So. New blog. First post.

I really like how brand spanking new blogs, fresh out of the shrink wrap, say, “Hello World!” I like to imagine some random person running outside with their arms wide and declaring to the heavens, “I am unique! Behold, here am I in the Cyberspace Sea sharing my thoughts and skills and overall awesomeness.” Just like everybody else with a blog.

Hmm.

Or I suppose this could just be the cool way of staying in touch with the family and friends I left back in Ohio. Especially my artsy friends. Shout outs to David Shankland, Heath Bennett, Robyn Helsel, Dorenda Watson and Batman, and my favoritest art student ever, Nicholas Bastaja! You have all helped shape me as an artist and I miss you very much.

If you are not from Ohio, that’s cool. And welcome! I moved to Utah a few months ago to apprentice under the incredible master artist William Whitaker. Through this blog it is my goal to record my artistic experiences (snore) and maybe some other stuff too (I recently took up rock climbing since, you know, I now live in the mountains and all. So maybe I’ll write about that).

Here’s a work in progress shot of one of my recent projects.

This painting is my first experience using Lead White. Before I’ve only ever used Titanium or Zinc. Each white has different qualities. Titanium, for instance, is very opaque while Lead is very transparent, allowing the underneath layers of paint to show through and giving the portrait a luminous quality. Lead White, however, looks horrible in photographs. I’ll try to do a more extensive post on the different whites in the future.