick and dirty white paint. I allow dark reds to cut the edge then drip down over the body mass. I block in in varied flesh tones the structure of the body to give it some shape. I decided to make some changes and also put in some contrasting stripes to represent the background. I allow the heart to hide in the structure but it is still there.

Some parts seem to have too much ambiguity while others a little too carved out. I intend on putting the jaw back in and splattering some gruesome splatters and bold strokes, but this is just the beginning!

What pumps through my heart?

Here is a drawing I completed while standing in line waiting for the opening of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. I added the drips of blood and the ROYGBIV, color after the screening when everybody came over in the weeeee hours and we had an impromptu drawing party. I used my trusty Faber- Castell's to ink the drawing and Prismacolor markers to color it in.

Art. Color. Blood, sweat and tears.

Please don't steal this image or any other on this site. 
© Brian Batista 2010