Studio Update: 

Saturday night, March 8th, I will be exhibiting recent work, Cast the Light, in my loft.

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The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship has published the second issue of its newsletter, Kaizen, featuring an interview with me. You can print out the interview, pdf file, at the above link.

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In late June at the Atlas conference, I will be giving the talk Figure the Future in Portland, Oregon. http://www.atlasevents.org/2008_summer_seminar.html

Figure the Future

The nude in art graced the civilizations of Ancient Greece, the Italian
Renaissance, and much of Europe through to the beginning of the 20th
century. In this presentation, painter Michael Newberry will explain how
the nude stands for more than titillation—that rather it is the
personification of the individual. He will argue that the nude
represents and complements the best humanist traditions and that a
flourishing future cannot do without the nude in art.

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The Mexico Plein Air Painting Workshop will be at the end of July or the first week in August. Contact me for more details.

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Mentor Program--Good Stuff!

The artists in my mentor program are doing great work. Below is Anita Murphy's recent pastel.

Anita is being disciplined. She is painstakingly working on the Grisaille of the chair below. Oil, 3x4 feet! Look at the detail image--incredible!

Robin Neudorfer absolutely nailed this plein air oil. Notice that all the colors shift in tone. The greens are different from one another. The mountains change up in tone. The little mark of rust color in the center! And really great movement of the plants swinging into the foreground.

Mary Woodul has begun in color on her 3x4' still life. The platter and the fruits are the Grisaille underpainting--Mary started with the dark background with the color overlay. No easy feat. I love the shifting hues of colors from the right bottom corner, warmer in hue, to the cool violets on the top left.

Mary also did this lovely pastel.

Sue Johnson recently completed this spiritual piece. I love how the woman is in the middle space with the planets rotating behind and in front of her.

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Studies, Charcoals, and Pastels

I am working everyday, several hours on Venus. The delay in the painting is simply that an indescribable something doesn't feel like my conception of Venus. I have been getting details correct, like the tilt of the chin and form of the eyes. What is fascinating to me is that I continue to go push myself. For example I don't really like doing hair--and Venus needs great hair! Every Sunday in my loft I host a life drawing session. Last week I did nothing my hair studies--and actually had a great time doing them.

This drawing below looks awful, but it is grid following the form of Venus' face--very helpful when I get stuck on the shape of a form, like how her cheek's form curves into the soft roundness of her jaw.

The biggest problem with Venus is that I started the painting with a live model, working direct on the canvas--I had no studies of the original model when I left Greece. I tried switching models, working direct again, but all kinds of problems arise, i.e. different body types and looks.

Below are two recent charcoal studies of two different women. The little squares are grids--I used them to transfer the painting's image to paper. Then working direct from the model I could see how I was making adjustments that were different from from the painting.

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I am continuing to finish drawings from the Cast the Light series. I will be exhibiting these and several other charcoal drawings March 1st, Saturday evening in my loft.

Giving a Hand

Left Behind

In last Sunday's life drawing session  I opted to make quick pastel drawings. I placed an orange transparency filter on the halogen lamp. The wall behind the model is white but the filtered light does radical changes to the highlighted and shadowed areas.

These color pastel studies got me thinking about continuing the Cast the Light series with female models, and instead of charcoal to do them in pastel.

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Hope you enjoyed this studio update.

Michael Newberry
New York--February, 2008