Make My Day

And this should bring the blog up to date... a brave little chihuahua standing up to the big bad cat. Is the dog's name Harry? We just don't know.

Papillion painting

I painted this cute dog because one of the students in my painting class was working on a painting of a Papillion dog and I wanted to be ab le to help her. I had never painted one so I thought the best way to help would be to paint one. I love this painting. The dog has eyes just like my dog, Jake. It is life size on an 18" x 24" canvas.

Carducci Workshop

I was fortunate enough to take a Portraiture Workshop with Judy Carducci last week. Judy is a master Pastellist and one of the best portrait painters around these days as well as being a knowledgeable and patient teacher. We painted from life each day and I ended up with two pretty good paintings and one really good one. One painting was a total flop because I was experimenting with a new surface for the pastel and it just did not work for me. These were all painted in three hour sessions in the afternoon.

BLACK GOLD the Cold Reality

This is a large abstract painting I call BLACK GOLD. It shows the folly of our world dependency on oil and what is happening as the world fights for control of those last remaining energy resources.

What can we learn form gray-scale?

I know that I have a few students who read my blog and for those people I want to point out that when you convert your painting to gray scale it should still "make sense." The shadows should all be the same VALUE and there should be a clear center of interest. Here it is her face- of course- it is a portrait-- and the face is lighter than everything else (by design- maybe not in actuality). But this idea holds true whether we are painting dogs, or buildings, fruit or rivers.
So as you build your paintings keep in mind where you want the spotlight to be and focus the viewer's attention on this place. Here I have places a light area in the midst of dark and medium values.