Nest and Upcoming shows

Hey all,

Since I joined Conceptart.org in 2003, my eyes were opened to some talented artists that will make your eyes bleed in envy, but at the same time inspire you to do better. The same artists and more formed the powerful Safehouse Atelier which is already having some amazing shows and a great collective pool of artists are exhibiting together in one night, and it's bound to be an incredible show.

 The Third show entitled "The Humble Show" is a silent auction, one night only, Sunday November 20th at 7pm, bidding ends at 10pm. Seeing their work really made me work harder, and it still does. This is the nature of humility, first you need to be stripped away of your ego, and then you need to figure out how to rebuild. These themes were the subject of the nest drawing, which I really enjoyed working on. 
 I met and stayed with some of the artists earlier this year, they are all great people and I know it's bound to be a fun night if you can make it down in person, but otherwise the works are going to be posted online here.

I'll be exhibiting works from Anima with Phone Booth Gallery at the Art Du Vin wine bar for the group Show "Clap Hands", so if you are a fan of wine or art, or both then you should definitely head down.
 I've attached the flyer below for details, drawn by the great, talented Ryan Milner! It should be a fun night, there should be plenty of great art!
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It's pencil and pastel, 14" by 17" And we may be doing a print run, to help me figure out the demand, let me know if you'd be interested.

Click the image to open the larger res in a new window...

Gnostic Cosmic Rasputin

Got a couple new paintings in oil/pastel, same size, 8" x 10"

Painting on the left sits inside the cover. It's a bit ironic that I've ripped out pages from this new book, seems that thanks to the previous book I can hardly ever get to keep the pages inside now :)
The fuzzy writing is in Greek, "know thyself" which was inscribed in the Oracle of Delphi, Greece.
Should finish and post the nest drawing this week, unless something goes wrong :)

Cheers!

Nest drawing and tattoo in progress

Hey guys

Here's a piece I'm currently working on. I had initially mentally planned for a dark background but I may go with a light one with pastel touches behind the objects

I'm also really excited to share some progress shots of a tattoo that combines a couple if my artworks into one image on a sleeve. 

The artist is an ex Ashtons student, Mark Powell, looks like he's done a great job so far and I am really looking forward to seeing the final work.

These are only iphone shots, but we'll have better pics soon.

Cheers!

Here are the originals in case you haven't seen them.

various

Just a variety of different work here , have been doing a bit of freelance to keep funds going.

Couple of tee shirt designs

Prelim Study

Beyond Eden Arts

This painting was 8" by 10" it's oil/pastel and is up for sale through Thinkspace Gallery. You can see the piece I had with Gallery Nucleus on their website, it's called "Feeding Birds II"

Was happy to see that this drawing sold at the event last night, it was also used for an album cover for the musician Lumeet

Next gallery event: Beyond Eden 2011

Hey guys,

If you are free this weekend, Oct. 1st and 2nd, the Beyond Eden Art Fair is being hosted at the LA Municipal Art Gallery. It promises to be a great event to check out. I've been lucky enough to have been invited by Thinkspace gallery, other galleries showing there include Gallery Nucleus and Spoke Art is doing Quentin vs Coen Round three!
Here is a preview of one of the four works I've sent over, it's an oil painting on moleskine paper, I'll post up the final version this weekend

Cheers!

Oils painting

Before I start, a little self promotion, I have some spare moleskine pages on sale at the spoke art website, some are as low as $50 and go up to $150 I think.

 Only the ones with a number and not a name are for sale and they are unframed.


http://store.spoke-art.com/category/rod-luff

Please keep in mind that some of those are sold already. If you are interested you should email Ken and quote the number. I'm not getting rich off these, all proceeds go into framing and shipping costs I pay to have shows. :-)

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So I'm just gonna talk a bit about this process, it's not a tutorial so please don't expect to learn anything:P

 I drew up the figure to get the proportions and then sized it with GAC 100 by Golden. it is an artificial replacement for rabbit skin glue. You need to use a size because it stops the oil from penetrating the surface, which would eventually lead to rotting. Microbes can eat your paints, I guess that is pretty cool, but ultimately we want to delay entropy. I usually use about 3-4 layers.

more info:

"preparing a paint support" brought to you by golden.

I cut the double page out of the book because it was annoying to paint the figure with it cutting through the middle.

Then i blocked in a rough skin tone and some shadows.

As you can see it looks pretty crap at this point.

phase 2 I added some opaque colours and yes she gained a few kilos. I don't know why i scraped off parts of the block in and I guess i wanted to repaint the face ( a common theme in this work).

I cut back into the figure to fix it up and added some oil pastels in there for fun, but it still looks crap because I need to do the face and hands. More opaque on the sternum and boobs because the light is hitting it hard. 

Done the hands and arm here, adding the warms of the knees and some fancy little squiggle things to entertain myself it is pretty fun at this point.

Adding some random colours and seeing what happens, I don't know why. Trying to tighten it up and finish because I could paint and repaint things forever. It's fun to see how much chroma you can get away with (or not).

The sun crept up on me and that was a probably a good sign I should go to bed. 

And here is the final. 

later that day, I scraped off the head, cut the GAC and paper so I had to reprime it with GAC and then repaint the head, so that's why there's weird texture on it.  It looks a lot better in person or try the hi res by clicking the image.

Please excuse my self indulgent detail shot, keep in mind its bigger than the actual painting. 

You can see the shadows where I cut the paper by accident when I was scraping off the dry paint to repaint it.

Thanks for looking!

A drawing

here's a sketch on bristol, 8 x 10, used a colour pencil and a tiny bit of pastel.

It was difficult to get this one right, I had to fail a few hard worked drawings (all of which were about a third the size.). I'll be doing some more head studies to try and get better.

Here's one of the disasters:

prep

these are just some sketch studies in pencil/pastel to work things out. I still need to do separate studies to work out the composition, colour and tone.

Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to the blog, if I reach 500 I may do a little sketch giveaway to celebrate.

 more updates coming in the next few days

Violin II

This was a really oil fun painting to do. The block in was for trying to get everything simplified and clear, and then the last stage was the more enjoyable part, experimenting with some pastels, texture and opaque/transparent effects.

Things that came and are ready for tasting.

Here are the full versions of the works I had showing at the Spoke Art group show last night, "A taste of things to come." I might post up some photos from the opening night later on.

I've got a few more moleskine paintings to post up soon, so stay tuned!

If you'd like price info then please email me at rod@rodluff.com as the prices are very affordable.

You can catch more of my art on:

Twitter
Facebook

Cheers

Wind Study

Pencil, acrylic, pastel

8" by 10"

Wind

pencil pastel

15" by 20"

Violin

8" by 10"

Oil/pastel

A taste of things to come

Hey guys, 

I'll have three works available at the new Spoke Art group show "A taste of things to come" in San Francisco, CA. The show opens Thursday the 4th of August from 6- 10 pm and runs through until the 25th. The only images here that aren't in the show are the hand studies.

I hope if you are in town and are free that you go, because the other artists are really awesome, so you are bound to be inspired!

There should be more coming this week, and I'll post the full size images once the show opens.

To see the larger image, just right click and open in new window.

Cheers!

Trippy art

Hey guys,

I'm back home after three months away on my trip, and the plunge to do all these shows and take the time and money to be there seems to have been a success, I sold half the Nucleus pieces, about 3/4 of the Anima pieces, and the Spoke Art show sold out completely!

I'm excited to be making art again and also happy to be here with you guys again in the blogosphere posting art from my trip.

 I also had a lot of fun times in SF and LA, meeting a lot of inspiring artists many of whom I was familiar with, being an old regular at Concept Art.org since around 2003.

I stayed in SF for about a month, and stayed in several different places the whole time, and as a result I had a lot of art I needed to send people as gifts! I'm still working my way through it all, but here are some:

Random pages

I also made it up North of SF to do some sketching and Landscape painting with the awesome artist Sergio Lopez!

He made a blog post about it too so go check it out, has some studies of other places we went to and the blog is worth a look regardless.


Top two photos by Sergio

Landscape galactic super action paint fun time!

I had a few troubles....wind being my enemy this day,  all part of the experience!

I also did some sketching at the Safehouse Atelier run by Carl Dobsky, go check them out as they are brilliant, brilliant I say!!!!!

A portrait sketch from one night session:

Here is a painting by Jeremy Mann of my mug, I sat for one of the portrait sessions at the atelier while they played Australian folk music about tying a Kangaroo down and R Kelly, hahaha!

I also did some model drawing in SF in the Spoke Art gallery (previous post). Using the study I made in the life session, I finished a couple more drawings. I might do a few more if I get the time.

Thanks again to Magdaleen Veen for modelling that day.

Click this one for a better, larger version.

As part of the video that Shaun Roberts is making, we went up to Golden Gate Park to get some shots during the late afternoon. He did a fantastic job of capturing the beautiful light that streamed in through the trees. I'm really excited to see how the video of our collaboration comes out, there are other finished ones on his website under 'studio visits'.

Here's the sketch I made:

Sorry to dump so many images on you all! 

Cheers