Canyons, deserts, and angels, oh my

Hi all,

Welcome back to the blog! Today, I’ve got updates on the angel painting, as well as recent shows.

As I mentioned in my last post, I got into the Wrightwood Wine and Arts Festival, which I showed at in May. I turned the show into a small road trip, and I got to see some really beautiful places along the way. I of course brought a sketch book with me to document them. Here’s a drawing from Moab, Utah:

and another from Snow Canyon (also in Utah):

Although that sketch was a fun one for the campsite I stayed in, it doesn’t really do the park justice, so here’s a quick video I took, too, just for good measure:

The festival in Wrightwood was a beautiful day — plenty of sun, art, and interesting people. I brought a few more pieces with me than I anticipated, too . . .

In addition to Wrightwood, I also recently showed at another Pancakes and Booze pop-up show here in Denver. I decided to change it up a little this time and bring some bigger pieces with me.

I also had a few more prints made for the show, so if you’re in the market for some giclée prints, stop by my Etsy account or shoot me an email!

Giclée prints — “Angel Torso,” 10’’ x 7.5’’ (left); “Shipwreck,” 9.5’’ x 8.25’’ (right)

Outside of the recent shows, I’ve been continuing to hack away at the cherub painting. When I last posted, I had finished all the studies and was starting on the underpainting. I’m very excited (relieved?) to share that I finally have finished the underpainting:

“Cherub — Ezekiel’s Vision” (WIP) - oil on canvas - 42’’ x 26’’

Freaky, right? If you’ve been keeping up with the project, you know that I’m using Ezekiel I (yes, that Ezekiel) for the textual reference. The Bible’s got some pretty bizarre imagery.

This painting has been a long haul . . . and I’m only halfway done. To give you a better idea of the scale, here’s me and the painting side-by-side:

I’m 5’11’’, and it comes up to my waist, so it’s not quite life-sized (whatever that means), but it’s definitely a biggun.

Because of its size, I think some aspects of the painting are better seen up close. Here’s a quick tour of the details:

I used such warm colors because Ezekiel describes the cherubim’s appearances as “like burning coals of fire or torches”. You can look forward to some color studies of burning coals (and maybe torches?) in my next post.

Aside from all the painting news, we also recently released a new issue (15.1) of Consequence. Stop by the website and pick up your copy up today!

The reading period for our next print issue is also open. If you’re a writer, be sure to send us your best work on the culture and human consequences of war and geopolitical violence before the reading period closes on October 15!

That’s it for now. Thanks for stopping by, and keep creating!

Faces, skulls, animals, and more

Hi all,

Welcome back to the blog! Today, I’ve got updates on the cherub painting and the self-portrait series, as well as some news on publications, shows, and festivals.

At the time of my last post, I had recently completed two self-portraits and was working on a third. The first two were a pen and ink and watercolor combo:

Self-portrait — watercolor and pen and ink on paper — 12’’ x 9’’

Self-portrait — watercolor and pen and ink on paper — 8.5’’ x 8’’

The third, which I’ve completed since, is mostly oil (with a bit of acrylic magenta) on canvas:

“Drift” (Self-portrait) - oil and acrylic on canvas - 12’’ x 12’’

As I said in my last post, I usually do self-portraits when I’ve gone through a major change or am at a transition in life. I spend so much time focused on writing — working on my own, editing others’, teaching it, reading it — that it’s a relief to be able to engage in self-reflection without the demands that writing imposes, especially when the dust hasn’t settled or I’m having trouble making sense of exactly where I’m at.

This piece, then, is appropriately titled “Drift.” I couldn’t tell you exactly what it means (if I could, that would sort of defeat the point), but I can tell you that there’s something about the play of super-saturated and muted colors, the screen-like effect of the brushwork and paint-handling, and the fluid-but-structured mark-making that captures the push and pull, the visibility and obscurity, the forming and dissolving that I feel in my self these days. Of what, exactly, I suppose time will tell.

In other painting news, I’m continuing to make progress on the cherub. When I last posted, I had finished the animal studies for the cherub’s heads. The cherub painting is based on the description of the cherubim (or what rabbinic scholars decided are cherubim) in Ezekiel I. Ezekiel describes the cherubim as having four faces: one, facing right, of a lion:

Lion head study - oil on canvas - 14’’ x 10’’

another, facing left, of an ox:

Ox head study - oil on canvas - 10’’ x 14’’

another of an eagle (direction unspecified):

Eagle head study - oil on canvas - 14’’ x 10’’

and, finally, the face of a human. At first, I didn’t think I would need to do a human head study (I’m a bit more familiar with the human head than I am with animal ones), but, after thinking about it a bit, I decided to do a few anyways.

I didn’t want to make a completely generic, mannequin-like face, so I began to wonder if anyone has any idea what ancient Israelites (Ezekiel’s kinsmen) might’ve looked like. It turns out, someone does. Or rather, some people do. A group of researchers, Kobylianski et al., published a study in which they reconstructed the face of two ancient Jews — one male, one female — based on the morphology of their skulls. I did charcoal studies of them both.

The male was from the Hellenistic period (third century BCE):

Head and skull studies, male - charcoal on paper - 9’’ x 12’’

and the female was from the Roman period (37 BCE-324 CE):

Head and skull studies, female - charcoal on paper - 9’’ x 12’’

With those, and a study of the full cherub complete:

Cherub, Ezekiel’s vision - charcoal and dry pastel on paper - 12’’ x 12’’

I finally felt ready to start the actual cherub painting. Ezekiel says the cherubim look “like burning coals of fire or like torches,” so I’m starting with an extremely warm underpainting:

Cherub, Ezekiel’s vision (WIP) - oil on canvas - 42’’ x 26’’

More updates on that to come. In other news, I’ve had/will have a few shows and publications. Last month, I showed at the Pancakes and Booze show here in Denver once again.

And, a few weeks ago, “Drift” was published in Artstonish magazine.

I was also accepted into the Wrightwood Arts and Wine Festival. I’ll be heading that way next month, so I should have more updates on that the next time I post. In the meantime, here’s a couple of 100% candid, organic photos I took for my application.

The artiste at work…

A preview of what my booth will look like

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

New year, new paintings

Hi all,

Welcome back to the blog! Today, I’ve got an updates for you on the cherub paintings and a self-portrait series, plus more work available on Saatchi.

First, let’s get the shameless self-promotion out of the way. I’ve added a whole bunch of work to Saatchi, including two hamsas, work from the Paradise Lost series, skull paintings, an abstract, and a very cute cat, so stop by and see if anything strikes your fancy! And as always, feel free to email me about purchasing a piece directly or to inquire about commissions.

The last time I posted an update on the cherub painting studies, I had finished the lion head study and was making my way through the eagle. For those who haven’t been following this (sub)project, I’ve been working on illustrating the cherubim from Ezekiel’s vision in Ezekiel I. In his vision, Ezekiel sees ‘visions of God’ that some rabbinic scholars believe include two classes of angels: cherubim and seraphim. If you’d like to see a quick study I did of the seraphim (truly bizarre), you can check out this post.

The cherubim are four-faced, four-sided creatures. One of the faces is human. The others are a lion, an ox, and an eagle. The cherubim also have four wings—two covering their body, the other two facing upward—with human hands beneath them. They also have straight legs leading to feet “like those of a calf” that gleam “like burnished bronze.” Here’s a preparatory charcoal study I did of the cherub as I geared up for the painting:

Cherub, rendered - charcoal and dry pastel on paper - 12’’x12’’

Since I’m not super familiar with lions, eagles, or oxen, I decided to do some head studies of each of these animals before diving into the full painting. I’m now done with all three (yay!), which you can see below:

Lion head study - oil on canvas - 14’’x10’’

Eagle head study - 14’’x10’’ - oil on canvas

Ox head study - oil on canvas - 10’’x14’’

The lion and the eagle I painted the way I spent most of my time at The Art Students League of New York learning to paint: alla prima, or direct painting. In alla prima, you start with opaque paint, mixing what you see and putting it directly on the canvas (thus the ‘direct’ name). For the ox, however, I decided to try glazing. When you glaze, you start with a monochrome underpainting called a grisaille, usually using a warm earth tone like burnt sienna. You then add the color in using thin, transparent layers.

This past fall, I started teaching a course called “Painting Through Time” where I guide families through the materials and methods of different painters over art history. The second painter I covered was Anthony Van Dyck, who, in my personal opinion, makes the OG list.

Van Dyck had a three part glazing process. First, he would do a grisaille in a warm brown. Then, he would add in the highlights using impasto, or thick, opaque paint without any kind of paint thinner added. Lastly, he would glaze and scumble the color in. Glazing uses wet, transparent paint to create thin layers; scumbling uses dry, thin paint.

I usually hate glazing, but I actually enjoyed trying out Van Dyck’s method while making a demo painting for class. In my demo, I did the grisaille using red ochre. After it dried, I taped off a third of the canvas and did the impasto highlights. Once that was dry, I taped off another third of the canvas and glazed/scumbled in (most) of the color. This allowed students to see all three layers on the same canvas. You can check out the end result below:

Van Dyck demo - acrylic on canvas - 10’’x8’’

Since I actually enjoyed this process, I decided to try it (albeit with a different palette) with the ox head study. Here’s the grisaille, which I did using burnt sienna:

And here’s the grisaille with the impasto highlights (and a touch of glazing on the snout):

I plan on starting the final painting of the cherub soon — but first, I decided to take a detour and work on some self-portraits. I look at self-portraits as a way of checking in with myself, using visual expression as a means to free myself from verbal or written articulation. I tend to do them at points of transition in my life or a short time after them, once things begin to feel a little more internally settled.

It’s been about a year and half since I moved to Denver from New York, and, especially with the new year starting, it felt like time to check in. I knocked out two quick ones using watercolor and ink. The first one I started with an ink line drawing, then added the watercolor:

Self-portrait - pen and ink on paper - 12’’ x 9’’

Self-portrait - watercolor and pen and ink on paper - 12’’ x 9’’

For the second, I reversed the process — watercolor, then pen and ink:

Self-portrait - watercolor on paper - 8.5’’ x 8’’

Self-portrait - watercolor and pen and ink on paper - 8.5’’ x 8’’

I’m also working on a new one using oil:

Self-portrait (WIP) - oil on canvas - 12’’ x 12’’

Funnily enough, this one is reminding me of another self-portrait I did in my senior year of college. I was taking a painting class at the time as an elective (I did my undergrad in Middle Eastern studies) and had no real training when I started it. The assignment was an ‘internal self-portrait,’ which is how I’ve more or less come to think of all self-portraits since. I had just come back from a rather tumultuous seven months in Jordan and Lebanon, and the piece definitely reflected that.

“On Anger” (internal self-portrait - 2015) - oil on canvas - 11’’ x 14’’

This one feels calmer so far, but I definitely still like green (and partially obscuring my face).

Aside from all the painting stuff, we also have a new reading period open at Consequence, the journal I help edit poetry for. We focus on writing and art on the culture and human consequences of war and geopolitical violence, so if you have any relevant work, send it our way! We publish poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, translations, and visual art. You can find the links to submit here.

That’s all for now, folks. Thanks for reading, and keep creating!

Back to the angels, color chaos, and more!

Hi y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! A very belated happy new year to you all. It’s been a while since my last post—things got crazy with the holidays, new job/s, and my teaching schedule—but I’m back!

First, I’ve got two happy announcements to share. One is that I made my first sale on Saatchi since I started using it last spring. For those of you who don’t know, Saatchi is the world’s largest online gallery. Here’s the lucky winner:

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

It found a home with a collector in Boulder, about 30 minutes north of us in Denver. In case you, dear reader, are interested in a piece yourself, feel free to check out my Saatchi page, shoot me an email to inquire about a piece or a commission, or peruse the Shop & Learn tab for more goodies.

The second piece of good news is that I have an interview out with VoyageDenver, a magazine that tells the stories of local creatives and entrepreneurs. We talked craft, how I got into the arts, challenges I’ve faced, plans for the future, and more! You can check out the interview here.

Now for the good (read: nerdy) stuff. Since the weather has gotten cold and snowy, I’ve been back in the home studio. If I can work up the nerve/buy finger warmers, I might do a winter plein air piece or two, buuut for now I’m staying inside.

As a result, I’ve turned my attention back to the Paradise Lost illustration project. In case you don’t remember, I left off with a few studies of Satan from Book I, where he and the other rebellious angels have recently been cast into hell.

I started off with a conte and gouache drawing:

Study of Satan, Paradise Lost, Book I - 16’’ x 12’’ conte and gouache on paper

then did a study on Procreate, where I though through some of the color problems:

Color study of Satan, Paradise Lost, Book I - Procreate

and now, finally, I’ve finished the full oil painting:

Satan Stands to Address His Legions, Paradise Lost, Book I - 30’’ x 24’’ - oil on canvas

One of my main challenges in this painting was staying true to the textual references, which are… tricky. Milton describes hell as being a “dungeon horrible” surrounded by a great, fiery furnace with flames that cast “[n]o light, but rather darkness visible”. Satan also walks on “burning marl” (a kind of stone). So… how does one create flames that cast no light? And how do stones burn without casting light? And how exactly are we supposed to see Satan if there’s no light shining on him?

For those of you who aren’t big painting nerds, rendering an object (i.e., making it look three dimensional) with no light source is… basically impossible. It kind of defies the laws of physics. To get around that, I decided that, given his recent fall (and God’s omniscience in the epic), we could afford a little bit of light from heaven still shining down on him—a way for God to keep an eye on the tricky rebel and for me to solve my physics problem. Thus the light source at the top. This also allowed to me basically ignore whatever light the ‘burning marl’ might’ve cast.

As for the lightless flames, I started off the painting with a relatively dark background, which allowed me to make bits of pure, saturated color pop while keeping their value low (that is, make sure they stayed pretty dark too). I later toned down the background, but I’m pretty happy with the ‘lightless flames’ that poked through in the end. Here’s an early stage of the painting for comparison:

Early stage of the Satan painting

One of my other main challenges was showing Satan’s corruption through the chaos in the warms and cools. As I articulated in an earlier post, I’ve decided to show the level of an angel’s (or demon’s) corruption through the contradictions in their colors. From a distance, the Satan painting may look fairly unified, but when you get closer, you can see the warms and cools knocking against each other:

All this angel painting got me thinking… Milton says angels look this way, but what about the source material—that is, the Bible? Well, that and watching Midnight Mass on Netflix, which I totally recommend.

Turns out, it says some pretty weird stuff. After a little Googling, I found that one of the main sources of Biblical imagery comes from Ezekiel I. Ezekiel sees the heavens open up and has “visions of God”—and, rabbis and theologians have inferred, angels. But they’re not exactly the winged, Cupid-like version we’ve grown so accustomed to.

Instead, some are made of two intersecting wheels, “sparkling like topaz”, and covered in eyes. Yep, you read that right: shiny wheel eyes. That’s what angels look like. According to Maimonides, a prominent Medieval Jewish scholar and philosopher, this was actually the highest rank of angels. Here’s a quick study I worked up for them:

Study for Ezekiel’s vision - pen and ink on paper

And it only gets stranger from there. The other angels — believed to be cherubim — are a hodgepodge of humans and various animals. They have four wings, two of which cover their bodies; the other two face upwards above them. Under these wings, “on all four sides”, they have human hands. Their legs are straight and human, but their feet look “like those of a calf” and gleam “like burnished bronze.”

Perhaps the strangest part of the cherubim are their heads. Heads, plural—four, to be exact. One, facing left, is an ox head. Another, facing right, is a lion head. The other two heads are human and eagle. Ezekiel doesn’t specify where they sit in relation to each other.

This got me thinking, so I started on some studies of the animal heads and working through some of the perspective problems.

Perspective and animal studies for Ezekiel’s vision - pen and ink on paper

As you can see in my notes in the upper left, Ezekiel’s vague description of the eagle and human head create an interesting problem. If they have “four sides,” as Ezekiel mentions when describing the position of their hands and wings, and if we presume that each side gets one head and one head only, then how exactly is Ezekiel able to see all four heads at once? Shouldn’t one be facing away from him?

It’s almost as if Ezekiel is seeing multiple perspectives at once. You know, the core ingredient in Cubism? Maybe Picasso wasn’t such an innovative genius and more of a Biblical scholar. Or maybe there’s a translation issue, or the Bible just isn’t meant to be taken so literally . . .

At any rate, it’s been a fun issue to think through! To do so, I came up with a line drawing/cartoon:

Cherub from Ezekiel’s vision, study - pen and ink on paper

In conclusion, the Bible is the best source of surrealist and modernist imagery. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Alright, that’s it for this post! Thanks for reading, and keep creating!

Plein airs, watercolors, and more

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:

Capital - Procreate

David - Procreate

Beauty - Procreate

Americana - Procreate

Tutu - Procreate

Honey - Procreate

Prophet - Procreate

Burn - Procreate

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

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.

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

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

Paul Cezanne

Claude Monet

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:

Mom, post-op; pen and ink on paper

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

Mom, recovery; pen and ink on paper

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!

Satan! + some non-Miltonic art

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:

Inwood Hill Park, oil on canvas (WIP)

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

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 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:

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!

Satan's stages of grief, angel heads, and more!

Hi y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! This week, I’ve got updates on the shop, some forthcoming poems, and more work on the Milton project. First, I’m happy to share that I’m now selling originals online on Saatchi Art! You can find them by clicking here. I’m starting with a few pieces from my semi-abstract, surrealist eye series, including several of my hamsas. For those who don’t know, the hamsa is a symbol in Jewish and Muslim culture that keeps away the “evil eye,” protecting its owner and/or bringing them blessings.

“Hamsa (Base),” oil on canvas, 9’’ x 15’’ (for sale on Saatchi Art)

“Hamsa (Blessing),” mixed media on canvas, 12’’ x 16’’ (for sale on Saatchi Art)

“Hamsa (Space),” mixed media on canvas, 12’’ x 16’’ (for sale on Saatchi Art)

“Shipwreck,” oil on canvas, 26’’ x 30’’ (for sale on Saatchi Art)

The idea of this series is to explore liminal spaces — between abstraction and representation, Jewish and Islamic culture, energy and reason, etc. I’ll share more on that as I add more to Saatchi. As always, you can find more products and services in the “Shop & Learn” section of the website. And don’t be shy to inquire about other original paintings, drawings, or commissions via email at slreichmanart@gmail.com!

I’m also excited to share that I have two poems forthcoming in Sand Hills Literary Magazine. I’ll say more about them once they’re out in the world, but, for now, stay tuned, poke around their website, and consider purchasing a print issue!

Outside of all that, I’ve been making more headway on the Milton angels project. As I shared in the last post, I’ve been slowly (but steadily) stitching together the angel bodies à la Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (which, by the way, is also a retelling of Genesis). Here’s where I left off with the full-body pen and ink study:

Angel body, back view, pen and ink

You might notice there’s a crucial element missing here . . . and since I don’t intend on making headless angels, I’ve been thinking through how I might go about illustrating an angel head. I’m a sucker for the classics (shocker, I know), so I started off by distorting some Da Vinci and Michelangelo head studies I dug up in one of my anatomy books.

Da Vinci copies, with distortions; pen and ink

Michelangelo copy, pen and ink

Michelangelo copy - distorted, pen and ink

I’ve also gone through my usual process of doing an anatomy study and distorting it:

Anatomy study, muscles of the head and neck, pen and ink

Anatomy study - distorted, muscles of the head and neck, pen and ink

I don’t think I want to have something quite that alien-looking for the final version (maybe Satan at his most fallen?), so I’m still looking around and experimenting. I’ve even been distorting line drawings of people on the train. Do angels need to wear masks?

Observational drawings on the NYC subway, with distortions; pen and ink

On the painting side of the project, I’ve completed the oil study for the angel wings:

Angel wings, back view, oil and acrylic on canvas

As I’ve been working on the wings, I’ve been thinking more about how much visual chaos I can sneak into a painting before an angel goes from “good” to “bad.” This one’s a bit closer to good, but, when you get closer, you can see that I played a little more with color and texture than it looks like from a distance.

I’ve been thinking of this as an early stage of Satan’s fall, perhaps when he’s convincing other angels to join his rebellion in Heaven or leading the charge against the pro-God forces. In Paradise Lost, Satan’s fall from Heaven is only the beginning of his descent into moral depravity. As he gets further along, he grows more and more tormented by his decisions.

His outward appearance grows more distorted as his inner torment increases. Accordingly, as I’ve been painting more and reflecting on the studies I’ve already made, I’ve been looking at them as Satan’s “stages of grief.” The torso study might be Satan in Hell after the fall from Heaven.

Satan torso, back view, oil and acrylic on canvas

If you look closer, you can see there’s more warm/cool confusion in this one than the wings study. The torso study is now stretched and ready to go, by the way, for anyone interested in purchasing it.

The warm/cool and textural confusion grows more pronounced in the leg study I completed a few weeks ago. That one could be Satan traveling through Chaos, his corruption nearly complete.

Satan leg, back view, oil on canvas

That’s it for this week! I’ll be posting again soon with more progress on the angel head drawings, oil studies, and more. Thanks for tuning in! Have a great week and keep creating.

Slowly but surely...

Hi y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! This week, I’m happy to announce that I’m now offering prints of the front-facing Procreate angel torso study. You can purchase them online via Etsy. I’m really pleased with how they turned out, so be sure to take a look!

Angel torso, front view, Procreate (print)

Angel torso, front view, Procreate (print, with pen for scale)

I’m selling two other prints on Etsy, too, and will be adding more soon, so feel free to poke around! As I shared in the last post, you can find the full range of products and services I’m offering on the “Shop & Learn” section of the website.

Now for the fun stuff! Over the past couple of weeks (sorry for the gap between posts, it’s been crazy), I’ve been hacking away at the remaining angel body parts. First, I managed to finish the oil study of the angel leg. This time, I got a lot more adventurous with the texture and color work, really emphasizing the visual chaos of the fallen angels.

Angel leg, back view, oil study

I’m seeing this one as a study for Satan as he travels through Chaos. It’s one of my favorite scenes in Paradise Lost — utterly bizarre, science fiction-esque, and sonically delightful. For anyone who’s interested, it’s the end of Book II.

I’ve also been working through some preliminary sketches of what the whole angel bodies might look like. As usual, I started with a pen and ink study. This time, rather than starting with a human study and distorting it, I Frankenstein’d together the various angel anatomy studies I’ve done thus far.

Angel body, back view, pen and ink

To get a better idea of where I might go color-wise with this, I also worked up a Procreate study.

Angel body, back view, Procreate

I’ve also been working on an oil study of the angel wings. Just to get a little variety, I’ve been pushing it in an unfallen angel direction, keeping the color and values relatively traditionally organized. I’ve been primarily referencing the pen and ink study of angel wings I did a couple weeks ago. You can find them both below.

Angel wings, back view, oil study (WIP)

Blue heron wings, back view, pen and ink (above); angel wings, back view, pen and ink (below)

The oil study is still in early stages, but I’ll have more on that soon. That’s it for this week. Thanks so much for tuning in. Have a great week and keep creating!