This web site features the art of Live Event Painter Jeremy Sutton.
This painting was painted live at a wedding in the beautiful Sonoma Wine Country.
The scene I painted from direct observation was the wedding dinner and dancing surrounded by vineyards. The painting was created live over about four hours using an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and the Procreate app. The iPad screen was projected on a large flat panel display so the wedding party and their guests could enjoy watching the painting evolve over time.
This digital painting was painted live at CREATE!, free public event in Downtown San Francisco https://downtownsf.org/things-to-do/create CREATE! was a wonderful “only in San Francisco” celebration of creativity and the performing, literary and visual arts that took place at the historic Landing at Leidesdorff, next to the Transamerica Pyramid, where the financial district of downtown San Francisco intersects with the North Beach, Chinatown and the old Barbary Coast neighborhoods. The celebration was produced by The Downtown SF Partnership, a nonprofit funded by property and business owners in the downtown district which covers the Financial District and Jackson Square.
I was located at the intersection of Leidesdorff and Commercial Streets, a picturesque pedestrian area free of cars, and created the colorful digital painting of the vibrant scene that you see featured here on this page. My view included a wonderful mural, titled “Beyond the Sea – the life and legacy of Captain Leidesdorff,” created by the Twin Walls Mural Company. https://www.sf.gov/news/mayor-breed-celebrates-launch-new-landing-leidesdorff-downtown-destination Visitors were able to watch my brush strokes unfold in real time on a large display and see my creative process as I painted what I saw (using an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and the Procreate app).
CREATE! honored the historical artistic significance of the Montgomery Block, affectionately known as ‘Monkey Block,’ an artist enclave that once flourished on the site now occupied by the Transamerica Pyramid. Over its nearly century-long existence, this building was a hub for housing and hosting notable artists, both literary and visual, including Frida Kahlo, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dorothea Lange, Diego Rivera, Ambrose Bierce, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain. https://www.sfchronicle.com/chronicle_vault/article/Iconic-SF-building-was-home-to-Bohemians-for-13340080.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Block
The Landing at Leidesdorff, where I was located, is named after Captain William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr., the country’s first African-American diplomat amongst many firsts, and one San Francisco’s most notable founders.
William Alexander Leidesdorff (1810-1848)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leidesdorff It is called “Landing” since in the 19th century it was where ships landed and was the original coastline walked by SF’s earliest inhabitants. https://downtownsf.org/things-to-do/landing-at-leidesdorff/history
Thank you to The Downtown SF Partnership team!
Here are photos from the event:
Photo: Kevin Adams for The Downtown SF Partnership
Photo: Kevin Adams for The Downtown SF Partnership
Photo: Kevin Adams for The Downtown SF Partnership
This digital painting was painted live at a company HQ Soirée gathering at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, PA. The artwork depicts the scene both outside in the courtyard where I was located, and inside in the magnificent atrium where the band played. I started with a custom background that I created using textures from the floors, doors, walls and paintings in the museum. The artwork was displayed in real time as it was created on a large 82″ flat panel LED display positioned behind me as I painted.
“Ishmeet”, 2014 – This portrait was created from life on a plane journey from London to San Francisco using an iPad Air using the Sketch Club app and Pencil by 53. Click on the video to see stroke by stroke build up of the painting.
“Brandon, Masha and Arthur”, 2014 – This portrait of artist Brandon Jones and his family was created from life on a plane journey from London to San Francisco using Brandon’s Wacom Cintiq Companion Hybrid with the ArtFlow app. It was a “draw off”: he painted me at the same time using my iPad with Sketch Club. Neither of us had used the other’s platform or app before so it was very fun!
On this page I share a small sampling of my (mostly) iPad drawings and paintings I have made over the last couple of years. I performed live iPad painting at the De Young Museum in October 2013 for the opening of “David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition” (see my Inspired by Hockney page). I teach iPad painting workshops and classes. If you’re interested in learning how to draw and paint on your iPad, then please visit Paint on the Go! and The iPad Art Summer School. If you’d like to set up a portrait sitting please email me (jeremy@jeremysutton.com) or call me at (415) 641-1221.
The portrait of Alison, shown above, is one of a series of portraits I drew from life on my iPad of fellow presenters at FOTOfusion 2014 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Alison is an amazing photo journalistic photographer who has captured portraits of people all over the world, including an extensive series of portraits of Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet and in exile (see her book Face to Face: Portraits of the Human Spirit). The following three portraits (below) were also created at FOTOfusion of fellow presenters.
As I drew Lou’s portrait we discussed his six year project in which he and his team photographed and interviewed death row inmates across the country (see his book Final Exposure: Portraits from Death Row). It was an intense subject and that intensity was reflected in the portrait…
I’ve known Lawrence, a pioneering digital media artist, for many years. This year at FOTOfusion he drove up in one of his Art Cars. I included a photo I took of his artwork on the car in the background of this portrait.
Tom, University of Miami Department of Art and Art History professor, sat for me for a few minutes at the FOTOfusion Awards Dinner between courses..
Over the last two years I have taught iPad painting and given iPad painting presentations in North America and Europe, including at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, (see William Dutton’s blog post) and at the magnificent flagship Apple Stores in central London (Regent Street), and San Francisco.
“Portrait of Tony”, 2013, created using Sketch Club with Adonit Jot Touch on iPad (created on Southwest flight at 30,000′ altitude). I like the recording feature in Sketch Club that also allows you to easily add your choice of music to the replay.
“Life Study”, 2013, created using Sketch Club with Sensu Brush on iPad2.
“Seated Man, after Diebenkorn”, 2013, created using Art Rage and Adonit Jot Touch stylus on iPad2 at the de Young Museum
Caricaturist Jon Casey and I sketch each other at the Coffee Bar outside my studio in San Francisco, Jon using pencil on paper and me using the procreate app on an iPad with a Sensu brush (see What’s in my studio). For a summary of the different iPad painting apps I am exploring, click here.
“Sketch portrait of Jon Casey”, 2013, creating using procreate on iPad2
In March, 2010, I came across artist Roderick Smith sketching on his iPhone in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, using a PogoStick stylus and Brushes iPhone app, the same one David Hockney started with when he began sketching on his iPhone. He kindly let me have a go. When I got home I ordered a PogoStick and experimented with sketching in Brushes and Sketchbook Pro on the iPhone. It didn’t quite click for me. The iPhone screen felt too small and restricted, and the brush stroke styles too flat and uniform. I preferred sketching in my regular sketchpad.
The iPad introduced a significantly larger painting area. That summer in 2010 I sketched my first iPad portrait from life of one of my students at my Amsterdam Painter Workshop on his iPad (see iPad Sketching in Amsterdam). A year a half later, in January 2012, I went to see David Hockney’s Bigger Picture exhibition at the Royal Academy and was impressed with his display of huge prints of his iPad drawings, as he referred to them, in the spacious galleries of the historic and esteemed institution. For me that was the ahaa moment when i knew iPad art had arrived! On returning to San Francisco, I immediately bought a Nomad brush at Macworld and purchased all the cool iPad painting apps I saw they had on their demo stations, even before I’d purchased an iPad! I then got painting on the iPad in earnest, leading to my teaching iPad art workshops and performing live iPad painting at special events, including the Hockney show.
Rosa, created in Inspire Pro on the iPad, 2013
Imagine painting in the air, literally… That is now a reality. Since 2012 I have been experimenting with, and helped shape, cutting-edge prototype air painting technologies, working closely with different hardware and software developers. One of the technologies I have explored is the amazingly powerful combination of the revolutionary new Leap Motion Controller, the world’s most accurate 3-D motion-control technology that accurately maps the movement of your hands and fingers in three dimensional space, and Corel Painter Freestyle, a simplified Leap Motion-enabled version of the phenomenal paint program Corel Painter that I have been using for over twenty years.
See the Epson video of me air painting at the SIGGRAPH conference, Anaheim, CA; the Vimeo video featured on the Leap Motion blog; my air painting presentation at the ideaCity conference, Toronto; plus the BBC article.
More recently I have been exploring air painting with other software such as Leap Motion-enabled Ethereal on the Mac platform; with a custom prototype using Kinect technology; and with the Leap Motion combined with the Oculus Rift for VR 3D air painting.
In January 2007 I was a speaker at Macworld and had the pleasure of sitting in the hall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. I see the introduction of the Leap Motion control of computers as an equally significant paradigm-shift in the way we interact with our devices. Just as kids now take touch screens for granted, in a few years they will also take motion gesture control for granted. Painting in the air has a quality of magic… a cross between being a magician, a dancer and a symphony conductor! I am reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This certainly fits the bill!
What struck me as I painted the portrait of Lisa and also the still life, both shown above and both created 100% using only movement and gesture of my hands in the air, was (1) the level of fine control of the quality of line I was able to achieve using movement in the z axis, equalling or even surpassing the level of pressure control I have using a pressure-sensitive Wacom pen tablet, and (2) how much I liked the quality of marks I made through motion in the air, and how there was a playfulness and looseness to the line quality that was different to the type of marks I would make either using a Wacom pen-tablet or traditional physical media.
On Wednesday, July 24, I gave a presentation on air painting at the world’s largest conference devoted to computer graphics, SIGGRAPH. I also presented air painting in the SIGGRAPH Studio
I became aware of Leap Motion in May 2012 and immediately saw the potential for a new way to paint. That same day I contacted both the Corel Painter team and Leap Motion, introduced them to each other and subsequently worked closely with both companies to help shape the resulting Painter product powered by motion gesture input from the Leap Motion device. I am a named inventor on Corel’s pending patent application for controlling color selection using gestures in a vision system. In March I demonstrated painting in the air with Corel Painter Freestyle and Leap Motion in the Leap Motion Experience tent at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Media Conference, Austin, Texas, where Leap Motion officially launched their product.
Demonstrating air painting in the Leap Motion Experience, plus air painting in the air, literally, at 30,000′ on a Southwest airline plane coming back from SXSW (the first ever air painting at that altitude).
While demonstrating at SXSW I was asked if painting in the air is tiring on my arms. I painted for three full days, each day for about five or six hours, and had no problems with arm fatigue. It was my legs that got tired standing for that long! I positioned the Leap Motion controller device low enough that my arms and hands remained most of the time in what I refer to as “dance position”, that is a comfortable position with a slight bend in the elbows. Here are a few links related to the SXSW air painting demonstration:
Press Release from Corel published in ImagineFX magazine
Vine video taken at SXSW by Steve Garfield
Instagram photo taken at SXSW by Steve Garfield
Corel Painter Freestyle allows you to easily select brushes, textures, commands and choose hue, value and saturation, to know where your cursor is in hover mode and to finely control your entry through the painting plane, all through hand movement and gesture. I can even save my files, clear the canvas and finely control the brush stroke quality, size, opacity and movement, and then be able to easily choose from 24 million colours, all with movement in the air and without touching anything. It takes a little practice to get used to, but once you do get the hang of it and sense of where the 3D painting zone is in space, it is absolutely brilliant as well as fun.
The self-portrait you see at the top of this page was created on November 29th, 2012, and is, to my knowledge, the first painting from life ever created with 100% air painting. I was using early prototypes of both the Leap Motion controller and a Leap-enabled version of Corel Painter. A few days after this self-portrait I created the first ever air painting portrait of another subject from life:
Tableau Vivant at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, Sept. 14, 2012
In celebration of the opening of the exhibition “William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism” at the de Young Museum I portrayed the great French artist Henri Matisse in a tableau vivant (September, 2012). During the performance I drew, painted with sumi-e ink, gouache and acrylic paints, sculpted in clay and cut and glued paper cutouts.
Photo by Laura Wuest
Photo by Laura Wuest
Photo by Ken Watanabe
Photo by Laura Wuest
Photo by Marissa Teal
Photo by Marissa Teal
Thank you to Lorena for so kindly being my excellent Matisse model for this performance.
The rimless eye glasses you see me wearing in this tableau were kindly loaned by the Optical Underground.
Created during tableau vivant portrayal of
Pablo Picasso at the de Young Museum
2011
30″ x 40″ mixed media on canvas
This portrait of Flamenco guitarist Ryan Kelly Garcia was created as part of my tableau vivant portrayal of Pablo Picasso at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, September, 2011. My performance was part of the de Young’s Friday Night Cultural Encounter, a free public event, themed to celebrate the excellent special exhibition, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris. My painting is inspired by, and named after, one of the paintings in the show—Homme a la guitare (Man with a Guitar), a painting Picasso completed in the Fall of 1911 in Paris as he was in the midst of his cubist experiments with his friend and fellow artist Georges Braque.
Here are photos from the performance at the de Young:
I am fascinated and inspired by the passionate and fearless intensity of Picasso’s art making—always experimenting, pushing, prodding, borrowing, branching and growing. He was ever ready to destroy and transform, never attached to or precious about his marks and his media.
This summer in London I painted a portrait of a friend, Robert, who, as a child in the south of France, spent a whole summer watching Picasso paint directly onto glass panels for the window of a church. He literally looked up at Picasso’s intense gaze as he worked. He said Picasso’s incredible intensity and concentration was undiminished over many hours, each day throughout the summer. At the end of the summer Robert was in the shop in the church and wanted to get a Picasso print for his parents but couldn’t afford anything. Then a voice said “Let him have it!” It was Picasso, who then signed the print for him.
In 1993 I created a portrait of Picasso, which was published in the National Association for Desktop Publishing Journal and subsequently, in 2010, was displayed in the San Jose Repertory Theater when they performed “A Picasso”. At Oxford University, while studying Physics (and art), I performed at the Oxford Playhouse in “Desire Caught by the Tail”, one of the only two full-length plays that Picasso wrote.
Here are Man with a Guitar preparative studies, each 9 x 12 inches, made with various dry media such as charcoal, pencil, ink and collage on paper:
Here are some more photos from the tableau vivant performance showing the creation of a portrait titled “Le Canard”. This portrait was inspired by Picasso’s paintings of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter (portrayed at the museum by Peggy Gyulai). The title of the portrait is based on the newspaper cutting pasted in the upper left corner of the painting. The cutting is from the masthead of the historic French satirical newspaper “LeCanard-Enchaine” (“The Chained Duck”)which was founded in 1915 and which Picasso was sure to have read.
A third artwork I worked on at the museum was a mixed media collage titled “Still Life with Flowers, Guitar and Jug.” This was inspired by Picasso’s collage “Bottle, Glass and Violin” (1913). The guitar I chose for this still life was a gourd African guitar, a nod to the strong influence of Africa artefacts in Picasso’s early works and in the development of cubism.
Here you see children who were watching me paint, sticking on a piece of newspaper at the end of the evening. They were fascinated by the performance and didn’t want it to end!
Sunflowers
2010
Pigment and acrylic on canvas , 30″ x 36 “
The artworks shown on this page are all inspired by artist Vincent van Gogh and were created as part of my tableau vivant portrayal of van Gogh at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, October, 2010, in celebration of the exhibition Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. I prepared these artworks in my studio using digital paint (Corel Painter software on a Macintosh computer with a Wacom graphics tablet), output on canvas which I then painted on with acrylic paint in performance.
Portrait of Joe Talmadge
2010
36 inches wide by 23 inches high, acrylic and pigment ink on canvas
Joe sits for his portrait as I paint him at the de Young Museum
In preparation for the tableau vivant performance I started working digitally from life inn my studio using Corel Painter and a Wacom Cintiq 21UX tablet.
Portrait of Al Honig
2011
29 inches x 34 inches, pigment and acrylic on canvas
This portrait, also created as part of my van Gogh tableau vivant performance, is of sculptor Al Honig . This de Young Museum’s Friday Night Cultural Encounter Soirées was celebrating the exhibition Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. The photos that depict me painting Al are by Gil Rego, Jr., taken for the the SF Weekly, unless otherwise stated.
With the other Tableaux Vivants!
Myself as van Gogh, Dede Wilsey, President of the Board of Trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Peggy as Berthe Morisot and John Buchanan, Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Mr. Buchanan sadly passed away on December 30, 2011. He achieved great things at the de Young and Legion of Honor Museums and made a significant contribution to the cultural richness of the San Francisco Bay Area. He will be sorely missed. Condolences to his family.
Performing as artist Edgar Degas in a historical “tableau vivant” at the de Young and Legion of Honor Museums, San Francisco, July, 2010. The painting you see me working on, Dance Rehearsal (shown below), is an original composition inspired by the compositional approach and style of Degas.
Video length: 1 minute 8 seconds
2010
32″ x 30″, pigment, acrylic and pastel on canvas
This painting is inspired by Edgar Degas’s wonderful paintings and drawings of dancers. It was created as part of my tableau vivant portrayal of Degas at the de Young and Legion of Honor Museums in celebration of the Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay and Impressionist Paris exhibitions. The painting and the dancers you see depicted are based on photos and sketches I made at The Ballet Studio and the Chamberdance (Academy of Ballet) in San Francisco. I performed with members of the Ballet School at the de Young Museum and with members of Chamberdance at the Legion of Honor Museum. This painting was the featured case study in my DVD-ROM Post-Print Painting The Sutton Way, now available as a download.
I am fascinated by Degas’ use of dramatic cropped imagery, his depictions of dancers in off-performance moments and the thoughtful construction of his compositions. I constructed the composition of this painting with the thought in mind of “how would Degas have portrayed these dancers?” That led me to include part of the piano accompanist and the teacher. It is not based on any single Degas work but more his overall approach to depicting his dancers. Degas experimented with different media and new technology, including photography, and would have loved the digital tools of today!
To learn more about the process of researching and developing this painting please read the article I wrote for the April 2011 issue of the Digital Paint Magazine.
Here are some photos of the Degas performances:
Renee, Peri and Nico, from the Academy of Ballet, being painted at the Legion of Honor Museum
Drawing Peri
Sketches of Peri and Nico
Drawing Nico
Drawing Renee
Sketch of Renee
Nico, Peri and Renee enjoying the artworks I just createdof them
Degas and his traveling art kit!
Sketching from the wings as Chamberdance perform in the Florence Gould Auditorium
Sketches of Chamberdance made from the side of the stage
The view from outside the de Young Museum (photographer Steven Somerstein) as I sketch Amanda and Mia
Sketches of Amanda and Max
Enchanté!
Talking with an enthusiastic audience:-)
Sketch of Mia
Painting dancers at the de Young Museum
One of the sketches made at the de Young
Drawing Joey
Here are close up shots of the final painting:
Acrylic paint applied with use of a painting knife onto thebow at the back of one dancer’s dress (above) and onto the swirling fabric of another dancer’s dress (below).
This section of the painting (above)shows where I used scumbling and glazing techniques.
Notice the difference in reflectivity between a region of the painting where I applied a gloss gel (above) versus a semi-gloss gel (below).
Thank you to Renee Baldocchi of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for kindly inviting me to participate in these wonderful artistic collaborations at the de Young and the Legion of Honor Museums. Thank you to Renee’s colleagues at the museums, Cynthia and Andrea and the rest of the staff who helped make everything run so smoothly. Thanks to the fabulous dancers Mia, Amanda, Max (de Young, July 30), Peri, Renee, Nico and Chamberdance (Legion of Honor, August 1), Emily, Lisa, Rachel, Andrew, Pemberly and Joey (de Young, August 13), and all their teachers: Henry and Charles from the Ballet Studio and Richard, Zory and MaryEllen from the Academy of Ballet. A big thank you to Peggy who tirelessly helped me carry Degas’ not so light traveling art kit and kindly documented the whole creative process, as you can see from her wonderful photos shown here.
Video of live painting performance, Happy Feet, Happy Paint
Herrang Dance Camp, Sweden
July 2008
Three minute portrait of Lindy Hop teacher, performer and inspirer Dawn Hampton created live in a cabaret at the Herrang Dance Camp, Sweden. I used improvised painting materials based on what was available in the camp workshop, which was house paint on board. The music is Opus No. 1, performed by Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra.
Video length: 3 minutes 27 seconds