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I Love...

FEBRUARY 14, 2007
Painting. It's amazing that after 20 years as an illustrator I still lose myself in the joy of painting. Illustration is sometimes work and requires more than a 30 minute time block. I am an illustration professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. I love teaching there and right now we are painting portraits. They are getting it! I have been better able to explain the process this year. I think reflecting on my recently deceased portrait instructor and his words has had a positive affect. One thing his wife told me was how he would discuss with her how hard he searched for ways to explain the methods and ways to consider the model. I podered this quite a bit and am better for it. Anyway, here is a portrait of Jack Dempsey. Jack was the biggest name in Boxing during the 20's and would fight before growds of 100,000 often. I love his jet black Irish/American Indian hair and rugged jaw. This is a portrait done in 30 minutes in oil on toned panel. You can see I'm chewing gum and laughing (Howard Stern Show playing in the background). I wish I could have cut off that half of the camera frame. I have a bigger file of it and if I can figure out how to get it up here, it's much better.
After looking at the Hirshfeld movie Mr Brodner mentioned (which was great) I wished I had a better resolution version of this video on youtube. It takes forever to compress stuff and I am not good at figuring out how to size clips for youtube.
© 2024 Tim O'Brien