Aaron Pickens Art

Me at the closing of my first solo show at Bowling Green State University. Woot!

Photograph by: Bianca Garza 

Photoshop sketches with digital photography. 

I have been working on a concept of me "Caught In A Pickle."

I started the under painting finally last night. The underpainting was done in acrylic. I will probably go back over it later on today to refine the under painting and begin with oil soon.

I also started this little robot in acrylic. I will start with oil back over it later on today. "Robots are people too... right?" 

I also had the opportunity to show in the Bates Gallery at Edinboro University. Although my submission was unexpected and very last minute, I was more than happy to have participated. 

I normally paint on one or two layers in Photoshop, which usually causes a poor handling of the edges for me. Something I will work on in the future, but for the time being I tried to use the wonders of technology while rendering something from life. I think that I need to seperate the values more. 

This is a study of a painting by Dice Tsutsumi, http://www.simplestroke.com/, who maybe one of my favorite artists currently. I love his style, and the deceptively simple way in which he renders form. It's so good! 

After going through Dice Tsutsumi's website there was a short tutorial that caused an epiphany for me. Although I am still sorting out the details, essentially he uses on three value ranges, darks, mids and highlights. Of course... this something that has been mentioned repeatedly through out art education, but what caused me to have the "Oh..." moment, was that with in these value ranges, the use of temperature shift to turn the form. 

This may not be any profound statement to most painters, but for me it started to make a little more sense then it had previously. The digital sketch of the mug was exercise I completed as I worked through the tutorial. I accidentally didn't save the final version, which was a little more refined than what is shown. The robot acrylic painting is my first attempt to put Dice's tutorial into a piece of my own. Hopefully it turns out one tenth as good as his! 

Any and all critiques are more than greatly appreciated. Thank You!