Steve Carpenter, painter of world renown is giving back

Steve Carpenter is a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School, Portland, Oregon. He is an example of when your high school teachers and friends believe you can be an artist to the fullest depth of the word, the seed of the dream can materialize with work and focus. In high school Steve's biggest dream was to be an illustrator like Norman Rockwell which he accomplished early on in his career. He was a commercial artist for Disney as part of a rich art journey taking him to Europe where he was a fine arts painter. Recently he returned back to the United States to give back to the arts by creating a school in New York. Steve says anyone can learn to draw and learn from him by watching a four hour long video on building a portrait.
Below is his painting "Cosmos Dialous I".

Below Steve's teacher, Henry Heine's demonstration from years ago has sharp differences and faint similarities.

"The Mechanical Birds" by Henry Heine was part of his lesson. He showed us a number of examples of cubist painters and talked about the history of science impacting the artists of the early 20th century. Artists learned from science that there were more ways to see. Mr. Heine, also, demonstrated the process at work. He applied the paint with a sprayer and used printing techniques as well as brushes. He demonstrated an energetic attitude and promised us a break through where we would let our hair down, feel freedom, and promised it would be great fun for us when we make a break through where creative expression would flow. During the 60's there was a movement in art education to paint from our own notions and disregard the tradition of representational painting. This philosophy produced practitioners of painting who complain. Many felt misguided because they don't know what they are doing when painting abstracts. During the three years we were with him, Heine gave us an understanding of abstracting the essence and directional guides based on art history in many of his assignments.

Henry Heine somewhere in the cosmos is very proud of Steve. To learn more about Steve click on the links in blue and underlined above.

Inanimate things or people the most difficult to paint?

I find no difference in difficulty whether I am painting something alive or inanimate. I paint their gesture and energy. When I am painting the rocks I feel myself as a rock. The gesture of the rock comes from its skelton-like creation standing up to water and wind. When I am painting the ocean water instead of picking a still moment. I do a dance of gestures as though I were to paint. I feel slish, slosh, kazame of water moving into the rocks pushed by weather and tidal forces. My muscles do the planning in a state completely in the moment. Theoretically my goal is to live in tha moment.
The end results do not always flow. But when they do I am pleased.

February 3rd, Seal Rock Sunset

Seal Rock - 60 degrees F.-slight breeze - 10 foot swells

Wishing to correct for the scale of Seal Rocks and the early morning sun light on them, I painted over the on location experience. I think this one was a learning experience.

Review of e-book,Golden Chains by Rain Truax

Rain calls her books Romances with an Edge. GOLDEN CHAINS is one of many books each with aspects of Rain's creative life. This one is from her art involvement. Rain is also a sculptress like her main character, Ravine. In GOLDEN CHAINS Rain's philosophy of art pretaining to art education and business is woven into a suspenseful, entertaining murder mystery/love story set on a present day imaginary, small college campus in Portland, Oregon.

In order to read her book, I downloaded Kindle for PC's found through a Google search. I purchased the book from an Amazon link on Rain Truaxes' web site .

Oystercatchers' rocks at Seal Rock

Completed at home with the aid of Rain's photographs

Painting in progress before finishing it at home. I am not sure the desire of making the oystercatchers more distinct really improved the painting.

Inspirations for painting from the Oregon Coast

Boiler Bay Lincoln City

Favorite weed at Painted Hills

Painted Hill Photos

Painted Hills, Oregon are a lesson in painting

The cracked texture of these dolimite clay hills inspires me to pay close attention to enriching my colors by applying them so they are textured.

Watercolor Magic Workshop results

The Oregon Fish Hatchery Research Center Arts and Crafts workshop at Fall Creek was today. In both the morning and afternoon class there were a number of children with their families. It was nice to see the liveleness of young people's work. It helps us adults too. This piece was done by a nine year old boy.


This workshop is the first time a student copied a small digital image looking at his camera - a picture fresh in his mind just taken on his way to the workshop. I was at a loss to help him because he was almost done before I noticed he was using a camera. My handy empty slide holder would have been too large to apply to his tiny screen. On larger photographs an empty slide holder window moved about the picture often helps to focus on a doable painting. The student's work, I am critical of the method not the student's ability, was a wonderful example of the flaws of low resolution photos. The elements of trees, fog, water were flat within each of their areas.

Using the digital camera as a tool could be more productive. Even copying an image could be a rewarding experience, if he understood that the elements are more individual in color, texture and degree of sharpness than on the camera screen. Interpreting the photo makes it more personal, poetic, and interesting. One way to interpret is to count the number of trees, rocks, clouds. Decide which one or ones you love most. Labor over the ones you love the most. If they are not turning out the way you want, look at the camera image to be refreshed.

Goal number 1 of the workshop is to make a memory of a time you enjoyed painting observing nature with others excited about seeing in new ways. The memory can be framed and hung in your home.

Goal number 2 is to be confident in a technique that will enable more family painting outings in nature. This year I had a group of friends as well as families. Maybe we will get together soon during a costal storm to paint the waves.

Splash Down of Silver Salmon

Fall Creek Fish Hatchery Festival watercolor workshop

This will be my seventh year teaching watercolor the first Saturday of November. One class will be at 10:30 AM and the other after lunch. Other classes will be in silk screen, leather working fish prints and others.
I'll be covering making marks and how our body works to make them the way we want. Also how our life experience in decision making can carry over to making watercolor painting. The goal is to show that the students know more about how to paint than they thought. Last I'll have my new ideas on how to make watercolor sketch books.
For more on past workshops click on blog label below.

Painting memory of Cascade Head this September

Black and white ditital photographic inspiration

Abstraction of lanscape painted in the rain

Saved painting from 11 years ago.

Today the yellow jackets were attracted to me and my paint. Then it started raining very hard so I took my paints inside and cleaned the lids and packed them away under the motor coach. I am ready to go home.

Chinook painting #3

Painting jumping salmon in the rain

Acrylic and alcohol before and after

photos of river water

Watercolor painting at Cascade Head

Praying Mantis Photographs

Acrylic painted paper, collage, and glitter

Early sunrise atmsosphere

Acrylic painting with rags started in high humidity

Inspiration for today's acrylic sunrise painting

Inspiration for sunrise paintings

September 13, I saw a subject I wanted to paint from memory and not from a photograph. But then I had difficulty with the mud flats exposed by the low tide. They appeared rather blue and the blue that I first painted read as flat water.

Golden Light on River Banks painted in Acrylic

Oregon Waterfall, oil on canvas

Approaching Oslo

Oslo Fortress and Museum of the Resistance

August 2, painted from the Eurodam Silk Lounge on the 11th deck.

Hello again.

This is a drawing from a sketchbook I kept on a cruise in Northern Europe.

July Ocean Spray

The curve is an element of design in 2D art

I am looking at old paitings and art to decide what curves connect the viewer with emotion. So I am publishing some old blogs with a fresh interest. Fresh I hope.

It has become increasingly difficult to post on my blog. I miss spell check but I can live without it. But when I cannot see the pictures I amposting in the edit posts screen, I am upset. Has anyone else experienced these changes on Blogger?