Michael and Claudia, drawing and underpainting.

Michael Elsasser and Claudia Monaco are two of the other artists participating in what seven of us have come to call our 'portrait project.' We have agreed to spend a year or so each doing a minimum of two portraits of other artists in our group plus a self-portrait. The end of our year will come in January and at that point we hope to find a venue in which to exhibit our results.

I started my self-portrait and another rendering of Claudia in the spring, but after staring at the canvases for a number of months have decided to start over with entirely new compositions.

Except for Claudia who is a fairly new member of our group, the rest of us met six years ago at the Art Students League in Manhattan in Sherry Camhy's drawing and anatomy class. We have all since moved on to other classes at the League but we now get together for lunch once a month to share progress on our project and swap other stories.

Michael, for example, was just featured in Connoisseur Magazine. An article written by a magazine editor describes first-hand what it's like to purchase a portrait painted by Michael and add it to his collection.

Eva

A new model, Eva. Well, new to us anyway. She is petite and athletic. This drawing took about an hour with a number 4B pencil.

Tyrone at the Art Students League

Tyrone held one pose for the afternoon on Saturday, posing in sessions of 20 minutes each with five minute breaks, seated on a high stool in front of an old plaster bas-relief. James McElhinney's class is focused on drawing, the figure and anatomy. The class runs from 1 pm. until 4:30. These four drawings, each done with a 6B pencil, represent one afternoon's work.

Note: image enlarges if you click on it.

Looking across Oyster Bay from Center Island

Beautiful weather this week and clear skies. This is an abridged and edited view that comes at the top of a small hill on a weekly bike ride I do. I'm not a sailor, so I don't know for sure, but the boat off in the distance looked positively 19th century.

Cold Spring Harbor, Dusk, Plein Air Painting

Oil on masonite panel. About two hours.

Figure drawing, year six

Laetitia has turned her back on you.

These were done with a 7B pencil, the top drawing in two minutes, the drawing below it in the course of roughly an hour, in three twenty-minute poses, punctuated with five-minute breaks.

I've been going into the Art Students League in Manhattan on Saturdays or Sundays now for six years. Before that I tried briefly going in one week night each week but it was tough fighting traffic and trying not to get into class too late. Weekends are better.

I drove in for a few years. It was especially nice when I had a Sunday morning class just after the city revoked parking fees under the campaign that people shouldn't have to "pay to pray" on Sundays. But after a year the rest of the world figured out that parking in the city is free on Sundays and now I'm convinced that ghouls circle the city at midnight on Saturday nights waiting for the clock to strike and grab their spaces.

I did take the summer off, although most years I have continued in one class or another.

I'm of a mind to take a sculpture class but the only weekend class offered in sculpture at the League is one in which students work life size. For a guy who lives on Long Island that's a bit daunting. I'd like to bring my work home when it's finished and I'd prefer not to have to contract with a mover to do so.

The sketchbook project

The Sketchbook Project, as it was called, invited artists to fill rather small, modest sketchbooks and submit them to a traveling show. I did as requested and to my surprise the show traveled quite a bit this year. Perhaps you saw it in one of the following venues:

Atlanta, GA, Art House Gallery;
Washington, DC, Museum of Contempory Art DC;
Philadelphia, PA, Chris' Jazz Café;
Boston, MA, Laconia Gallery;
Chicago, IL, Antena Gallery;
Chicago IL, Art Source Gallery;
St. Louis, MO, Soulard Art Market;
Brooklyn, NY, 3rd Ward Gallery;
Atlanta, GA, Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA);

The Art House Gallery is all about staging large participatory exhibits like this. Their current project involves having as many artists as possible fill a handful of tiny canvases which are then exhibited mosaic style in the Atlanta airport.

Fun stuff.