Angel in Red

Angel is a woman from Taiwan who posed in her wedding dress for our portrait group. She was everything you could want in a model: beautiful, poised and immobile. I created a 12" x 16" study from life, then using the study, I painted a monochromatic underpainting from the study and filled it in using color when I went to the life session the following week. There were other corrections that needed to be made, but the basis for the painting is a complimentary color scheme of red and green.

18x24

Angel in Red

Drama with Still Life

I love this painting. In it I have finally achieved a level of expertise that allows me to think I might be on the right track. What did I do differently than normal? Not a lot. Perhaps it is just my love for the curvy objects and the way they are arranged that somehow transmits itself into the piece. It is definitely a keeper and I will need to figure out what makes it so interesting. Is it the push/pull between warm and cool? The composition or the background. or maybe a combination of all three.

Shades of Green
11" x 14"
Oil on canvas

Sometimes your best is not good enough

I have worked on this piece off and on for over a month now and it may have all been for nothing. The person who commissioned it has not responded to my requests for feedback and he seems to have lost interest in it. This is surprising because he seemed quite enthusiastic in the beginning! I suppose I knew this could happen, as what I have painted is a representation of his favorite bible verse: Isaiah 11:1. The client is local and someone I trust so I did not ask for a deposit. I normally request 50% from internet clients but I didn't think it was necessary in this instance. I will probably not break that rule again.

 My husband thinks he may have decided he just didn't like the emailed image and doesn't want to hurt my feelings by telling me so. I know I am at a place where I can go no further without some feedback. I have already added a ton more stuff than his original "vision" of a tree stump with a sapling growing from it entailed. I'm not sure what to do at this point but I'm leaning toward just selling it to someone else for whatever I can get and calling it done.

This is the first time I've been stiffed in the 11 years I've been doing commissioned pieces so I guess that's not too bad.

Isaiah 11:1