Marc Dalessio

While in Bagan I was fortunate enough to meet a group of Burmese landscape painters centered around a teacher, Maung Thiha. They work mostly in watercolor en plein air, and paint in acrylics from photos in their studios. Apparently, a century ago, a Burmese painter (whose name I forget) studied in London and then returned to Myanmar to teach at the art school in Mandalay. Today there are a number of working painters and teachers artistically descended from this one individual.

Having local painters to show me the best spots (and drive me around on their scooters) helped immensely. In exchange, I left them painting equipment and took some of Maung Thiha’s watercolors to try to sell for him in the off-season. Here are a couple of his watercolors, contact me if you are interested in purchasing one of these gems.

On the last day, the maestro asked me if I would paint his portrait. I only had time for a short sketch, but one of his students filmed the whole thing and I tried my best to explain sight-size portraiture while working.

We also had a small exhibition towards the end of the trip and invited the local artists. It was quite interesting to get their feedback on what subjects they liked from our oeuvre. One problem I had when they were trying to show me their favorite spots was that they wanted to paint the ruins which looked like European ruins, whereas I was interested in the more exotic (to me) subjects. I got the feeling they were a bit bored of painting temples and pagodas (there are almost 3000 in the 20 mile radius around them).

The interaction with this group of painters was probably a high point of the trip. If anyone else is planning a plein air excursion to Myanmar and will be passing through Bagan, I would highly recommend you stop by the Heritage gallery in New Bagan and ask them to show you the good spots.

Here is a short video from a quick portrait sketch yesterday morning. After a one-shot session like this I usually end up with a ton of paint on the canvas from pushing shapes around quickly. This is where scraping down with a palette knife is so useful. In fact, I would say scraping down between sessions at the beginning of a portrait is probably the second most useful thing I learned while studying portraiture (the first being the sight-size technique).

I have a short video of the scraping down process which I’ll add soon.

So I made the papers this week. A friend’s jewelry school was burgled a month or so ago the theives made off with 3 of my paintings. This week the police busted up the ring and in the appartment where they kept the stash there was a large collection of stolen art.

In the photos that made the papers they are holding up an old portrait of mine from ten years ago. Somewhat flattering I suppose.

I remember when I was studying painting in school there was a rash of thefts one week. The students who lost their work were upset for obvious reasons, but what was interesting was that the students whose work wasn’t stolen were also upset about the thief’s presumed offense to their skill.

Perhaps theft is really the sincerest form of flattery.

This post is for my portrait student in our discussion about lighting for portraits. I quickly pasted together a few examples to explain myself better.

The classic 3/4 view, light on both sides of the face with a strong ‘Van Dyck Z’. Painter stands between the window and the model:

Light on the far side of the face, half-tone or shadow on the nose:

Light from both sides, much more difficult to pull off in my opinion (the Serov on the left has light bouncing from everywhere in the room):

Half the face in full shadow, seems to very popular with self portraits:

I couldn’t find good historic examples of the high light-source, raccoon effect which is popular today. There are more lighting possibilities than just these four, but I figure this is a good start.

Someone sent me this link to a tutorial on lighting, one of the better ones I’ve seen.

I had intended on focusing more on my teaching this year. All things considered however, I still managed to get a lot done.

I’m quite pleased with my Florentine paintings this year. For years I haven’t painted seriously in the city as I felt somewhat bored of the views I see everyday. Then I got a commission to paint Piazza Tasso, which is not considered the most beautiful piazza in Florence, but it has a special meaning to me so I was very happy to be asked to capture it on canvas. Here is an image: 

The painting was quite successful (I felt, and the clients were happy). An antiquarian saw this in a small show I had and asked me to do a series of ‘unusual’ Florentine scenes for a show this October. The work is at the photographers at the moment, but I’ll try to post more when the images come back. The gallery website would not appear to be up and running at the moment…

I’m currently working on one of the larger portraits I’ve ever painted. I also have very little time to do it as the sitter is about to have a baby. Luckily the room where I’m working is the largest room I’ve ever had to do a portrait commission in, and it is so much easier to paint fast when you have this amount of distance to see the model from.

Here is a quick time lapse film of the first four days. A last minute idea using my cellphone camera, so the quality is not the best. The jumps in progress are because the battery kept dying…

 

This is a project I’ve wanted to work on for a while. An outdoor, full length self-portrait at midday in the summer. Lots of light everywhere.

At the moment I’m working on the composition and trying to figure out problems which will arise with the larger version.

Here are some early photos (cellphone camera):

An old film of a portrait sketch, finished in about 2 hours and a photo was taken every brushstroke. The ‘model’ was actually a professional photographer who had an appointment pushed back an hour and came over to kill time in my studio. I had to paint the portrait (fast), remember to take a photo after every brushstroke (using my point and shoot), and keep him entertained.

This winter we’ll have artificial light in the studio and I want to try a long project time-lapse film. With natural light the colors change a lot over the course of a day and the changing hue is too distracting when sped up.