David Shevlino Art Blog

2012-02-28T23:42:00.002-05:00

I designed the cover art for my next DVD video available through my website in April. It features four demos which focus on the idea of simplifying form.

2012-02-05T22:13:00.000-05:00

I've started working on another video DVD. This painting will be included as one of the demos.

2012-01-27T11:06:00.001-05:00

For years I've been wanting to use my red living room couch in a figure painting. I finally took some photos and did a small sketch. Hopefully it will lead to some other ideas.

2012-01-17T18:29:00.001-05:00

I've been working on some paintings by using an acrylic under painting, which can be dried pretty quickly. Then I go right into it with oil.

2011-12-16T11:34:00.002-05:00

I've been painting some live models lately. This is one I liked in particular. I'll be teaching some figure painting workshops in 2012. The first is in Yardley, Pa at Artists of Yardley

2011-12-10T12:22:00.002-05:00

This is something I did recently on Mylar. First I did a little bit of under painting with acrylic paint. After that was dry, I went in with oil paint and scraped/wiped away areas which let the underlying acrylic show through.

2011-11-26T12:48:00.001-05:00

I did several demo paintings while teaching at the Scottsdale Artists' School last week. This was the last of them.

2011-11-18T22:25:00.000-05:00

This is a demo I did for my class at the Scottsdale Artists School. 16 x 20

2011-11-15T19:45:00.002-05:00

I'm teaching an "alla prima" painting workshop at the Scottsdale Artists School in AZ for a week.

2011-11-01T11:20:00.001-04:00

I did this recently. Figures that have a lot of movement in them really lend themselves to the kind of painting I've been doing lately.

2011-10-08T13:24:00.001-04:00

This is another self portrait I decided not to wipe out. It's 11 x 10 on panel.

2011-09-16T17:13:00.002-04:00

I've been doing a lot of self portraits lately. Most of them get wiped out or painted over. This is one I decided to keep. I've always had the most difficult time with paintings of myself in that there are two opposing forces at work. There is the painter in me trying to remain objective about the subject in the mirror, scrutinizing every aspect of my face. Then there is the less courageous/insecure part of myself being very subjective about what I see. It's a very humbling experience to look hard at one's self ...and even more humbling to look deep inside beyond the surface.

2011-08-25T18:27:00.003-04:00

I have many old photos of my son when he was younger. I've been going through them looking for subjects to paint. This is one I did recently. Oil on canvas 25 x 19.

2011-08-11T15:52:00.006-04:00

I've made a couple of Giclee prints of my work. This painting of laundry blowing in the Maine summer breeze was quite popular...so here it is in print form available at www.davidshevlino.com. It's printed on 100% rag paper.

2011-07-16T21:37:00.002-04:00

This painting is the subject of the demonstration in my new DVD "PAINTING LOOSELY."
I shot the progress of the whole painting from start to finish.

2011-07-12T16:40:00.002-04:00

I'm coming into the home stretch with my new DVD. I've just finished designing the cover art for the jacket. It will be ready for release July 25, 2011

2011-06-30T20:30:00.002-04:00

Work on my new DVD is coming along slowly, but surely. It's divided into two demos. One is an alla prima portrait and the other is a painting of sumo wrestlers. I'm also explaining a lot of technical stuff about materials and techniques. Doing several workshops over the past few months has informed my teaching style as to what students want to know. I'm hoping to have the video done by late summer.

2011-06-21T08:14:00.001-04:00

This is a figure demo I did at a recent painting workshop in Atlanta. I had about 16 students in the class and also did a still life and portrait demo over 3 days.

2011-05-19T18:12:00.002-04:00

After many months of thinking about it, I have started working on producing another DVD. One of the paintings featured will be the above sumo wrestlers.

2011-04-27T13:21:00.001-04:00

I noticed some orchids at a local store recently and decided to buy one to paint. This is one of the most exquisite flowers I've seen. The painting is 12 x 10 on panel. I did a quick under painting and let that dry before I went back into it directly. I did the under painting because I wanted some strong opacity in the whites of the flower.

New Paintings at Rosenfeld Gallery, Philadelphia

2011-04-13T16:57:00.003-04:00

This is a new painting I'll be exhibiting in my show at the Rosenfeld Gallery in Philadelphia May 1-22.
Several years ago I was spending a lot of time at the pool of my local YMCA with my son. I became intrigued by the effect of the water; it gave the body a weightless feeling and the perfect context for abstracting the figure. I did some research and found an underwater casing for my digital camera and started taking photos.

2011-04-10T20:54:00.003-04:00

This is a small painting I did in one day. It was painted very quickly. My intention was to stay very loose with it and to convey a sense of movement and spontaneity. To do that I find it requires building up a certain amount of momentum in the paint surface. There's an element of chance and trial-and-error in order to arrive at the end result. Once I get all pistons firing at once, I know it's time to stop.

IN THE STUDIO DVD

2011-03-13T19:05:00.010-04:00

It's been about nine months since I produced my DVD "In the Studio." In the months before I released it, had anyone told me that I'd be able to film, edit, produce and market a DVD entirely by myself, I would not have believed them. Apparently I have a knack for film making.
Here's how the whole thing came about.
A few years ago my brother-in-law loaned me a video camera. Around that same time I got my first Mac and started using imovie to edit some videos. In December of 2009, after watching my friend John Thornton make a slew of videos with his camcorder and Final Cut, I decided I wanted to get my own high def camera and give Final Cut a try. At first I just played with it, then on a lark I decided to film the progress of a painting I was doing of two sumo wrestlers. I put the sumo video on Youtube and was amazed at the response I got. In the spring of 2010 I started filming the progress of a figure painting, thinking I would upload it to Youtube. Someone saw my sumo video on Youtube and asked if I'd be interested in having them produce a video of a painting demo. This got the wheels spinning in my head and within a week I decided I wanted to produce my own video about my artwork and painting methods. I took the footage I was shooting of the figure painting and some other footage of a still life and used those as the basis for my DVD "In the Studio." It was an enormous amount of work, especially writing a script for the narrative, which took several weeks. My brother Stephen played the piano sound track. In July 2010 I released the video and have been selling it since. Next month "The Artist's Magazine" will be featuring the DVD in an article about me and my work for their May 2011 issue.

2011-03-03T14:09:00.004-05:00

I just finished this painting. Oil on canvas 26 x 29. Part of what I like about painting sumo wrestlers is the interaction between the figures; there's a wonderful sense of rhythm and movement as they struggle to overcome one another. They also convey a feeling of weight and tension. All of these qualities make them particularly well suited for a quick and fluid paint application.

Teaching

2011-02-25T14:34:00.007-05:00

After many years of exhibiting my work in commercial galleries, and with an economic downturn forcing my NY gallery to close, I have begun teaching painting workshops. Teaching is a new discovery for me and opens up what I do as a painter to a whole new audience. I find students are very eager to learn about painting and to absorb whatever knowledge and experience I have to share. It's very gratifying to me to have an audience which is enthused about painting and how an artist uses his/her craft as a form of self expression. This is very different from what I have grown accustomed to in the world of exhibiting and selling through commercial art galleries. In commercial galleries it's mostly about creating a commodity which can be marketed and sold to a much different audience....one which (to varying degrees) doesn't know much at all about art and can often put pressure on an artist to keep doing the same thing over and over again.

2011-02-25T14:15:00.005-05:00

This is a small 19 x 17 life study I did a couple of months ago. It was painted alla prima. I used poppy seed oil to keep the paint surface very wet while my model posed over 3 consecutive days. There's an effect you can get when paint is still wet that is just not possible after it has dried. Namely being able to move everything around in one layer and fuse edges together...or smearing and dragging paint layers. The light source was from daylight balanced florescent photo lights, which give off a nice enough color.

2011-02-23T19:48:00.001-05:00

This is a painting from Feb 2011. It's similar in concept to a painting I did a few years ago from a series of photos I shot in my backyard. I've always been intrigued by aerial views and the unique grid-like perspective they lend to a composition.....so I got a model and ladder then started shooting. I used late afternoon light for the figure. The long cast shadows were contrived as a compositional device, as was the chair. The whole painting was created from separate images, giving me lots of freedom to arrange the composition just as I would set up a still life.