Wow, so it has been a busy few months. I got back from Paris mid-June (can't wait to go back) and spent the month of July as a studio assistant to Patrick Earl Hammie. This was a challenging but incredibly instructive experience that I would recommend to any artist at any level. Art is so highly personal, and every individual has a different way of working, so it can be both frustrating and difficult to come out of one's artistic shell, to break away from one's creative habits.

Prof. Hammie's Midwife

Professor Hammie is a figurative artist like myself, but he works incredibly large-scale and paints "like a sculptor", something that I've always admired, which is understanding and using paint as a three-dimensional medium applied to a two-dimensional surface. Although I also admire extreme realism, I crave the visual treat that is a painting painted "painterly" wherein the work appears realistic at a distance, but upon closer inspection, a lush, abstract topography is revealed.

In addition to learning (or at least attempting to learn) a new way to paint, just learning another painter's studio practices was incredibly helpful, such as choice of products, suppliers, organization of work and daily schedule, etc. And of course, I learned a great deal about the industry as well!

What is even more frustrating than re-learning to paint is not being able to paint! Between getting back from Paris, moving back to Chicago and launching my career in aerial arts, I have had practically no time to oil paint. As soon as I settle into a new apartment, I hope to fix that. In the meantime, I draw every now and then and have been working on some digital painting studies from screen captures.

Interestingly enough, I already feel like I've been able to apply some of what I learned from Professor Hammie because I find myself able to be much looser with these studies than I would have in the past!

So, it has come to my attention that the About and Contact sections of my website are not working at the moment; I'm not sure what's up with that, but I'll try to get it fixed soon. In the meantime, my contact info can be found here:

camille [dot] swift [at] gmail [dot] com

Twitter 

Also, I might as well take the opportunity to explain why this blog is so quiet right now: I've been working in Paris since February! I am doing a digital painting at the moment, but 95% of my free time is spent in trapeze training. I went to a great art event last night, though, and was inspired to do this sketch:

"Sylvan Repose"

So, I did a commission for a friend in exchange for his making me a bullwhip. I'm thinking a trapeze act combined with whip-cracking...somehow? Here it is:

"Patience and the Enchanted Forest" - 24" x 18", oil on canvas

I tried to be a lot looser with it than I normally am. Some progress shots, which demonstrate my lack of commitment to the background until the very end (not the best approach):