Another Portrait

Jada 11" x 14"

oil on linen

Jada posed for our Saturday morning group. She is eighteen years old and moving to California this year to go to college. I think I've made her look a bit older than she actually is.
Jada won Miss Buckeye State, which is a huge honor. You have to be smart!

This painting was done 90% from life in one pose and I finished her dress and the background home using a photo reference.

I Didn't Stop Painting

A few people have asked me when I'm going to start updating my blog again, and the answer is today. I recently began working full time and it's limited my painting time. But I'm still painting and I'll share some of the good ones over the next few weeks.

This is a painting of Jessica, a model who posed for our portrait group in September. Jessica always manages to look like a different person every time she poses.

16" x 20" oil on canvas

Tegan

This young lady modeled for our portrait group last week. She was so professional and we appreciated her steady gaze, excellent posture and ability to return to the pose--and her beautiful costume, of course!

Traditional Syrian

Another fine model from our weekly portrait group. The handsome young man is Syrian and is dressed in a ceremonial Syrian style of dress. The scarf was his grandfather's. Youssef is thankful to be living in the United States. He has many family members whose lives have been destroyed by the warring factions in Syria.

This is that rare portrait that I an happy with after one pose and feel nothing else needs to be done to it.

Youssef 

9" x 12" oil on panel

Teenager in a Volleyball Uniform

I can't remember this model's name but she came to our group through  a modeling agency and she did an excellent job with her pose. We don't have many people pose looking downward and her face was tilted slightly as well, making it especially challenging for both her and the artists who were drawing and painting her.

This was my effort. I will try a side view next time, where the light is not likely to change if she moves slightly.

16' x 16" pastel on Canson gray paper

Using Pastel as a Medium

This is a pastel PAINTING. It was created with hard and soft pastels, which are sticks made of pure pigment, calcium carbonate (chalk) and just enough water to bind them together. All pastels are not created equal. Some pastels are hand made, like Terry Ludwig Pastels, others are machine made and resemble crayons.

The difference between a pastel painting and a pastel drawing is the level of coverage. If the pastel was layered to create colors (as this one was), it's a painting. If the artist used the pastel like a piece of charcoal or a pencil and didn't cover much of the paper, it is a drawing.

That's your mini art lesson for today. This is Jessica, one of our regular models, who manages to look different in every painting I create of her. She is like a gorgeous chameleon, able to take on exotic colors and become someone altogether different at will. She's also a very nice girl who always goes the extra mile our group. I love the hat she is wearing here. It reminds me of a Renoir prop.

16x20

Soft Pastel on Gray Paper

Miranda

This is a more detailed painting of Miranda, who I painted last week at the Hyter portrait group. I used my study to create an umber underpainting. The values were there and when Miranda posed I used the two hour window to block in the color. The study was very helpful. The new painting is larger and more developed and I like her expression very much. It's often difficult for me to capture a child this age and make her look her age. Usually I end up making them look much older.

Miranda

18" x 14" oil on linen

A New Year, Painting the Same Old Stuff

Here it is 2015 and I am painting the same old things. That's what I would tell myself if I were not an optimist. But I am an optimist, so this year I will paint bigger and better paintings. If they are not better, they will certainly be more thoughtful and more thoughtfully composed. So even if I paint the same "stuff" I painted last year this year it will be arranged better, which will result in a better painting. Readers might think that this resolution is too easy to achieve. Why not resolve to paint one painting a day for thirty days, or even sixty days. We all know there are plenty of artists out there doing that. I am beyond the place where I need to challenge myself to paint. I don't need any incentives because I already enjoy the process. I also have a tendency to speed through projects a bit too quickly so the last thing I need to do is a thirty day challenge.

So my resolution this year is to look twice and make one stroke. Consider the possibilities before jumping in. Mark out my compositions in a linear fashion prior to pushing the paint onto canvas. In other words, I'll be a more intentional painter. Hopefully this will translate into becoming a better one. That's my goal anyway and I think goals are a necessary part of improving.

We also purchased a Sole 80 for ourselves this year so another goal will be getting into really good shape and running a 5K next October.

So here is my first painting of 2015. It is another still life and it does include things I have painted before. But hopefully the arrangement is more interesting than what I might have done previously and  maybe I have paid more attention to the edges than I have in the past.

Happy New Years and good luck with those resolutions!

Third Day: Finally Understanding

 

9 x 12 oil on linen

Blue Pot with Grapes

By the third day of the workshop I was beginning to understand the process. I was happier with this little painting than I was with the previous two and I think it comes down to edges and brushwork. Keep the edges loose where detail is not necessary; allow the eye to fill in what is not there. This is actually harder to do than one might  think. We want to show and tell. We want to complete the line. It makes the entire process of painting still life more interesting and complex than I ever thought possible. I was having fun and enjoying myself with this one.

Here is painting no 2 from the workshop I attended last weekend

I added the bottle behind the copper incense burner when I returned home because the composition seemed a bit off. Composition is something I really need to pay closer attention to. I used to just throw random objects out there and if they looked good I painted them. I looked for a "thematic" connection and ignored the textural and size ranges for the most part. An important lesson I took away from this workshop is to position the objects intentionally, varying the size, colors, texture and materials.

9" x 12" oil on linen

Chinese Vase with Lemons

Pastel Painting

This guy posed for our Saturday portrait group last week. He attends Renaissance Festivals on a regular basis and he dressed in his pirate costume.

This was a two hour session from life.

17" x 22" pastel on Canson paper

Peaches

I set these wonderful peaches up slightly off center. I struggled a bit because I didn't have any cadmium orange and the cadmium red I was using seemed weaker than normal. It was Charvin and I might have purchased the student grade by accident. I'm not too familiar with that paint but I did get a really good buy on it from Jerry's Artarama.

Daisies in an Orange Pitcher

These daisies were left over from an arrangement at work. You can always count on daisies to live longer than most flowers. I needed a break from another painting I have been working on for a few days and flowers are always fun to paint..

12" x 16" Spring Daisies

Painting the Nude Alla Prima

I painted this nude during my class with Romel de la Torre at Scottsdale Artists School on the fourth and fifth day of class. It was a challenge to me because I never get the opportunity to paint or draw the figure from life for an extended period. I have attended a few life drawing sessions but they are nothing like rendering in paint. So much goes into the painting process that must be planned and thought about, whereas a drawing is flexible and easily adjusted.

Our beautiful model really liked my painting. She kept posting pictures of the face on her Instagram feed and then she contacted me after I came home about purchasing it.

22" x 18" oil on linen

Lemons on Sale!

It must be lemon season somewhere. They were 37 cents each at my local supermarket. I picked up a couple and paired them with my Deruta Italian vase, a small Clementine and a blue ceramic cup. I was thinking about how the blue cup echoed the blue in the vase and how the fruit did the same thing. It just seemed to come together more easily than usual.

11" x 14" oil on canvas

Bud from our Portrait Group

Bud is our model for February at the portrait group. He is a retired guy and he was going to bring a prop - like a gun, but he forgot. He had a difficult time holding his head still and finding a focal point so he may not be the best model we have ever had. But he has an interesting face. His face at rest appears somewhat grim, which is the opposite of his personality; he is a very jovial guy.

11" x 14" oil on canvas

People are interesting

When my daughter was seven she told a fiend that she didn't like coming In to my studio because there were always so many eyes staring at her. I was just beginning to paint a lot of portraits then and to attend a weekly portrait group where artists worked from the live model. I would prop the paintings up against books in bookshelves, lean them against the wall or hang them on a temporary hook to let them dry. All the people seemed to be in the same pose, most often a three quarter view of the face. I rarely arrived early enough to get a straight on view of the model.

Yesterday we didn't have many people show up for our portrait group so I was fortunate enough to get a head on view of our lovely 14 year old model, Katelyn. 

11" x 14" oil on canvas 

Tea Time

I pulled out my pastels on Saturday and went to the Hyter Group, a weekly portrait open studio that I try to attend whenever possible. Jessica has posed for us before and she always comes up with something 'different'. This time she seemed to be dressed as a rich lady having some tea. Whatever, it was certainly interesting!

I finished this at home and I still may do some more to it but this is where she stands now. I think the tipsy teacup is pretty funny.

18" x 21" pastel on Canson paper

Mirrors are a scary thing....

Mirrors can be frightening. Especially when you get a bit older and your eyes start to lose the ability to focus well. You have to put on glasses to read, to see the computer, to paint etc.

Sometimes it helps to take the glasses off though. Then you don't see the lines as clearly as you would with them on. The paint goes on a bit looser.

As always the point of painting a self portrait is to experiment. This time around I used a mix of Shin Han Violet Gray and titanium white as a base for the skin tones in light. Then I went over the cool base with an approximation of the actual skin color. The violet base was wet when I did this so even though the top layer was darker and should have read warmer, it mixed with the lower layer and became a warm-cool, grayed down color that appears very realistic. I like the way the violet shows through in some areas and reads as very cool. keeping the neck area cool by leaving the violet showing was an easy solution to shoving it back in space. I discovered that I like this color a lot so I will see if I can mix it with my normal palette of colors, which is very limited. If not, I'll be adding it to my portrait palette.

9" x 12"

No Glasses

I Buy Pottery

I buy pottery with the intention to use it in still life paintings. That's how I justify the purchases. Most of it is acquired at art fairs or on eBay. Some of the pottery I get on eBay does not arrive in the condition it left the seller's house in. I wish people were more careful when they pack fragile items. I have shipped over 500 paintings via the Postal Service and NOT ONE has been damaged, thanks to the generous use of BUBBLE WRAP. Bubble wrap creates a cushion of air between your object and the box. I use two layers of the stuff. Unfortunately the person who wrapped my pottery last week did not and I found pieces of shattered ceramic in my box when I opened it yesterday.

Oh well, I am digressing. Here is a pot I bought at a local gallery that represents myself and other artists. It is beautiful. The two pears HAD to be painted because they were picked from our very own dwarf pear tree. It's only three years old and I really did not expect fruit so I had to record this for posterity.