New member from Seattle
 

I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Aaron Coberly I am 35 and have been painting from life for about 6 years now. I organize a life drawing session in downtown Seattle every Saturday morning and Monday evening. I am self taught and have reached the point that I am at now by going to sessions, reading books and scouring the internet. I was very happy when I came across this Forum there is a lot of great information here.

Here are a few examples of my work. The 2 male portraits were painted from life during 2- 3 hour sessions. The painting of Cathleen in the pink hat was finished during a 3 hour session.

I hope you enjoy

Aaron,
Welcome to the forum. Please participate a lot here, because I want to learn from you.
You have your own personal, very painterly style, but it looks like you have extracted the best from the masters. Cathleen could be by Zorn.

Welcome Aaron.

Your paintings are great! Loved them.

Self-taught - wow! You are going about this in the right way and you have lots of energy in your paint handling with good draftsmanship skills as well. I really enjoy these, so keep posting, please. :)

Love your work! Welcome.

They are sensitive and imaginitively designed.

I went to the Boston Museum School, learned nothing. I haunted libraries and museums to teach myself. This was pre-internet. It is a much easier now to get information.

Again, an enthusiastic welcome.

Hi Aaron, welcome! Wow, these are great paintings! I feel a certain kinship since I also taught myself to paint. I think the term "self-taught" is sometimes misunderstood because people take it to mean you have lived in an ivory tower and learned to paint somehow without ever absorbing information from other artists. But in fact, as you pointed out, it is quite the opposite.

I noticed that you are a concept artist for a computer gaming company (did I get that right?) and this interests me because my son has been talking about entering the world of computer game design in some capacity. He is quite a good artist and also enjoys composing music, so I'm not sure which direction he will go, but he's always pointing out the amazingly realistic animation (complete with 3-d moving light and shadows and reflections, etc., and I have to say it is intriguing, and quite an advance from the visuals from the games of 10 years ago.

That is great that you have organized life drawing sessions. It is clear that you are not content to sit still.

Just beautiful! Welcome.

Welcome to the forum. Nice work.

Your paintings are really great. very impressive.
Welcome, I am quite new here too.

Welcome, Aaron!
You seem to have a lot of fun in your life sessions! Do you decide yourself the pose and the costume of the models? The result is very lively and sensitive.

Thank you all for the kind words. Alexandra you are right my 9 to 5 is working as a character artist for a video game company. The company is Arena Net and we make a game called Guild Wars. One thing that is good about the Game industry is that the more detailed the graphics become the more a solid art foundation is valued. Having a understanding of composition, color harmony , anatomy, proportion and all the other fundamentals are becoming more and more important in the industry.

To answer your question Marina. I usually ask the models to where cloths that create a character. Now this could be an all dressed up out on the town outfit or a bathrobe the important thing for me is that they look a little out of the norm. I don't provide costumes for the models for a couple of reasons. The first is that I wouldn't be able to store that many costumes in all the different sizes. The second reason is that I think it is important for the model to feel confident in his or her pose and if they are wearing something that they own or have picked out them selfs I feel that they are more comfortable and it makes the pose better. As for posing it is usually 50/50 they might already have a plan or I might. It usually just happens.

Ok I am done rambling. I hope some of this made sense.

Great work, Aaron! Welcome to the Forum. Maybe I'll see you around Seattle sometime.

Dear Aaron,

Teriffic work - and welcome!

Wow!
 

Aaron,

I am thoroughly amazed at your talent. Your paintings are among the truest and most expressive I have seen.

So welcome! We are privileged to have you among us.

Your website is fabulous and richly inspiring. We should all partake of it.

I look forward to your further contributions here.

Garth

Wow Garth thank you.

I did have some paintings to post but I didn

Gorgeous life paintings Garth. Thanks for sharing.
I live a ferry's ride from you.

Keep posting. I especially love the girl in pink.

Dianne