New Sketches! New Ideas! Jess and Eric’s House

Over the last couple of months, I haven’t been as active on my site. Hopefully, I’ll be able to start regularly updating. There are two major things I’m working on right now, both of them pretty experimental. The first is Jess and Eric’s House, which is a working title (that will probably become the actual title…

Oh yeah, and also…the tree of Life

I was looking through my blog posts and realized I had never posted about this as a final painting. This painting was equal parts done by me, Stuart Diller, and Amanda Shepard. Nathan Tavenor came on at the end and helped us push through and finish. His energy was really important, even coming later to…

Herzogs!

Two versions of Herzog. The second one is the final one. It’s almost the same, but the eye and lips are slightly different.

New Worlds! Herzogs!

It’s been a while since I posted anything. I’ve been working on a landscape (for my brother Will who just got married) as well as a whole new kind of project. I’ve been attempting to “sketch” using publisher and chopped up digital images to make a collage. If this is successful, I’ll be able to…

Nathan Van Patter and the Quest of the Seven Dragons

….and, we’re back. That’s right! For those of you who might not know, about five years ago I set a goal of making seven great dragons before I died. The first two dragons were made of wood. This red one: And this Green one: (Also, does anyone have a better photo of this? I can’t find…

Photo Dump

I have a backlog of photos that I’ve been taking, thinking I’d paint them. I’m a little stuck, so I’m uploading the photos to my computer and thinking about them. If anyone has any input about what I should paint, I’d love to hear it. I’ve been meditating on making a knobbly self portrait. While…

Kandinsky and the Gap

Recently I’ve been reading a book about Kandinsky. I went to an Impressionist exhibit with my fiancé in Philadelphia. I had forgotten, maybe, how good paintings could be- I left in a weird state of altered consciousness. I felt kind of elated, melancholy, and discouraged. I realized that the paintings I was enjoying I would…

The Parking Deck

The Parking Deck I took this picture while hanging out with Jeff Song (who might have his portrait on this website soon, stay tuned). What I I like about it is that I think I got at the beautiful/slightly ominous nature of the parking deck when painting this picture. I tried this before with No Man’s…

And……..Back: Penn and Atlantic, Family Dollar

So, since making that enormous tree with my team from church, my regular painting has not been happening as consistently. This is the first painting I’ve done since the tree project was completed. I’m really happy with this. I’ve been reading books on Van Gogh, color theory, and mixing colors. This painting enjoys some of the…

Where did all the Paintings Go? (Part 2): Tree of Life

The very first thing to say about this project is that I couldn’t have gotten this far without the help of Stuart Diller and Amanda Shepard. This is being made up for my church, the Upper Room. The expenses for the materials have been generously provided by the church, which is a hug buy in…

The Year in Review- Where did all the Paintings Go? (Part 1)

So, this year I’ve been more disciplined than ever. Surprisingly, then, when I counted how many paintings I had made, I had to stop counting at seven. Why is that? Well, I’ve been trying to figure that out, and I figured that as I do I could post about where my painting time has gone….