It was a nice feeling to finally put the finishing touches on this piece, and I’m overall satisfied with it! This is a strange piece in a way.

It took on new personal meanings as it progressed, and now at the end, it is almost completely different for me than what I had originally felt.

As mentioned here, I composed my objects and set the parchment in the brandy snifter, setting it on fire. To get the right flame, I took many photos as it was burning.

I chose these objects for their wide variety of hues and textures. I took the opportunity to further explore wood, glass, metal in several forms and cloth.

And of course…fire! I will definitely play with fire in paintings again in the future.

The olde rusty key is the same one I painted in another still life a few years ago and is a favorite in my small collection. It is possibly 16th-18th century based on a few opinions but I’m not sure. The tobacco jar in the background and the leaning pipe are from a vintage 1940′s pipe stand I found at an antique mall in Dallas, Texas.

As always, this is painted with high quality Old Holland oils on Realgesso hardboard. At the time of this posting, the original is available for sale in my store here. If you wish to secure the painting but do not have the full purchase price, please feel free to contact me here and I’ll be pleased to work something out with you.

I could tell you the secret, but “The Burning Obvious…?” just wouldn’t have the same ring…

NEXT UP, Is it…classical? Realist? Goth? Steampunk? Elegant? Delicious? Why yes…

I’d like to thank Attitudes and Attire for the opportunity to contribute my art to their wonderful cause! Attitudes and Attire is a long-standing organization that provides a full range of caring and attentive recovery for battered and abused women.

I had the pleasure of meeting Lyn Berman and Angelina Valencia last year at the most delectable gourmet chocolatier in Dallas.

They are great people with a great cause, and offered me the opportunity to do a painting for the Annual Luncheon’s Silent Auction for contribution to the charity. I was grateful to be of help, and did a special still life painting to add in with the art!

My wife and I were invited to the luncheon at the World Market Center in Dallas and had a lovely time! There was quite a fashion show of ladies who themselves had been helped in many ways by A&A, and they were having a blast sporting new clothing and renewed confidence and life!

It was a very rewarding event, to say the least.

The painting itself was an 18″ x 24″ still life entitled “A Lovely Arrangement”. I love to sometimes work with double entendres, and this title suggests to me several ways of understanding. The wonderful recovery services provided by Attitudes and Attire, our meeting, and our agreement to work together are all very lovely arrangements! It was new and different to have my art used in this way, and it feels good that I made myself useful for something worthwhile.

This is in addition to the objects I chose to paint. I always choose a variety of objects and materials to compliment each other, and I feel this was an artistic success for me.

I hope to do more of this kind of work in the future!

  

   Oh MY, Look at who the fireflies brought…
  

Or, as they call them down here in Texas, “Lightnin’ Bugs”…

  

With great appreciation for my client and model, I announce the completion of this new painting! This is the result of a request for a fairy portrait with firefly accompaniment, and I loved the idea from the start. As usual, I thought through all of the great references and examples of otherworldly beauty in the world, and carefully came to a decision. I had long since been enamoured with the work and person of Kamille Freske, a fellow artist with very similar interests in subject. This image came to mind, and I felt it very appropriate for this project.

With my ongoing exploration of fae-folk, elves, Gods and Goddesses, and all things mythological, I’ve elected a new direction for myself. With each depiction, I am making an effort to dispense with the more predictable mechanisms like pointed ears. In this way, I am forced to round out the visual message with other elements so that what I end up with is something that says “faerie” in more dynamic ways. With this exercise, I avoid having what amounts to a human with pointed ears and little else to indicate her divine origin.

  

For this painting, I use the setting and the clothing to give the viewer an experience that carries the message in a believable way. Kamille already looks like the fae to me, so her features have done much of the work here.

I might have called this “Twilight Fae”, had an awful troll out there not imprisoned that word for an undisclosed period of time…sigh…

I have always loved fireflies, and grew up in an area where there were many. I miss them now that I’m in the city. All three of the fireflies who live in Dallas have all they can do to make their rounds, and had no time to actually pose for me.

Having studied their movements for a long time, I realized that like many creatures of nature, they follow the direction of the Fibonacci Spiral * as found in nature and in the golden section used in classical art and architecture. Knowing this and little else, I set to work painting them. Due to my still being stuck with a terrible camera, the yellows come across as very dull in the photos. It glows more in real life!

  

With most of my projects, I make every effort to have my own modeling done locally. With this project, I have found that going with the photo produced by Kamille was far more desirable. For me, it’s not just about finding a model with the look I need and using her for the painting. I seek out more of a collaborative environment when I can, with models who are truly interested in the subject. I don’t feel as fulfilled with simply having it modeled, and the model just doing it as a job. While this is fine and acceptable, I just like it much more when the model can look at the final work over time and compliment me alot be really glad she participated!

I believe I first discovered Kamille’s work through this Poe related piece , and from there discovered a versatile body of work that at turns inspires thought, innovation, and at times, shock.

She has a very full range of mediums, as you can see here and in her gorgeous jewelry here!

I really love how she comes through in her paintings, photography, and jewelry making. She is currently at work on new art, so bookmark her DeviantArt page(s) and her Etsy page for more upcoming greatness!

  

I am thankful for this opportunity to paint her, and I look forward to more in the future!

  
  
* This is a lie. Fireflies do not know math (with a few notable exceptions), and do not follow the Fibonacci spiral.
  
  

  

   NEXT UP, What is that Burning smell!…
  

  

  So, the nude returns…
  

I mean that figuratively of course. In this case, what I mean is the idea of restoring a few of my older influences in order to give my new work a fresh approach. I am in some ways reviewing my past life as an artist painting the surreal, but hopefully in a better way than before.

My nudes are often their own reason for being, and I have been inspired to give them more meaning outside of the figure study itself. Now we hopefully strike a balance.

The meaning here is simple and straightforward, just the way I like it. It is a dream of metamorphosis (probably the most common symbolic meaning for butterflies). Contrasting the beauty of the butterfly, we have an indication of old ruins suggesting the passage of time. Time passage brings the beauty and hope of the metamorphosis forward, and gives strength and encouragement to our subject.

  

I would like to leave the description at that point, and let the viewer decide what else these elements might mean.

Our model here is Natalia Ghiani, one of my favorite people to paint. Her beauty is exotic and very versatile, as shows in her own art. I prefer to work with other artists such as Natalia most of all. Her professional photography with this pose helped me greatly to produce a life-like depiction. Her hair is really this long and gorgeous, and in some ways I see it as it’s very own subject.

There will be more of Natalia to come, in various settings! I am seeking at this time to balance out my subjects, so it is most likely we will see other themes cycling through before the next nude.

Thank you for visiting, and I hope you like this work!

  

For more on the work of Natalia Ghiani, please visit her website (Contains Mature, Dark and BEAUTIFUL Content!) , here at DeviantArt , and also her Facebook Fan Page! .

  
  
  
COMING NEXT…The fireflies bring a VERY ENCHANTING GUEST! Thank you fireflies!
  
    

One day, I decided to set stuff on fire in my studio. My goal? To add another element and a sense of mystery to the still life painting.

The Burning Secret is a simple expression of an idea or feeling going out into the ether, as an idea or prayer sent to those would understand. The objects, while not all symbolic of anything specific, indicate that this is an examination of the concept from a temporal perspective, rather than spiritual. The burning paper is a physical representation of the idea of sending a wish or secret “out there” somewhere.

For this painting, I took a page of parchment and put it in a brandy snifter and set it on fire, taking many photos of the flame so I could later choose the shape of flame I want. As for the rest of the objects, they are here for me to observe first hand. I also light candles to look at the character of flames first hand.

Normally, I do not show the references for my paintings, but in this case I feel it helps to show what my plan is. I have a few other reasons for this which I’ll explain as I go along. I am having a great time with the stained glass lamp and the opportunity for unusual lighting it presents.

At this point, we are about layer 4 out of 7-8. I have completed much of the “dead layer”, and have begun to indicate some of the colored light coming from the lamp. The photo shows how the colors of the light are painted on before blending. I am using a “hatching” brushstroke so that the final blended version of the lighting will work well with the mottled texture of the wall.

You will notice that from the reference to the painting, some embellishments of the textures and overall look are occurring. This shows that in this “realist” painting, what we are doing is not simply copying reality. The goal with realist painting is to do more than just illustrate what we see,to show and celebrate the beauty and meaning of our surroundings. I choose to embellish certain things so as to add some of my own inspiration to what is already there.

  
  

Thank you for looking in on my art! I hope you enjoy seeing some of the artistic process, and hope to see you back for more!

  
  
  
NEXT…To Dream…
  

I’m pleased to show my new finished oil portrait. My secret process for this was to paint, and paint, and paint, and paint and then finally decide it was finished. Kimberly is a sweet and beautiful friend who has been wonderfully supportive of my art! She has strong and very interesting features to paint, and I really enjoyed the time I spent on this. Kimberly is one of the first people that comes to mind when I consider finally getting around to a painting of a Norse goddess.

This is about six layers of paint, and I spent probably about forty hours from beginning to end. I painted it in Old Holland oils on a 9″x12″ Realgesso hardboard.

I love to paint jewelry on my models for the challenge of painting the refractions in the gems and the metal reflections. Her blonde hair gave me some interesting challenges in that I have just painted mostly brunettes in the past. I think when approaching blonde hair, there is a temptation to put too much yellow in the paint, because blonde is golden in the light. With paint there is the challenge of suggesting the golden shimmering properties without getting too literal with the yellow.

The same is true of eye color. Many painters have trouble with making the eye colors to literal, when in fact to get a realistic eye color one has to mix it with more neutral (grey-ish) tones than one might think at first.

To the right we see another oil portrait I completed a few years ago. This is of my wife, Leslie. She is a beautiful woman and an experienced art model. I am mostly pleased with this painting, and I still look to it for inspiration on those things which I felt I did well.

Honestly, I believe I painted the eyes too wide open, but that was my interpretation of the photo reference at the time. Sometimes a person’s eyes really will be like that in real life and it looks perfectly natural, but when one paints it the painting comes across differently. This is a very basic difference between a photographic realism and the intuition that has to come with artistic interpretation. I like the painting very much still, which is unusual for me. I feel that it helps to capture the friendly personality and good will of the subject. I tend to like my previous work less as I learn more in most cases.

My focus with the last few portraits since then has been to get more skin texture quality. Over the course of my next few portrait paintings, I will be studying more of what looked great in the works of the masters (Bouguereau being one of my favorite master references). I always have several references when painting. The primary model which is the subject of my painting comes first, but I tend to have hi resolution images of master portraits open to study how they treated difficult areas like the hairline, etc…

One difference between my recent approach and that of many historical works is that I no longer make the female skin quite as soft and idealistic, unless it really is in life. If there is a golden quality to the skin tone, that goes on the painting. If there is more texture, it is painted as such. My first real success with this was with my oil painting of my Italian friend Natalia Ghiani. Although the skin texture tends to look more blended in the overall work, it lends a sort of subliminal quality to the surface that tells the viewer that looking at realistic skin.

This painting was also large enough for me to get the detail I really like to have in the eyes. The realistic wet look is always something I aim for, and I think I was able to accomplish it well here.

These portraits all have one thing in common…They are NOT FOR SALE, HAHAHAHA!

I’ll be pleased to consider commission work though…

And THEN…The Burning Secret…the next Still Life!

And as you know by now…An Interlude could happen at ANY time!

Since I was delayed in my painting this last week, I want to offer up a short preview of the next post.

This is an oil portrait of a dear friend. It is currently working it’s way through the second of the “dead layers”, which is an under-painting. It is relatively colorless to the final work.

I have established much of the light and shadow, and will be adding color in our next session. She is wearing a diamond necklace, so I’ll have a chance to talk a bit on painting of the metal and stones themselves.

I love painting shiny jewelry! At this point there are probably about three layers to go, depending on how everything looks when dry. One things that is interesting for me is that she is blonde, and I have always painted brunette models. I look forward to the final details of the hair which is one of my favorite parts of the finishing touches.

It is important to note that I do not put on eyelashes or eyebrows until the final layers. What we are seeing here are the shadows which will be underneath those finer features.

Thank you for watching the progress! I really appreciate all of the interest I have seen so far. You can keep track of this blog by joining my Facebook page!

  
  
  
COMING NEXT…The REAL Portrait Post with discussion of portraits past and present!
  
  

So, the battle with flying cat hair continues. It is persistent. It is sneaky. It is very thin. I shall prevail, because I am stubborn. Here we have the finished Bone, Iron, and Stone still life painting. This is about a total of five layers.

  

Skulls are one of my favorite still life subjects because of the range of colors and shapes they demand of the artist. Bone is deceptively hard to paint sometimes. It is tempting to paint it too white or gray, but in fact bone reflects a good number of colors and shades within it’s structure. There is opacity and translucence, and often those gradate into one another. This muskrat skull offered some interesting stuff in the teeth, in that the yellow is not only a surface color but also a result of slight translucence moving into the solid brown of the shadow area. The iron is great to work with, because the painter must look into ways of beautifying what in real life is a fairly flat gray metal. The color variations shown here are meant to embellish the slightly reflective surface nature of our key.

  

The stone provided the opportunity of not only recreating the lovely marble finish, but some irregular reflections on the surface from the lighting. There were a few layers of preparatory texture under the finished colors we see here.

  

This is 5″x 7″, so smaller than I usually work. I like that it can be framed in a photo frame and sit on a shelf or desk where other larger paintings cannot. This is painted on a Realgesso Hardboard Panel, which is may favorite. What I like about them is that they coat the boards with actual traditional gesso (primer) made up of marble dust, chalk, and rabbit skin glue. Most of the “gesso” you get in art stores is just white acrylic paint, which has not had the opportunity to prove itself through the centuries. It may be alright, but I like the absorbent quality of the real thing. It just feels like it’s not going to crack off as easily as the work ages.

  

  

I appreciate you watching the process and hope you have enjoyed it!

COMING NEXT…Our first portrait, and she is a beauty!
    

While we wait for our painting projects to be ready to show again, I offer a short introduction to my sculpture projects. Thus far my sculptures have been fairly small and manageable, so as to make them as accessible and affordable as possible for my collectors.

I got started with sculpture some years ago when I was inspired by some friends who deal in molding and casting. My subjects as usual tend toward the Scandinavian cultures.

One of my first sculptures was a wall plaque, designed after a 10th century Norse Hammer of Thor. An old pendant with a design like this was unearthed and is one of the more well known designs for these pendants.

Vikings wore them quite a bit, so we have many example artifacts of simple to ornate hammers to look at, and in some cases the molds have been discovered with other metalworking items.

Thor is the Norse god of thunder and lightning, and is well known in the Norse culture as a protector of people. He is quite possibly the most beloved of the heathen gods of Scandinavia, and is certainly the best known. His hammer is called Mjolnir, and was crafted by the “dark elves” (the dark alfs) at the behest of Loki. The dark elves were represented as ugly dwarfs in the old mythology.

The entire myth is a bit much to relate here, but the hammer turned out short and slightly misshapen, and it can return to Thor’s hand every time he throws it. Of all the weapons that guard the realm of the Gods from attack, Mjolnir is known to be the most powerful.

So we see why it is such an attractive symbol to wear, for all it represents. Rather than having a literal war hammer as a pendant, the Viking artisans had many creative designs to represent a stylized version of the hammer. For my project, I chose to create a wall plaque about 8″ in height, as is shown. It met with a nice response and hundred or so are now hanging in the U.S. and several other countries.

I no longer sell this run of the raven hammer design, but may create a new one in the future. This second photo shows a more recent version I designed. This is my own design of knot-work, and was created in December 2009. This is more Celtic in nature if you ask me, but I’m happy with it even though Thor is not a Celtic God. The Celtic designs tend to be more consistent in the width of their knotwork than the Norse, which varies greatly into

tapered features.This version of my hammer of Thor plaque is currently for sale in various finishes.

In all of my sculptures, I sculpt the original in non-hardening clay and create a good quality silicone mold. From that point I can cast in Resin or Stone. I prefer resin because of it’s chip resistance and versatility. I cast these examples in “cold-cast” bronze, which is bronze powder mixed with resin. What results is a polyurethane sculpture with a real bronze finish, for a fraction of the cost of foundry casting.

I do hope to get to foundry casting some day. What is nice about the cold-cast method is that the surface does have the real bronze look and feel to a large degree, and it reacts to patina acid treatments. It is maintained in the same way as foundry-cast bronze, and polishes up nicely.

Another of my recent designs is the the Art Nouveau style faerie plaque. Whereas the Hammer of Thor pictured has a black finishing wax, the faerie plaque is shown with the green wax. Each design can be created for you in any finish. Some of my collectors have asked for custom finishes, and those are fun!

My most recent project in sculpture has been challenging and rewarding. I have had a story in my head for some time now, and the elf in this sculpture is one of the characters. Her name is Svetta, and she is one of the friendlier characters I have conceived of.

I show the original sculptures here first. This work is about 7 1/2″ by 3 3/4″ in size. It’s the kind of thing you can fit on your mantle, a side table, or a nice bookshelf. For those who collect knick-knacks and value the nude figure in art, this is a nice item to have. The cold-cast bronze really worked out well with this design, so most of them have been made in that method. Contact me for options and pricing!

I referred to several models for this, and had many references for the realism.I incorporated an embroidery design in each of the pillows, and a feather bookmark.

I love to take these basic ideas and add in small elements of subtle character to give it something extra unique.

I am pleased with how it came out, and there will be more with her. I am currently planning sculptures of other elves and faeries in various situations, and I will update you as they progress. I do have more sculpture to show, in another of my Interludes coming soon!

  
NEXT UP…Bone, Iron, and Stone Still Life Continued!
  
And THEN…Our first look into Portrait Painting in Oil!
    

Hello! Thank you for visiting my blog. This is the first edition of Classical Fine Art, and I’ve elected to go with a “jump right into it” approach with the first post. Rather than having blocks of introductory material here in the posts to scroll through, there will be a few pages of introduction to myself and my art in the About Lee pages to the left. The main thing to know is that this is an ongoing account of my artistic processes and thought. It will not have every single step of my work, but a summary with some trivial facts thrown in for fun. It is not intended as an instructional, but if you come away with something useful or inspiring I’d love to know.

 

Today I’m working on a small still life of a muskrat skull, a Victorian key, and a nicely colored stone bead. This is in the tradition of realist painting and still life in that I am painting from direct observation. I do photograph my still life set-ups in the event that I have the urge to work on them elsewhere, but photographs just can’t pick up the subtleties of objects and people that you get from having them right in front of you. Here I show the painting in it’s “umber layer”, which is a traditional under-painting to establish the forms and shadows. This is actually about the third layer of the work.

 

Umber is an earth (as in dirt, not the planet) based pigment, and the best of it is found in Italy. It is used for it’s fast drying capabilities and it’s strong values. It is ideal for this kind of under-painting because it has more stability and permanence than many other pigments, and it greatly enhances the undertones with a natural “earthy” color that is conducive to painting just about anything in nature.

 

I got the muskrat skull from a vendor at Parker’s Fort in Texas. The vendor claimed that the skull was a Native American symbol for “virility”. I think the key is symbolic of “opening stuff”. As we will see over time, I especially love old keys, and make all kinds of excuses to use them in my art. In my 20 years as an artist, I have repeated the key plate and antique key themes occasionally in different (and hopefully entertaining) ways.

 
Let’s return to this piece in just one moment…
 

I’d like to show you a previous example of my finished still life work, so you can see where we’re headed with this. Hopefully this is helpful for those who aren’t yet familiar with my style.

 

 

This is a gift painting I did for a friend in 2008, and shows my completed oil painting style. This was in seven layers, and is also 5″x7″. I have been poked at occasionally for working so small, but I enjoy the challenge of trying to get all the detail. The little glass in the painting contained mead, which I forgot to drink afterward so it sat there for several days.

 

The key in this piece is ye olde rusty key from possibly the Renaissance. It was sold to me as a “Medieval” Key, but my research has turned up that those were much more ornate than this. It is really quite old, though, and has a nice weight to it. The round thing with an archaic looking character and design on it is one of my Old Norse “runes”, which I cast in resin. I decided to be painfully self indulgent and paint a still life of my own sculpture. Why not?

 

 

For those who have no idea what a “rune” is, I assure you this is quite normal. I’m the weird one here, so I’m the one with some explaining to do. Runes are an old writing system (equivalent to our “alphabet”, but called the “futhark” after the first six characters, the “th” being represented by a single character) employed by the Norse (Viking) culture, and they fascinate me. As with many older writing systems, the characters have meanings in addition to the phonetic value. The “F” rune shown in this painting tends to be associated with wealth, and I deliberately put it in there as a wish or blessing upon the recipient. I feel safe going just that far with the meaning, but I’d caution against believing too much of what is on the internet regarding this writing system. Most of it has no historical foundation.

 

The feather, the stone jar, the glass and the key all have positive meanings for me. Not all of my work is intended to be quite so symbolic. In the work we are looking at today, it really is just a visual study of the beauty of the objects.

 
Speaking of which…
 

After carefully scraping off cat hair and oiling the surface, I am beginning the first of what is called the “dead layer”. This is like an almost colorless version of what is to come. After a few layers to correct details and solidify lights and shadows, the color will be added. I am thinking ahead on what will need to be emphasized later.

As the layers build, the detail sharpens, so I am planning as I go for the various shapes which will eventually hold a detailed bone texture in the finished work.I am using as little paint as possible to get the look I need. As this layer dries, the lead white will become a little translucent, so I will have to gradually build the opacity as I continue.

 

Many painters use Titanium White now, as it has a much higher opacity. It is also less toxic to use. I prefer Flake White which is pure white lead with just a little Zinc in it. I have compared the two whites side by side, and although I recognize the merits of titanium, I just like the look of Flake White better. It seems to be a softer, more organic white, and the old masters used it long before titanium came into the picture. It does stand the test of time if used properly, and the toxicity is negligible once it is dry and varnished.

 

Now that I have the lights and shadows established for the skull (for this layer) I am beginning work on the key.

The key is much easier than the skull. One of the great things about still life is that it helps you keep from getting bored with a single object, by switching as you please. I am using slightly different colors, moving to a few flecks of blue that will still show in the finished work, under the final layers. The whole time I am painting, I am looking at the properties of the iron. I constantly keep an eye on how close I am to the textures and reflections. I’ll do this with each material as I continue the painting.

 
I will return to this painting in several days, and we shall see how it looks as it closes in on the finish.
 
 
 
 
 
COMING UP NEXT… A LOOK AT FIGURE PAINTING IN FOLKLORE: BRYNNI FINDS HERSELF!