Trailer online

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McLeod Art/news

Youtube

Video trailer coming soon...

Having taken a score of pictures of a charcoal I've recently completed, I'll be making an inspirational/instructional video within the next week or so. To generate a little interest, I'll have a teaser trailer for it tomorrow.

website update

I've reverted back to the html/css code from my first website...just cleaned it up a bit. There will be lots of new paintings to come in the next couple of months.

Music

Portrait Society of America conference

This past weekend, I had the incredible pleasure of traveling to Washington, DC, to Portrait Society of America's annual conference. Gathering at one hotel for this occasion are the top artists in the world, including Everett Raymond Kinstler, Daniel Greene, Burton Silverman, Nelson Shanks, and Richard Schmid. The conference is set up to encourage artists and further the craft through teaching and sharing. Coupled with the conference is their annual portrait competition. Fifteen finalists were selected from among over 1000 entries; these paintings and sculptures were on display the whole weekend.

I got a chance to watch demonstrations from leading artists, meet many of the giants, and hang out with artists my age. In all, it was the most encouraging and challenging weekends for me as an artist. I'm absolutely thrilled about what I'll be painting in the months to come.

At dinner with my mentor Shane Neal, and the great Everett Raymond Kinstler:


On Sunday after the conference, I spent about 2 hours at the National Portrait Gallery. Here's a close-up of Sargent painting...I'll be studying this for years to come!

Sketchings

So...many times I'll have to break from the act of painting for a living and just sketch for fun. The charcoals are each about 10 minutes of my dog.

New Commission

I had my first meeting with a new client on Monday afternoon. Being an artist herself, she has a unique style and welcomes my own artistic creativity in the portraits of her two children, Edison (12) and Emme (10). So...I'm pumped! I love painting people, regardless of the pose, setting, or formality, but to basically be given free reign to interpret them and be as open as I would like is wonderful.

I took two sittings of about 15 minutes for each of them. I'll keep posting progress on this commission, so check in every so often.