Opera Oils

Illustrations for the Boston Lyric Opera, 2008-09 season! A really fun set of paintings to work on.

The above image is for the opera "Rusalka," A predecessor of "The little Mermaid." although I don't know which came first, the opera, or Has Christian Andersen's story. Either way, I believe it began as a Russian folk tale.

This one is for "Les contes d'Hoffmann," or "The Tales of Hoffman"

The above image is for "Don Giovanni," as is the image below. The painting below was mostly complete when the needs of the Boston Lyric Opera suddenly changed and a new painting was required. They're only using the one above, but you get to see both.

Above is the cover for the season brochure.
Below are some sketches and color studies leading up to the final oil paintings.

Some Things That I See

More sketches.

This fist page is made up, the rest are from life.

Figure Drawing and the Search for Gray Paper

My gray paper sketchbook just ran out. It was a sketchbook that I had laying around for several years and just last fall I decided to start using it regularly for figure drawing. Now it turns out that no one makes gray paper sketchbooks anymore. I find this mildly frustrating.



I'm even willing to bind my own sketchbook. However, the only gray paper I can find at a reasonable price for buying 80 sheets of is pads of pastel paper, but pastel paper has too much tooth for these little drawings. Alas, I may be stuck figure drawing on white paper for a while.