Dark Skull • Joe Forkan 2015 Oil on Linen 20″ x 20″

Last year I began started teaching a drawing class on Heads and Hands at CSU Fullerton. I ordered a couple of skulls for the class, and had also been experimenting with some new paints (trying some different lead whites from several different makers – needing to find US sources now that the EU has gotten so skittish about lead white). So when the skulls arrived, I jumped into a couple paintings from them. I set up the first one in a very dark corner of my studio, and the second I placed near a north facing window, mostly just looking at color and form.

The paintings are largely about color, paint, and close looking.

These are 2 of the 3 paintings included in Fleshed Out, a group show at Q Art Salon, in Santa Ana, CA, on view from Dec. 5 – Jan. 1, 2016.

Detail • Dark Skull • Joe Forkan 2015 Oil on Linen 20″ x 20″

Yellow Skull • Joe Forkan 2015 Oil on Linen 20″ x 20″