The Unveiling of Jeff Hein’s Painting

May 7, 2011 by blog | Leave a comment

The unveiling last Saturday at the personal studio of Jeff Hein, and his latest painting was met with admiration, and comments of its beauty and mastership.  It was a full house, with friends, family, collectors and admirers, enjoying the unveiling, as  you had to carefully squeeze by smiling faces and snippets of conversation and laughter to maneuver thru to Jeff’s painting on display.   I dare say one of the only places that did have room at times, was a respectful distance of a couple of feet, in front of his painting.  People seated near his painting , sat in silence contemplating and admiring, while others took pictures and discussed it up close with friends.  Jeff could be found to be deep in conversation with small groups, explaining his process and painting, or gesturing and talking to individuals throughout the night. 

This painting and its growth and process, was  7 months in the creating, for Jeff Hein.    Many times, visitors and us in the studio, would watch Jeff paint, we would often think that some of the figures in his painting were finished, only to find out surprisingly from Jeff, that to his eye, they were far from being finished and resolved.  To watch this growth over the months was a valuable learning process for both me,  Jeff’s  visitors, readers of the blog, and for the other students in the Hein Academy of Art. 

Thank you all for coming out and sharing the evening with us, it was a pleasure to have spent time with some old friends and wonderful to have met  new ones.

This coming up season of spring and summer are going to see some interesting and exciting blog entries for Jeff Hein and his paintings.  I am looking forward to it, as I know you are! Until then, have a great weekend, and ciao!

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Invitation to View Jeff Hein’s Newest Work of Art

April 21, 2011 by blog | Leave a comment

You and your friends are personally invited to the unveiling of

Jeff Hein’s newest work of art.


This will be the only and last opportunity to view his painting in the United States.


• When:  Saturday,  April  30,  2011   from 6 – 9 pm.

• Where:   Hein Academy of Art –  16w  700s,  Salt Lake City,  Utah 84101     (801)502-9185

• Light Refreshments will be served

We look forward to seeing you there!

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American Painting Video Magazine

April 1, 2011 by blog | Leave a comment

 

I’ve been Privileged enough to be included on the spring issue of American Painting Video Magazine. I am in good company in this issue. Painter Michael Klein is the creator of this magazine and it is sponsored by Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine. Klein is an incredible painter who has sacrificed his own painting time to travel, film and edit this video magazine. He tells me it is a passion project for him in order to bring what he considers to be the best living painters to one location for us. If a man of his caliber believes in it that much, you artists and collectors out there ought to give it a look and support the cause. Its just 10 bucks an issue.

Check it out here

http://www.americanpaintingvideomagazine.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p5usd3sVDpU

Posted in News

Behind the Scene Details

March 26, 2011 by blog | Leave a comment

Jeff Hein has been working constantly on his multi-figure oil painting this week, and has the background and most of the foreground of the surrounding jungle completed.  The plants he was using to paint from have found new homes or places throughout the studio.    The mannequins have moved in closer again, as Jeff has been making some new additions to the attire of both of the children that help to move the eye of the viewer, and  break up the larger fields of color of their dresses.   The robe of the adult figure is nearly complete with two small areas needed to be refined.  Cast shadows have been added by overhanging branches and a sense of filtered light has seeped into the background.

Today,  Jeff had his assistant, Jenna, make a small leather purse, as part of the attire of one of the children. After Jenna hand sewed the design  he had in mind,   Jeff then lay the  purse loosely into the painting while it hung on the shoulder of one of his mannequins.  Next week, his models  will be coming back into the studio, so that he can finish up their faces, arms and some toes. Until next time, Ciao!

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Sunlight and Bird Song Amoung the Trees…Inside the Studio.

March 12, 2011 by blog | Leave a comment

detail of background and foreground in progress by Jeff Hein

One of the  major additions is all of the foliage and jungle plants added along the top of the painting, and throughout most of the background, foreground and parts of the middle ground on the left side of the painting.  These were painted from life, from the plants brought in specifically for this purpose, with the skylight filtering soft sunshine from overhead.  Jeff is still deciding as to how many layers or times he will go back into these plants.  Most of them have one to two layers on them, as Jeff would painstakingly paint a stroke of dark green, and then change it by either hue or value to continue along the same small leaf.  He has not touched the ground or dirt, and you can see that the foot and arm of the two visible figures are not even started yet.  These body parts will be awaiting a live model session, as Jeff will also be going back into the faces of each of the three figures and adjust color, temperature, form, light and shadow some more. 

We piled into the car for a small field trip today to a local pet shop to find some small South American birds and finches, that Jeff Hein will be drawing and then possibly adding into his painting.  Either way, the Hein Academy now has the pleasant sweet trill of bird song in the background, along with the sunlight coming thru and the jungle trees in a corner, it makes for a very relaxing atmosphere.

A quick note to those interested…Please visit the Hein Academy blog to see a small clip of a facinating lecture and discussion by art historian Micah Christensen. 

http://heinacademy.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/cheating-exploring-the-relationship-between-technology-and-art-from-the-renaissance-to-today/

 

 

 

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Twigs and Leaves

March 1, 2011 by blog | Leave a comment

Jeff Hein painted from life using one of the larger jungle trees that he has in his studio for reference for his multi-figure painting.  He was working on the top left area of his painting, working swiftly and deliberately.  He said it was satisfying and fun for him to work the leaves in one sitting, and know that they are pretty much done as they are.  They are painted with more of a thick application on top of the warmer thinner background. I was fascinated to see that Jeff would mix his paint on his palette, squint up at the tree leaves, find his place, lay  one stroke of paint along a leaf, and then immediately go back to his palette and remix a slightly different temperature to lay another stroke of paint along that same leaf.  I asked him why he did this instead of mixing one color and laying it down where ever he saw it in multiple places; I was thinking efficiency.  He replied that there were several reasons why he preferred to paint stoke by stroke. The main reason was to reload his brush, as he wanted to have a very thick application to these leaves and build up the paint, so one stroke was just enough for the effect he was wanting to create. The other reason was that he liked to build up several temperatures in one area.  He showed me one such area, where on a leaf, he had laid down a very warm green, and then on top of that he painted a cool blueish green of the same value.  Jeff left some of the warmer green to show thru.  The leaf, then had this wonderful subtle temperature changes along its length with a much lighter highlight on one side added on afterwards. 

I love one of the twigs in the area he worked on today. I know, it’s a silly thing to be captivated by a twig.  I told Jeff and he laughed and joked that he was slaving over the leaves and here I was infatuated with a single twig.   I was astounded at the simplicity of it, and how much the illusion of it moving in space, and its small twisting growth just from a few strokes of paint with slight changes in temperature along its twiggy length.  The illusion of it was so beautifully done with such simplicity. 

Enjoy the day, and until next time, Ciao!

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Looking for Happy Mistakes

February 19, 2011 by blog | Leave a comment

I hope you are all enjoying the new website/blog! I think it looks amazing, and is a lot more user friendly. 

There have been so many dynamic changes to Jeff Hein’s multi-figure painting since last time I have blogged about it.  Jeff has been working on the cloth of all three figures, and has been adding in layers and details throughout the week. So I have been watching the evolving folds of fabric come into existence. 

 The other day, Jeff decided to brainstorm some small painting sketches for the background.  These were small quick paintings done on prepared board about 12 x 18 in size.  He had decided to do these small painting sketches, as he had not decided on his final vision of the painting. He debated over a lot of jungle vs. a lot of sky showing thru. He finally chose the idea that felt strongest to him, and decided to do a small amount of sky showing thru the thick foliage.  I really like how the light is close enough to the main figure in his painting as to break up the long white column that his robe was creating visually, I think it adds a lot of interest and visual flow with a good amount of contrast with the figures and the background. 

Jeff started with the farthest background area in broad fast strokes of paint, with the lightest areas being the thickest paint. The base for the foreground he laid in quickly, but with very expressive strokes and even more thick paint. He said he would be building up the textures in this area to give it a really gritty feel, and he was hoping for some “happy mistakes”, and how these fast brushstrokes would suggest sticks, pebbles, dirt, and then he would go back in later and refine them more if needed.  You will notice that the middle ground is not at all resolved, and he has plans to paint the plants he bought in that mid to foreground range.  I know my photo of his painting does not do it justice, but I really enjoyed seeing the depth of space created today and to  see the parts come together to start to work as a whole. 

Have a wonderful weekend! Ciao! 

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Subtleties

February 10, 2011 by blog | 1 Comment

The first thing I noticed coming into Jeff Hein’s studio was that the jungle was gone and replaced with a blue sky and distant hills.  Jeff is playing around with the idea of opening up the sky around the figures of his painting but still have trees around and above them.  The adult figure stands out a lot more, and is more of the focus I noticed with this new change in compositional elements, but it will remain to be seen how Jeff develops it or what he keeps or discards.

Jeff also worked on part of the dress of the child,   slowing working his way thru the maze like subtle color changes in the folds.  The dress has a lot of browns of various temperatures and colors in it, and I noticed that he was scraping off his  palette when he had a lot of paint on his palette  and asked him why he didn’t save it, or reuse it for the rest of the dress. He said that he only allowed a certain amount of  paint to be on his palette mixed. To much of it and it would take that much more paint to change  into the many subtle temperature changes that the dress was calling for.

I was astounded at his ability to see those small subtle temperature changes, and then again that he would record them in his painting so  painstakingly accurate. What I thought was interesting was that he briefly painted over the arm of the child in a  direct wet on wet application so that it “matched” the child’s face in temperature and color.  He was doing this just to see what the  overall effect would be. Satisfied to a point, he  then wiped it away, and left the warmer dry base painting there.  He told me that he was just being impatient with his progress, and had been curious as to what it would look like.  Jeff would later, with the model present, work on the layers of her arm with the warm flesh tones showing thru the top layers while building up brushstrokes and textures in the light flesh tones.
 
He was also considering today whether or not to warm the child’s face, or cool down the adults face eventually, but Jeff was going to wait till the background was in more to determine which would be best.
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Vanilla Ice Cream

February 8, 2011 by blog | Leave a comment

I talked in length today with Jeff Hein about painting techniques, and his process with layers, and his use of a live model as being pivotal to his art and process. He was explaining to me about the luminosity that he is creating, thru layering and why it is so important for him to work from life rather than from photos. 

I feel that I am on the verge of understanding this huge whale of a topic, but I need to let it percolate a bit more, before I tackle this one in-depth.  There were a couple of light bulb moments but its an elusive thing of subtlety and wording yet for me. And then there is the issue that I am unable yet to do this in my own art.  I wanted to keep the rest of you in the loop, that there was a lot of art discussions going on, but this blogger has yet to have the  knowledge and comprehension to be able to present this to you as Peach Melba in a chilled silver dish.  All I have right now is Thrifty’s  vanilla ice cream in a Styrofoam cup. It’s still good though on a hot day…  

So! With that in mind, here is a quick update on the painting that Jeff worked on today and yesterday. Jeff started the upper dress and necklace, painting in the form and structure of the necklace loosely at first, and then working wet in to wet and resolving the forms more. I noticed that he was keeping the far side of the turquoise necklace pendant soft to help it turn more in space, while the “closer” edge was sharper.  

 

The face is still yet to be finished, but both sides of her face are equally resolved to the point that Jeff would need the model there for another session to make sure that he had the placement and subtleties all correct.  Have a great evening! Ciao! 

 

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Reconstructing Light and Structure

February 7, 2011 by blog | 4 Comments

I am amazed, but I am getting ahead of myself.  Jeff Hein worked on his daughters face in his multi-figure painting today. He confessed that he was frustrated with the progress of her face last week.   Although she is an amazing model,  she is still a young child who struggles to hold still and needs lots of breaks. While she sat for Jeff, he didn’t get as much work on her face as he was hoping to, since she was wiggling about and basically doing what all kids do best, being a kid. This is where my amazement comes in… So Jeff came in today and worked on her face, completely repainting over it again without his model in front of him.  It is still unfinished, but it looks beautiful!   Jeff was telling me that if he were to paint exactly what he saw in life, it would appear more flat then he was wanting anyway. Jeff was using his memory of her and his understanding of light logic to paint everything down to the smallest detail. The picture I have of her face, the eye and cheek on the left side are more complete than the right.

Have a wonderful evening! Ciao! 

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