Plein airs, watercolors, and more

November 30, 2021 in Consequence, Landscape painting, Publishing poems, Collaborations

Hi y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! I’ve got a new plein air piece, updates on collaborations, some watercolors, and a review out.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been trying to get looser and more impressionistic with my landscape paintings. For a brief refresher, here’s the last one I posted:

Guarded Sunset - 12’’ x 12’’ - oil on canvas

I tried to take this a step further in my most recent piece:

Alameda Station - 12’’ x 12’’ - oil on canvas

I definitely had some fun with this one. I liked how the looser brushwork came together, as well as the complexity in the warms and cools, but I think I overcrowded the composition. Live and learn!

In other painting news, I recently started teaching drawing and painting with the Arts and Culture Department at Denver Parks and Rec. As part of my training, I got to shadow the watercolor instructor — a medium I’ve generally avoided. But I got some fun results!

Eye and landscape - 12’’ x 9’’ - watercolor on paper

Hamsa - 12’’ x 9’’ - watercolor on paper

I also got to do a brief oil demo for an open house. I decided to do a little hamsa; definitely had a blast!

Hamsa demo - 12’’ x 12’’ - oil on canvas

I’m also happy to share that my friend Kevin Shoemaker’s debut album, Sounds for the Young, is out. You can stream it here. As I’m sure many of you know, I made a series of digital drawings for the album release, one for each track. Here they are below:

Be sure to check out the full album, and stop by Kevin’s website for more!

On the poetry side of things, I’m happy to share a review I wrote for the literary magazine I work for, Consequence, on two excellent poetry collections: Graham Barnhart’s The War Makes Everyone Lonely and Nomi Stone’s Kill Class. You can find the review here.

That’s it for now. Thanks for tuning in, and keep creating!

Hello from Denver! And other updates

October 19, 2021 in Collaborations, Publishing poems, Shop updates, Landscape painting

Hi y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! I know it’s been quite a long time since my last post… in the neighborhood of three months, I believe. A lot’s happened since then.

As many of you probably know, I relocated to Denver, Colorado. I’ve lived in New York for the last nine years (with a few relatively brief excursions in Oregon, India, Jordan, and Lebanon). It’s been a big change. I’ve been here about a month, and so far I’m really liking it — lots of sun, the food is good, people are genuinely nice and helpful, and, of course, the mountains are only an hour away.

It feels apt that my first painting here and the last painting I finished in New York are both landscapes. Here’s the last one from New York; I’ve posted some of the WIP shots of it on the blog before:

Inwood Hill Park - 12” x 16” - oil on canvas

I painted this at a park in Inwood, the last neighborhood I lived in in the city, just down the road from my apartment. Inwood had long been one of my favorite spots in New York, especially Manhattan, so it feels right to have gotten one last image of it before I left.

It also feels right to start off here in Denver with a painting of the mountains. I grew up in Kansas City and came out to the mountains every chance I got.

This painting (and a number of others) is now available for purchase on Saatchi. And as always, feel free to poke around the “Shop & Learn” section of my website for other goodies or to email me directly at slreichmanart@gmail.com if you’re interested in a piece you see on the website or Instagram (or you’d like to commission a new one).

But back to the fun (nerdy) stuff. I’ve been trying to get a little looser, more impressionistic with my landscapes. I’ve always naturally favored a rougher, more painterly approach, but I’ve often felt myself conflicted between the desire to render more tightly, adhering more to “reality” (whatever that means) and the desire to let the brushstrokes do more of the work.

Between New York and Denver, I spent a couple of weeks back in my hometown (more on that later). While I was there, I went to the Nelson, the biggest museum in Kansas City. As I wandered around the French painting section, I found myself more and more drawn to the impressionists and post-impressionists:

A post-impresionist whose name I failed to take down… woops

Their free brush strokes and their impressive power to suggest form, light, even people and gesture with so little — that’s something I aspire to. I’m a long way away, but, fortunately for me, I’ve got some great landscapes to practice on here in Colorado.

I was back in Kansas City for a couple of weeks. My mom, as I suspect some readers here might know, was having surgery to remove a benign tumor on her brain stem, and I was in town to spend time with her before and after the surgery. This was her third round having the tumor removed since 1999, and it was definitely trying for her and the rest of the family, especially with the pandemic still strong in the Midwest. That’s made me all the more grateful to have such strong, supportive loved ones. The surgery was a success, and my mom, trooper that she is, is doing much better.

During my time in KC, I got a few sketches in of my mom’s recovery. I drew this a few days post-op:

And this I drew after she was released from the hospital and was recovering at home:

In a strangely well-timed development, I also got my contributor copies of the two poems I had accepted for publication way back in April right as my mom was getting through the worst of the recovery. They’re both about family, and one (I’ll let you guess which) I actually originally wrote for my mom’s birthday. It’s been through a good amount of revision since then (they both have), so it’s great to see them out in the world.

Mother Memories, published by Sand Hills Literary Magazine

Heaven Cannot Hold Her, published by Sand Hills Literary Magazine

There’s a lot of gorgeous work in this issue of Sand Hills Literary Magazine, the journal that took them, so please consider supporting their amazing work by purchasing a copy of the print issue!

I’m also happy to share that my drawing of my partner’s cat, Cashmere, was invited to an online exhibit organized by Exhibizone and distributed by Biafarin. You can check out my page on the online exhibit here. And here’s the drawing:

Cashmere - mixed media on paper - 16” x 12”

The exhibit is open til the end of the month, so be sure to stop by and check it out soon! And in case you’re wondering, yes, Cashmere knows how cute she is.

Finally, I’m happy to share that my collaboration with musician, producer, and 10/10 good friend Kevin Shoemaker, a.ka. Dandelot, went great! I made eight digital drawings for Kevin’s debut album (one for each track), and we released one a day, along with behind the scenes info on the making of each track, in an exclusive online exhibit — Chanukah came early this year.

We’ll be selling posters with all eight drawings soon. In the meantime, check out our discussion on the collaboration below, and be sure to get signed up for updates on the album release, album swag, and more here!

That’s it for now! I should be posting here more regularly now that I’m relatively settled. In the meantime, thanks so much for reading, and keep creating!

The many mediums of Satan

July 13, 2021 in Collaborations, Milton project

Hi y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! I know it’s been some time — sorry about that, things have been crazy. Since I last posted, I’ve been working on some new Satanic art for the Milton project, making some progress on the plein air painting, and plotting a new collaboration.

Let’s start with the new versions of Satan I’ve cooked up. I’ve turned the scene from Book I of Paradise Lost where Satan and his legions have been cast into Hell into a Procreate drawing. For a refresher, I had already worked up a conte and gouache drawing of this scene. Here’s that piece below:

Satan, fallen, stands to address his legions in Hell - conte and gouache on paper

As you can see, the first drawing was in black and white. The Procreate drawing was meant to help me think through some of the color questions I’ll be facing when I make this into an oil painting.

Satan, fallen, stands to address his legions in Hell - Procreate

Speaking of oil painting, I’ve finally finished the oil study of Satan’s head. As you can see above, my goal when painting Satan is to get as much chaos in the colors as possible in order to visually depict Satan’s inner turmoil. For the head study, I wanted to capture Satan’s descent into moral depravity, so I started with an underpainting using the Zorn palette, which only has a couple of colors. As I began working in the thick, impasto, chaotic blends of warms and cools, I ran into a problem — as I added more warm, it canceled out the cools, and vice versa, plus I was having trouble controlling my values (lights and darks). Here’s where the painting was when I last posted it:

Nothing a trip to the Met won’t fix! I decided to go poke around the impressionists, post-impressionists, and pointillists, and, sure enough, I found the fix. The key, as usual, lay in massing — creating large masses of light and dark, warm and cool, before adding smaller variations within them. If you look at this Renoir, for instance, the values and colors look blocked in in large shapes from a distance:

Renoir piece in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

But if you get closer, you can see smaller variations in color and value inside the masses:

The same is true for this pointillist piece (I failed to take down the artist’s name, unfortunately):

Pointillist piece at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

With that in mind, I came back to the Satan head study. Focusing on massing first, I was able to work in more color chaos without messing up the values. That, plus a little stand oil, and voila, Satan:

My take is a lot more painterly and saturated than the Renoir or the pointillist piece (what can I say, I like big brushes and loud colors), but, if you look closely, you can see the same mass-first-vary-later principle at work:

In some less unsettling painting news, I’ve also been making some progress on the plein air WIP I posted last time:

Between the tropical storms, flash floods, and heat waves, the weather has been keeping me painting indoors lately, but hopefully I’ll be able to get back out there and make some more progress on this soon.

In other news, I’ve got another collaboration coming up with my friend Kevin Shoemaker, a.k.a. Dandelot. For anyone who doesn’t know, Kevin is a really talented musician and producer. Kevin and I hung out in virtual reality a few weeks ago to do some live painting and playing/producing. If you missed it, check out the video below:

Kevin is releasing his debut album at the end of the summer. As part of the album release, I’m going to make a piece of visual art for every song, which I’m really excited about! You can keep up with the project and Kevin’s album release by stopping by his website and signing up for updates.

That’s it for this week! Check back in for more updates soon. Til then, have a great week, and keep creating!

Satan! + some non-Miltonic art

June 15, 2021 in Collaborations, Milton project

Hi y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! This week, I’ve got some new work on the Milton angels project, some plein air painting, and an update on collaborations. On the Milton side of things, I’m excited to share that I finally got through a finished drawing of a full-body (fallen) angel, head and all! Of course, I started with the best character in Paradise Lost: Satan.

Satan addresses the fallen legions in Hell, Paradise Lost, Book I — conte and gouache on paper

This drawing started off as an attempt to fix the problems of the last full body angel I completed. That study, done in pen and ink on much smaller paper, came out a little awkward and too obviously stitched together for my taste. Here’s a reminder of what that looked like:

The first attempt at stringing together a full-body angel — pen and ink on paper

On the first angel, I worked from the previous anatomy studies I’ve completed for the Milton angels project, but I didn’t have any overall guide to reference (other than some gestural lines I made up at random). The result was an unfortunately clunky figure, a bit cartoonish and awkward. I’m much happier with the second one. For that drawing, I combined a finished figure drawing I did at The Art Students League with my angel anatomy studies. Here’s the finished drawing I was using as a reference:

Line/Tone/Value No. 7 — Conte, pen and ink, and gouache on paper

The latest study started as an attempt to improve upon the shortcomings of the first full body angel, but, as I worked, it developed a life of its own. The staff of the figure reminded me of Satan’s spear from the beginning of Paradise Lost. The distorted head looked like a fallen angel.

So I decided to turn it into a scene near the beginning of the epic. Here, Satan and his legions have been cast out of Heaven, fallen through Chaos, and landed in Hell. Milton describes Hell as a “dungeon horrible” around which “one great furnace flamed”. However, Hell’s flames cast “[n]o light, but rather darkness visible”. To capture that, I kept some light on the top of the figure, but kept the flames on which Satan stands dark.

Milton also describes Satan as carrying a “ponderous shield” and a massive spear from the battle in Heaven. The shield is “massy, large, and round” and “[hangs] on his shoulders like the moon”, while the spear is the size of “the tallest pine / Hewn on Norwegian hills”. I had a lot of fun playing with the scale of the imagery there.

For painting these past two weeks, I took a break from Milton-related work to do some plein air. The plein air painting is still in progress, but it’s been so nice to get outside and paint when the weather’s nice. Check out the WIP below:

More updates there soon. And don’t forget you can get behind-the-scenes time lapse videos and process photos of this painting, the Milton illustrations, and whatever else I’m working on by subscribing to my Patreon!

I also got to spend a night painting and chatting with the very talented Kevin Shoemaker while he produced music for us in virtual reality. It was a strange and fun experience, one very apt for the (hopefully?) tail end of COVID. Check out the video of our collaboration below:

And here’s the finished version of the painting I made to Kevin’s music:

Collaborative painting with Kevin Shoemaker, oil on canvas

You can find the rest of Kevin’s virtual reality hangs, as well as some great singles from his upcoming album, on his YouTube channel. And don’t forget to stop by his website, too.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for stopping by. Have a great week and keep creating!

Frankensteining angels, NFT updates, collaborations

June 01, 2021 in Milton project, Shop updates, Collaborations

Hey y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! Pardon the interruption between this post and the last — I’ve been traveling and life has gotten a little hectic in the interim. In today’s post, I’ve got some updates on the NFT hustle and some recent/upcoming collaborations, as well as more work on the Milton project.

In the land of NFTs, I’ve got good news and bad. The bad news is that my first NFT didn’t sell within the auction timeframe. Alas. Gas (the cost of conducting transactions on the blockchain) was very high for Ethereum, the cryptocurrency I was using to sell my NFT, so I’m hoping that’s at least partly to blame.

Satan’s head, Procreate… slightly modified. Perhaps a new NFT?

The good news is that I haven’t let that get me down! Huzzah! Gas has dropped substantially, so I’ve re-listed the Satan head study and listed a new one: the angel torso study. I’m selling the angel torso as a bundle, meaning that it’s two NFTs grouped together. The bundle includes the time lapse process video and the finished piece. You can find the bundle here and the re-listed Satan head here (sans frown and text, sadly).

Part of a lovely NFT package available now on OpenSea — Part of a lovely NFT package now available on OpenSea

And just a reminder that you can get prints of the angel torso on my Etsy! You can also sign up to receive monthly prints on Patreon (plus some other goodies and access to behind the scenes visuals). As always, you can find the full range of products and services I’m offering on the Shop & Learn page.

I’ve also been hacking away at more studies for the Milton project. I’m (slowly) working up an oil version of the Satan head study. With this one, I want capture Satan’s descent into depravity, so I started with an underpainting using the Zorn palette (a very limited palette invented by the great Anders Zorn). On top it, I’ve been getting wilder and weirder with the colors and textures.

Satan’s head, front view, oil on canvas (WIP)

The goal is for the distortions to get more severe as you go down the figure in terms of anatomy, color, brushwork, perspective, etc. It’s still pretty rough, and it’s definitely been a learning curve for me to figure out how to balance these two types of painting, but I like where it’s going so far. At the very least, I’m sure this study will teach me a great deal.

I’ve also gotten through my first full body pen and ink study of the angels that includes a head:

Full body angel study, front view, pen and ink

Like the back view study, I stitched this together using the various anatomy studies I’ve completed thus far. Here’s the back view for comparison:

Angel body study, back view, pen and ink.JPG

The front view study is certainly weird enough for me, and there’s parts that I think came out well. Still, it looks a little too obviously Frankenstein’d for me. To fix that, I’m going to try working from figure studies I’ve drawn from life previously (or make new ones), and distort from there. To start, I think I’m going to try working from one of the last line/tone/value experiments I completed at The Art Students League of New York:

Line/Tone/Value, No. 7; mixed media on paper

More on that next time! In other news, I had a great time contributing poetry to Mei Yamanaka’s “Naked Tree” dance/video project. For the project, Mei worked with 15 different sound artists to create different versions of the same video. It was really cool to see how they all turned out! Everyone contributed amazing work, and the energy really shifted depending on the collaborators. The video I worked on with Mei is below; you can find the others on her YouTube channel.

Lastly, I’ve got another exciting collaboration coming up tomorrow night with musician and producer Kevin Shoemaker, a.k.a. Dandelot. Kevin is a seriously talented guy — if you haven’t checked out the tracks he’s released from his upcoming album, don’t sleep. You can find them on his YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify pages. Check out his website, too, for videos, VR, and other cool content. One of my favorite tracks from the album is below:

Kevin and I will be meeting tomorrow, June 2, around 8:30PM EST in virtual reality to livestream a joint session of live playing/producing and live painting. You can tune into it on his YouTube channel. Stop by and say hi!

That’s it for now. Have a great week and keep creating!