Final Day of Portrait Society of America 2015 Conference

Sunday morning there was a symposium by a group of eminent artists, followed by two drawing demos by Burton Silverman. It is always interesting to hear successful artists talk about their journey and offer pearls of wisdom.

Sculptor Rhoda Sherbell with Daniel Greene

Everett Raymond Kinstler and artist/author Samuel Adoquei

Mr. Adoquei talked about inspiration. He has a couple of wonderful books available, including The Origin of Inspiration which applies to any creative field. If you do not have Mr. Adoquei's books, make sure to add them to your library!

Mr. Greene showed a number of his series of art auction paintings and shared how he created them. He also offered a great tip about storing leftover paint - he said to be careful with freezing paint, since bloom can occur due to moisture that remains on the surface of the paints.

Mr. Kinstler talked about how painting is a means to communicate and how important it is to have passion and imagination. He recommended that we should assess our paintings by asking how much we can remove that is not contributing to what we are trying to say.

I did not get a photo of the wonderful work shown by the other artists, but here are a couple of the newer works by Mr. Kinstler. 

Painting by Everett Raymond Kinstler

Drawing by Everett Raymond Kinstler

The final presentation was by master artist Burton Silverman, who created two drawings while talking about, "finding your own voice". He said that mistakes are very helpful. Making corrections helps you find out if you have really gotten to the heart of what you want to say. If you make a correction, you need to see what that does to the other decisions you have made. Change allows for imaginative speculation and lets air in.

When speaking of sincerity in art, he said that, "children are rotten", (which got a huge laugh from the audience) and so perhaps the angelic, dressed in white, image that is often seen may not be the only choice.

Mr. Silverman also spoke about how we can learn, even steal, from each other in that we can employ similar techniques. Community is important.

Burton Silverman

Burton Silverman's grandchild in his sketchbook

Delightful drawing from Burton Silverman's sketchbook

For the first drawing he employed a soft graphite pencil in a holder, a stomp and a kneaded eraser. Practical tips included using a pencil holder to use those pencil stubs you may have lying about tour studio. 

He mentioned that General's HB is harder than his preference and seems to be holding a bit of a grudge after mentioning a bad experience with customer service many years ago, which I found rather amusing. He complained about something being wrong with some pencils and didn't get a reply. Note to art material manufacturers - don't tick off a master artist!

Drawing #1 by Burton Silverman

For the second drawing, Mr. Silverman used a Wolfe's carbon pencil, that is a little harder than General's, so more controllable, with more subtle definitions. He also employed a little color in the cheeks for the second drawing. 

Drawing #2 by Burton Silverman