Wild Beast Studios
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Art Fairs Here I Come …….. !
November 26, 2015
I am taking my art to the road! My goal has been extended to sell my paintings and prints of my paintings at Art Fairs here in the midwest and beyond in over a years time. My goal is to start showing in April/ May 2015.
I purchased a professional art canopy a while back. Today I set it up with the help of a few friends. It looks great and I am moving closer to this dream of living the life of an artist.
The tent took about 2 hours to set up with 2 friends helping me. It was also a very breezy day outside. We had it up just in time to take 15 minutes of photographs before spending an hours time to take it down again and property organize the tent so the next time around it would not be too difficult to set up.
Now that I have some good photos of the tent, I am going to update my online art fair portfolio so I can start applying to these shows. Ill post a list of art fairs that I plan on attending.
Gyan Samara MFA
Instagram.com/WildBeastStudios
Kingston Sunset
November 24, 2015
The past week I’ve been working on a new painting of a sunset that I took a week or two ago of Kingston Illinois where I’ve been going for the past few weeks the paint. This is my second indoor painting of the landscape that I photographed out there. The View was stunning and it was something that I want to capture in my new Farmscape oil pastel paintings.
I started with a black mahogany ground as I’ve done in two other paintings. I blocked in the composition I started to paint the sunrise. This took a few days to work in but once I got when I was looking for I moved onto the middle ground in the foreground. Today November 23, 2015, I finish the painting which is 20″ x 24″ on panel painted and oil pastels. For now it’s going sit in my living room for a while till I am totally satisfied that I’m finished.
To see my process I’ve attached some photos of the painting progress.
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
Stage 5
Kingston Sunset, Kingston Farmsccape series, 20″ x 24″, Oil pastel on panel. November 23, 2015
Prints will be available
Gyan Samara MFA
WildBeastStudios.com
Instagram.com/WildBeastStudios
Cultivo (Harvest) – Kingston Illinios
November 18, 2015
Two weeks ago after finishing up the painting I was working on out in Kingston Illinois farm country I decided to work on a vertical scene of a farmscape, actually the tractor path that I was parked in. The view was a nice simple composition that I thought would make a nice painting.
Cultivo, (Harvest), 20″ x 16″, oil pastel on panel, November 17, 2015, Kingston Illinois Farmscape series
I started this painting around 3pm in the afternoon since I still had the painting jitters in me and I did not want to call it quits for the day, and with only 2 hours of sunlight remaining in the day, there was much I could accomplish. I laid out my composition and began blocking in the sky and the general concept of what the painting was going to resemble.
As you can see in the time lapsed video, I am using a new tool aside from just my fingers to blend the sky. I purchased this tool specifically (used for the potters wheel) to help me manipulate the oil pastels in creating texture and line with in the painting but also helping me flatten out areas as the sky.
In this clip, I am working in and applying many of the base colors that in time I will be able to build up from. As I paint, I add and remove color with my knife or sculpting tools to creating many layers of colorful earthy lines drawn atop of each other to create a rich landscape. The below image is the general view of what I accomplished with in the two hours prior to the sun setting.
Day one before the sunset, I was able to take some photos that I could work from home which is what I did a whole week later. This past Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, I worked on the painting from home painting from the digital image as well as the vision that I kept in my minds eye of what I wanted the end results to resemble.
I painted for most of Monday well into the night to the point where I thought that 8 hours of sleep may help me remove some mental blocks and issues that I had with this tractor path / farmscape. Tuesday morning, I painted from 10am to 1:30pm putting in the finishing details and highlights needed to complete this warm evening painting. I asked a friend to title the painting for me with just one word. He chose “Cultivo” which means Harvest and for me it fits perfectly.
I will be creating a few more paintings of this area before moving on to paint a different part of Illinois Farmscapes. I will apply the new techniques acquired in this painting into future paintings.
Cultivo, (Harvest), 20″ x 16″ oil pastel on panel. November 17, 2015.
This was a successful painting so I will be photographing this painting so I can transform it into prints to sell matted and framed.
Gyan Samara, MFA
Dusk – Kingston Illinois
November 16, 2015
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A few weeks ago out in Kingston Illinois I took a beautiful photograph of a tree standing alone in a cornfield. This past week I began working on a new painting of this photo from my studio.
Looking at the photo I decided to try a different approach to creating this paining so that I could achieve the final results that I envisioned in my minds eye. For the first time in 20 years, I’ve used a black ground as my initial surface to work from.
I spent a few hours working the sky building up the layers to create a beautiful sunset for this bleak landscape. As for the foreground I built the deep red for the land and a warm yellow for the road. I applied texture with a variety of different tools.
Once I had the basics in I then started the carve up into the painting taking out some of the red to put in the grass along the road and defining the road with different shades of yellow beiges and siennas. In time I worked in the cornfield to the right and along the horizon line I added in the industrial barn, silos and trees.
For this painting which differed from most of my other paintings, I carved out the paint bring the trees to the foreground to show more of the detail in the crisp branches seen in the winterscape. Over the course of many of my paintings I’ve been working in this direction where I add and remove paint by carving or scraping paint away to achieve the best outcome in the painting. The tree that you see on the left is basically carved out of the paint. The trunk has been painted and just barely in black with a hint of Burgundy on top to give it some warmth. I very much like the Final results of this painting and will continue to work on a deep burgundy black surfaces in the next few late Autum/ winter paintings.
Dusk, 12″ x 24″, oil pastel on panel, completed November 16, 2015. Series: Farmscapes: Kingston Illinois. Painted in Chicago Illinois.
Prints are available for sale as well as the original.
Gyan S., MFA
Instagram.com/wildbeaststudios
Farm Country Kingston Illinois
November 14, 2015
On Sunday morning November 8th at the start of my 2 day weekend of painting, I hopped in my car and drove out to Kingston Illinois. Kingston is about an hour and a half west of Chicago. I chose this location because out there amongst the sprawling farms, one does not feel the tendrils of Chicago’s urban sprawl. It is so peaceful and beautiful. I drove out with 5 panels to 
work on. I had 3 in progress panels and 2 untouched raw surfaces to start if I had time.
The previous week I worked on painting this farm seen here in the photo and I wanted to see if I needed to add any final details before I declared it finished. Since the temperature is gradually dropping and Kingston is not exactly next door, I have started to work on these paintings more and more inside. It is not ideal as a plain air painter but here in Illinois it becomes unbelievably cold. I am prepared to paint outside in zero to negative -10 temperatures but realistically much of my late autumn and winter paintings will be worked on inside.
I started the day scouting out what I planned to accomplish with in the 4-5 hours of remaining day light. I pulled all my safety gear out of my car, placing the 42″ warning cone on the side of the road and donning my neon florescent yellow hoody. I parked my car with the hatch in the direction which I wanted to paint and spread out my oil pastels with all the needed painting tools. Painting outside in the elements, I need all my tools with in easy reach.
The previous week, I chose to paint the farm a ways down the road of this barn to the left seen above. The farm belongs to a farmer I met a few weeks back. I began the painting at home from a photograph that I took the week before just laying out the basics so I can have a starting point. I worked on this painting for the entire 5 hours of daylight wrapping it up around 430pm. The farmer who’s farm I was painting even came out to check out the painting with his wife.
The next day I was out their even earlier, even though I had spent a good part of my evening the night before working on detail work from a newly acquired photograph that I took. I worked on this painting for another 4 hours wrapping it up. The painting is 20″x24″ oil pastel on panel. There are different technics in this painting that I was exploring in using a tool to flatten and make the oil pastels more smooth as well as using tools aside from my knife to carve into the paint applying texture wirer it is needed. I have learned much in this painting which I have applied to a new indoor landscape that I am working on from my studio at home.
After finishing this painting, I finished up the painting of the barn seen in the above photo and started a new 20″x16″ plain air landscape of a tractor path leading into the desolate fields. For this painting I filmed my self painting with 2 time lapsed videos for you to see.
Part 1
Part 2
I concluded the day once the sun began to set below the trees on the far horizon. With just a hint of light, I stowed all my gear and headed back to Chicago with an inner glow about myself after two very successful days of painting behind me.
Mobile Studio Packed
Ready to go after 2 amazing days of painting!
Time Lapsed Video Part 3 of 3 – Red Barn and Silo
November 3, 2015
Time Lapsed Video Part 2 of 3 – Red Barn and Silo
November 3, 2015
Time Lapsed Video Part 1 of 3 – Red Barn and Silo
November 3, 2015
Mobile Studio
November 3, 2015
Newly installed Thule Force XXL cargo box
On my drive up rout 90 to Kingston Illinois to start a new farmscape, I took it fairly slow driving 65 mph just to feel what it was like to drive with this cargo box on the roof. There was some wind resistance but not much. As for the ride up, I am happy that I drove the speed limit since the Illinois State Troopers were out in force catching speeders left and right. I am guessing its quota time for the month of November since the 5 times that I have driven this way, I have not seen more than 1 or 2 troopers.
I made it to Kingston Illinois and went to paint near to a farm that I believe belongs to the farmer I met a few weeks back while painting at Genoa Curve. I pulled off onto a tractor entrance to a field already tilled with my tail gate facing a red barn with a silo. The perfect view to paint on a perfect day in the mid 60’s. I worked on the painting for about 3 hours and filmed myself painting with 3 time lapsed videos. I’ll work on the painting from home and finish it up next week on location.
Genoa Curve – Kingston Illinois
November 2, 2015
Genoa Curve,16″ x 16″, oil pastel on panel, October 19th, 2015
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