Todd M. Casey - Fine Art

Once again, I am in The Whistler House Museum of Art's Annual Juried Members Exhibit 2011. The Museum is the birthplace of James McNeil Whistler and provides the city of Lowell Massachusetts with beautiful art and history. I am humbled once again, as they chose to put my painting on the postcard that was mailed out for the exhibit. If you are in the area, come check out the exhibit. This year there are 51 artists that are part of the show, with a nice diversity of work. The piece I submitted is called "Gorch Fock" oil on linen, 20 x 24. The Gorch Fock was a German Ship built in 1933. During WWII the ship was used as a stationary office ship in Straslund. My wife and I are big fans of WWII history so researching is always a fun part of my process. Annual Juried Members Exhibit 2011 November 19 to December 30 Reception: November 19 from 2 to 4 pm

Like I mentioned in the last post, I've been doing portrait paintings on the weekend at the GCA. This one is Oil on Linen, about 21 hours (with the drawing and painting). I worked primarily with a flesh palette consisting of a Yellow String, Orange String, Red String and a Neutral String. I also use a full palette to get the highest chromatic colors when needed. Below is my transfer drawing and painting. Todd

I've been doing portrait drawing and painting on the weekends at the GCA. Here is a 6 hour drawing done with an HB pencil and white colored pencil, on Strathmore Grey paper. The length of this pose is for roughly 30 hours, so I"ll be transferring this to canvas and working with the drawing to do a finished painting. I'll try to post the work in progress. Todd

In January, The Whistler House Museum of Art will be hosting an evening class for Portrait Drawing and Painting. This class will concentrate on accurately drawing the figure from life in the traditional realistic manner. Over the course of the 4 sessions students will draw or paint from the model. Price for the class is $125 dollars per month (4 sessions) Tuesdays from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm January 10, 17, 24, 31 To sign up for classes, please email jdyment@whistlerhouse.org or call (978) 452-7641 Space is limited so Early Registration encourage!  This course wil be taught by Todd M. Casey. His artistic training involves studying at the Water Street Atelier in New York City. Todd has exhibited extensively over the last 5 years.  He is currently represented by Cavalier Gallery in Greenwich CT and Nantucket MA. www.toddmcasey.com Whistler House Museum of Art 243 Worthen Street Lowell, MA 01852-1822 www.whistlerhouse.org/  (978) 452-7...

Here is the my newest painting that I just sent off to Cavalier Gallery in Greenwich, CT. It should be in the Still Life show that will be from October 14th through November 4th, 2011. I'm hoping to have 2 more done for the show, so keep you posted. I've also attached the color study. Todd

From time to time Max invites me to paint with him at his studio in Long Island City. Its wonderful, as I get to see his approach to painting his large scale narrative paintings. These 2 paintings were done in about 1.5 hours each, and they were quick paintings as Max wanted to see what would fit best for his composition.

I'm posting my newest still life I finished about a week ago. Pretty happy with it. This is the first of two Elephant paintings. I'll post the other when its finished. t

Here is a new 3 hour painting done at the league on saturday mornings.

Today I'm posting my Munsell Neutral Scale. This is a useful tool when I'm painting still life's in my studio. The Neutral String is important as Value is probably the most important thing in setting up a painting. This was created with a sheet of Acetate and I painted oil paint mixed to the Munsell Chips on the back. Now I can check my color by daubing on the front (acetate) and then just wipe it off. The Munsell system breaks color down into Value, Hue and Chroma. I'll try to post later on Hue and Chroma.

I was accepted into this years 2011 Salon International at the Greenhouse Gallery in San Antonio Texas. It was a great experience to go to the awards and see the awardees, and to be part of the opening. I just found out I was selected as one of the Jury's Top 50, so I'm providing a link. http://www.greenhousegallery.com/cgi-bin/mp/salon/siawards.pl?Category=top50

I'm posting some poster studies that I've worked on in the last few month. They are for the 2 paintings that I'm working on now, and hope to have completed in the next few months. I've also posted the study for the last still life I completed. Poster studies are a very important part of my paintings. I try to finish the usually 5 x 7 painting in about 2-3 hours from life, so that my decisions are based on other decisions that are being painted. When form painting on the larger painting, I tend to focus on the small area that I'm rendering (sometimes referred to as window shading technique), but with the poster study I can focus on creating the picture as a whole. I then refer to the poster to make sure that those larger relationships are transferred to the final painting.

Today I'm posting a new painting that I completed a few weeks ago. Its my biggest still life painting I've done but I'm quite pleased with it. I'll post the poster study in a few weeks.

Last year I was able to work on doing a color wheel with Carlos Madrid. Carlos studied color theory with Michael Aviano for a few years. He had me come to his studio and work with him once a week over a 3 month span. I started by creating a value scale, based off of the Munsell Color System. From there I worked to get the color as accurate as I could, and worked mixing the lightest colors to the darkest colors. The end result of my color wheel represents the highest chroma of each color. After working the highest chroma, I then went and created a value string of each color, using my value scale. In the end I have a very valuable color wheel that I use when painting still life's.

I was fortunate enough to paint with my students at the Guild for my night class. The painting was done in 8 sessions for about 3 hours each session.

Here are some new one day 3 hour portraits from the League.