I'm now accepting commissions.   

An original piece of artwork is an investment.  It's the artist's job to not only do the best with his/her ability to produce a desired result but also work continually to promote his/her artwork so that your investment increases in value.  This is accomplished by the artist continuing to promote their work through commissions, events, publications, galleries, etc.  It is most often accomplished by fans and clients telling others about an artist's work.  The more interest, and therefore more business, that an artist receives over time makes past paintings increase in value.  Artwork is like land, it generally always increases in value.

There is an ever increasing accepted practice by many artists to use computers, overhead projectors, rulers and the like to trace, measure, grid, etc the 'drawing' of the subject onto canvas.  Once the copied image is on canvas the artist only has to fill in the paint.  I personally don't believe nor do I practice these procedures.  I take my artwork very seriously and believe that any fan or art client assumes that the work being admired was done 'in the artist's hand'.  I use a camera to take pictures of the subject but do not alter these photos in any way with computer software, etc.  I print the photo on a piece of photo paper and use it at my easel.  I find this better for me and for the client as not to force countless hours of 'model time' to sit while the painting is evolving.  I use professional paints, brushes, archival canvases and water.  I do not use any medium, only varnish after completion if that is the desire of the client.  My paintings begin with a charcoal drawing.  Once I feel that the drawing is correct I begin painting.  Time depends on the subject and size.  Drawings take up to two hours and the painting process takes anywhere from a couple of hours for small and simple to dozens of hours for larger more complex pieces.  Turn around time from start to finish usually will take a couple of weeks to a coupl of months.

I would like to invite you to surf the web for artists that work in commissions/portraits and evaluate their quality as well as their fee.  My prices are in most cases 10% the amount of many artists.  I'm confident that my quality is satisfactory and will work with you to assure so.  My paintings will be rendered with a 'painterly feel' like my other artwork represents.  I can paint very realistically but choose not to as I feel it adds no individual quality.  If everyone painted photographic realism then you could not tell one artist work from another.  If this is what you are after then I'm probably not your man.  I try to paint in a way that evokes an emotion.  This is what I will do my best to give to you. 

Prices based on one figure (person, pet, etc):

8" x 10" - $200 (unframed) 
16" x 20" - $300 (unframed)
24" x 30" - $500 (unframed)

Note:  Depending on where I would have to travel to take pictures of the subject there would be an additional fee (normally $50).

I look forward to working with you to produce a one-of-a-kind original work of art that you and I will be proud of.  I require one half payment at the beginning as deposit.  This is non-refundable. 

Thanks for your time and thank you for visiting my website.  I would appreciate it if you would 'spread the word' and tell others to visit my site.  Thanks again. 

I turned the big FOUR-O on Saturday, July 5th.  Not a big deal for me really, just made me realize that I'm a very lucky man.  Wonderful wife and four kids that mean the world to me, and I'm not too busted up physically at 40 I don't suppose.  My mom, mother-in-law and wife are really good about not getting me regular, ordinary gifts that I NEED, they try to get me things that they think I WANT.  Barbara, my mother-in-law, got me some 10 year old single-barrel bourbon (very nice!).  My mom got me a copy of Alla Prima by Richard Schmid (the artist out there can definitely appreciate).  Amber got me tickets to a comedy show which I always enjoy as well as some other items.  She told me that I had another present that would be coming soon.

We had an issue at my work on Saturday, July 13th (yesterday as I'm writing this) and I had to call about 10 people before I got someone.  Because I had called so many folks to finally get someone they began returning my call to see what I wanted.  I was working on a painting of a waterfall at the time.  I took a picture of the waterfall a couple of weeks ago in a rainforest in Puerto Rico (I had to add this as it sounds so exotic.  Makes me sound like a world traveling artist ;)  Anyway, I just hung up with a coworker when a call came in that showed 'Withheld'.  I normally never answer these so I just let it ring.  It came through again, so I thought maybe it's one of my coworkers calling back so I reluctantly answered it.  Realize that I was a bit on edge to take the call anyway, so when the person said "Hi John this is ..." all I heard was the first name and thought what company does this person work for? ...What are they collecting money for?  Then, for a split-second his last name registered...  I asked "eexxcuuse mmeee? and he answered "I'm ..." and I thought who is pulling this prank on me and why would they do this?  WHY would a world-class artist would be calling me??..  I paused I'm sure for 10 seconds as the corpuscles in my brain reattached.  I honestly don't remember how I started the conversation as my mouth was saying things while my brain was still figuring...  He started by stating my wife had contacted him and had asked that he call me for my birthday.  Amber told me later that he responded immediately and agreed to do it.

He had a couple of images of paintings I had done and wanted to critique them for me.  Realize that I'm completely blown away at this point, brain still running around, but when he said "your wife game me a couple of jpgs of your work" my brain slammed to a halt and I asked "Which paintings did she give you?"  He said the name of the first on and I just froze, face pruned up with disgust, and gut starting hurting..  It was a painting that I did three or four years ago (realize that I've only been painting about eight years, so this is some crude stuff he is looking at).  This is one of those paintings that I would be ashamed to put on my website now.... my WEBSITE!  I told him that I had a website, which he immediately brought up and said that his critiquing would definitely change from what he had been looking at.  Anyway, we talked probably 1/2 an hour or so as he gave me astonishingly wonderful suggestions, especially for him only having a few minutes to look at my work.  He gave me some ideas that I had never thought of.

As you can imagine this was completely unexpected and one of the best and most exciting presents I can remember (right up there with the easel that Amber, Chase and Andrew bought me a couple of years ago... that one almost made me cry).  If you are an artist this is like Tiger Woods calling you up to say "let me give you some tips on your golf game".  For this artist to take the time from his demanding life for a 40 year old weekend warrior artist like me that has never even shown in a gallery really shows what kind of person he is.  I could definitely tell that he is a completely giving person.  He genuinely wants others to understand what it takes to build professional looking art and is willing to tell you all he knows to help you get there.  You don't see others in the top of their professions taking the time to pass along their knowledge, their passion to help an aspiring person out.  To take a moment from his busy life to call and talk to a guy like me really raised my admiration for him and his work, if that's possible.

The only negative from all of this is that he is the only 'artist' that I've ever personally talked to.  There are a couple of people at my work that are learning to paint, but besides that I've never spent any time talking with another artist at any level, much less HIS level.  Besides postings that I've done on wetcanvas.com he is the only artist that I can think of that's ever looked at my work.  I guess why I'm saying all this and that this is a negative is that I have NOBODY that I can tell this to that will appreciate it..!!..  Can you image if you were a basketball player and Michael Jordan called you up to talk and you had no one to tell that could appreciate what that meant to you?  Oh well, I can only hope as you read this that I have explained successfully what his time in calling me has meant, and would mean to any artist.

As I try and think of something profound, wise or proper to end this with, the only think that is adequate is for me to say..

"Thank You, Morgan Weistling"

I donated a painting to be raffled for the 6 charities of the Kentucky Employee Charitable Campaign. Lisa Brewer, Susan Rose, Jean Hall and John "Caveman" Hornbeck sold tickets for chances to win. Hornbeck sold like 300 by himself as he is the king of gab and knows EVERYONE around. The drawing was held Sept. 28th and the winner was Linda Johnson from the Kentucky Department of Education.

Been a bit since I posted so I'm laying in a cumulative blog post for the month.

Lisa decided to paint the picture of Megan with Keagan on the beach.  It's a wonderful picture and I can't wait to see it develop.  Don brought in the finished painting of his lamp.  It turned out very good.  I suggested the highlight be a little subdued.

Don watched some of the Jerry Yarnell tape that I gave him, which he said was helpful.  Lisa is SUPPOSE to bring in her acrylic portrait book to share.  I suggested that we paint a 2 hour study and brought in some subjects.  The group thought they were way to difficult/detailed to render in 2 hours, so I painted the more complex one over the weekend within 2 hours to show them the purpose of the studies.  It's to grab the main info and not worry about the little details.  The viewers minds will lay in detail.  I'll add a link to the study when I get it scanned.

Lisa and I attended the Women's Club showing of local artwork.  We were both very impressed with some of the talent that is from Frankfort.

I was invited to a breakfast at the Kentucky Historical Society held by the Ky Art Council.  FAF invited me to come and speak on behalf of FAF and the Frankfort Chamber of Commerce.  I thanked them all for what they do to promote art in the community.  I'm a consumer of the work they do and I was thankful to get the opportunity to let them know how important they jobs are to artists like myself.

Only met on Tuesday.  Anthony and Don were there.  Don has painted in the table and will start on the lamp soon.  I brought in the backlit girl painting as I'm almost complete.  I think I took the back of her hair a bit too far as it more looks on fire than glowing :O).  I will take it back a bit and vary the shape as it's on long 'bar' that needs to be a bit more irregular.  I will have it done by the next meeting.  Lisa wasn't feeling well so hopefully by Tuesday she will have had some time to push some paint around.

We visited some of the art galleries here in Frankfort.  It's inspiring to see what others are doing.  I gravitate my artwork toward subjects that contain people, figuratures if you will, but as we were in the Capital Gallery I realized how a simple landscape can be a beautiful thing.  If you can take a field with a couple of trees and make something that people want to look at, that's pretty special. 

As you can see I have spent quite a bit of time this past week reconfiguring my website.  I feel that it is much cleaner and art friendly, but I suppose you would be the judge of that.  Let me know if you like it better.  I have a couple of new paintings on the site.  Hope you like them.

We are planning on spending next week working on sketching/drawing, something we really haven't focused on but is SO important.  See you then.

Don, Jean, Donnie and Lisa met during the week.  We have decided to pick a few simple subjects and over the next few meetings we will us our 40 minutes or so to do quick studies.  We will paint to completion during this small time frame.  I've done this in the past.  They are great to get 'brush mileage' as Craig Nelson would teach.  We will see where this leads us.

Some of the discussions I've taken a bit into the 'philosophical' realm, which I'm going to try to keep to a minimum as I feel that most need some good core fundamentals before really being able to take in 'feeling' type discussions.  I did mention artists such as Joaquin Sorolla (http://www.personal.us.es/jcordero/LUZ/images/obras/Sorolla.jpg) who used very 'lush' strokes in his work.  This was in support of 'something' that I was talking about.. not sure exactly what that was now :O)

Lisa brought up some of the struggles with drawing/painting people.  I always think about the larger shapes when I'm doing anything, especially a person.  We get so caught up in the detail that we get very loose (with our minds, that is) on the larger masses.  If you think about walking through a museum and a painting catches your eye or surfing the web and a thumbnail of a painting strikes you a certain way and makes you stop, it's the large shapes that appeal do you, not the highlight in the eye or the individual bricks on the house.  Just something to think about.

We met today and decided on a name.

"OET Art Guild"

I sent out a post to everyone in the group to come up with a name.  I've had a couple of people talk about the paintings that I have hanging in our breakroom at work.  I've told them that those aren't my paintings, but the others in the class.  We need to come up with a name for our bunch to post in the breakroom so others may catch the painting bug.

Some suggested names at the moment:

Logan's OET Students (L.O.S.T.)
OET Lunch Art (OLA) a little latino flair to it
OET School of Art
OET Starving Artists
Logan's Losers
Student Artists of Logan
OET Art League

just to mention a few..

I will suggest as we try and name ourselves that we try and place 'painters' or 'painting' in the name as Art is a bit broader and we don't want to blur our existence.  We will take the names Thursday, June 27th and decide.

At Amber's school she and Mrs. Murphy are teaching a group of students from 1st - 5th grade over the summer (about 20 or so students).  Amber asked me to hold an art class for them for an hour each day for 4 days.  We spent most of our time working on the fundamentals of drawing, focusing on shapes, angles and positioning.  Three of the four days were on these topics, as it is the most important thing (I believe) in establishing a successful likeness.  I chose a picture of "Captain Jack Sparrow" to draw.  Definitely a challenging subject to start with but at it's core it's still just a collection of forms, no different than a bowl of fruit or pile of rocks.  We drew the subject a couple of different ways and even broke it down with a grid system and drew it upside down.  I think a couple of the kids were beginning to see the essence of what I was trying to get across, and some were starting to understand the difference between assuming that we know how to draw certain things (like eyes, hair, etc) and completely surrendering yourself to the subject you are looking at.  It's the only way you're are going to get a good likeness.  Anyway, we painted an apple on the last day so we could discuss a little more about values, edges, colors and temperatures.

I definitely learned more this week than the kids did, and I appreciate the opportunity to do it.  Thanks Amber.  That's a great bunch of kids.  They did a very good job at paying attention, considering the fundamentals of drawing and painting are not the most exciting things to listen to.  I hope that at the end of the week a couple of the kids got a little bit better, or possibly a little more excited about their potential to get better.

This will be a brief update.  A few of us met yesterday and discussed the possibility of the group painting while at lunch.  Don is going to bring a couple of potential subjects to paint.  I would ask that anyone attending tomorrow bring something to draw with/on, whether pen, pencil, whatever.  We won’t need paints, etc just yet.  We will pick the subject and, if time permits, start sketching first before we tackle a canvas.

Please join us if you’re able.  It would be a perfect time to start as we begin this study.

Later.

In attendance this past week

Jean Hall

Lee Muncy

John Logan

Recap:

We only met on Tuesday.  It was Jean, Lee and myself.  We had a fairly in-depth discussion on color, mainly around primary colors and the differences between RYB, CYMK and RGB.  I think this is a very important discussion and warrants another ‘whack’ at it when we have more in attendance.  A description of what was covered is impossible to have in an e-mail typing during my lunch break so you will have to come and join us when we have it again :O)  It’s not that I don’t want to describe it, it’s just that it would take an hour to type and still it would not be very valuable.  It takes ‘white-board work’ to do it justice B-)

NOTE:  I would like to get everyone’s comments on the following items if you don’t mind.  I would also urge you to talk to others around the office to see if there is anyone else out there that would like to join us. 

· Are these get-togethers beneficial?

· Suggestions on how to improve them?

· Are these e-mails beneficial?

· If you have not attended a luncheon with us in a while do you have plans on attending soon?

· Would you like to be removed from this list?

My intent on creating these lunch get-togethers was to have two-way conversations about painting.  I don’t mind sending these e-mails out for those that have schedules that impede them from coming but I want to make sure that I’m not wasting both of our time.   Just let me know. 

Next time:

I am going to suggest that I paint a painting during the next several sessions.  The subject is irrelevant but I think that it would spawn some good discussions if I just show how I would approach painting a given subject.  That is not to suggest how you should approach it, just to show one way of doing it that I think works for me.  Start with picking the subject, lighting, etc, drawing, building, etc to completion...  or we can do something else, doesn’t matter to me.  I definitely think that we need to have a full crowd Tuesday if possible so we can go over the color discussion again as it sets up the palette used to paint from.  Then we will decide on where you all want to go from here.

In attendance this past week

Jean Hall

Lee Muncy

Donna Eustace

Lisa Brewer

John Logan

Note:

I’m going to begin doing a week wrap-up instead of one for each day.  Many discussions like last week’s are sometimes a bit more advanced and require ‘board work’ to get the message across.  These are nearly impossible to capture in a few sentences.  They would require me to write a small novel each week and still wouldn’t completely get the point of our discussions across, so I will begin just giving a brief summary on what was discussed and ask that you join us if/when you can.

Recap:

We spent both days last week discussing ‘The Value System’ and how vital the understanding is to building a complete painting.  I am no different than each of you when it comes to being a student of this endeavor of painting.  I’m just trying to lead the discussions into areas that I know are key building blocks in composing a finished painting.  I don’t have all the answers, but what I can share is what is working for me at the moment and what I’m struggling on.  With that said I discussed what values I choose to see when I’m trying to capture a subject and what other artists that I’ve studied choose to see.  Some see 3 values, some see as many as 9 or more.  How many you choose to recognize and what you do with them is absolutely vital in the end result.

Next time:

Today we will and discuss more on values.  I brought a book on John Singer Sargent that we will walk through if time permits.  If anyone has any other areas they would like to discuss instead just come today and drive the conversations.  Hope to see you today.

In attendance:

Don Allen

Lisa Brewer

John Logan

Recap:

We had no new work to look at so we just talked a bit about drawing at first.  Don had a question about painting distant hills/trees.  He had seen a painting I did a couple of years ago of a log cabin http://www.logangallery.com/photos/completed_artwork/images/87/original.aspx

 and wanted to know how I went about creating the hill that was a few hundred yards behind the cabin.  This was a rendering from a photo I took (http://www.logangallery.com/photos/reference_photos/images/26/original.aspx).  I under-painted a mid-toned color of ‘mud’ (brown/gray) to locate the shape of the hill.  I then loaded up colors of the same value on my brush, wiped off the brush with a paper towel and ‘cleaned’ my brush the area, scattering the different hues.  I know this is very difficult to grasp from my poor attempt at describing it here.  That’s why you need to try and come to the class this Thursday :O)

Note:  We have a new member on the thread and hopefully physically will be able to join us.  It’s Pat Black.  Welcome Pat!  Look forward to having you.  We have anywhere from 3 to 7 or so folks come each week.  Trying to get more of you to come but I guess the nice weather is winning out.

Next time:

We will continue on the rabbit/bunny painting.  Come and eat lunch with us if nothing else.  See you next Thursday! 

In attendance:

Debbie Lowery

Don Allen

Lisa Brewer

John Logan

Recap:

Don brought in his bunny.  It's a white rabbit in an Easter basket.  Very nice Don!  He talked with us about how he painted the hairs on the bunny which was the most difficult thing.  The brush you choose, the dilution of the paint and the stroke have to be just right or you'll just be pushing paint.  It takes practice and that's what these studies are here for.  I didn't bring my painting in but we looked at it on my web site.  Lisa asked whether I painted the entire background and then the bunny on top of that or did I paint the bunny and grass/background separately and 'up to' each other.  On this paricular painting I covered the canvas with the grass/background, let that dry and then worked on the bunny 'over top' of the grass.  If I had painted this on a larger canvas (this one was on an 8 X 10) then I would have probably painted the rabbit and background individually just to save paint.  Just in case you don't know me by now I'm quite frugel.  The painting I did of the horses a couple of weeks ago I used two homemade brushes, a knife, toothbrush and the handle end of a brush for about 99% of the painting (and a finger here and there of course). 

Next time:

We will continue on the rabbit/bunny painting.  Please come and join us if you can.  We'd love to see a new face and here another voice at the table.  You don't even have to paint ever if you don't want.  Just come and eat lunch with us.  See you next Tuesday!  Hopefully with a couple of new bunnies....