A Painting A Day

I was needing some serious redemption after my latest "attempts" at painting, so tonight I thought I would try to paint something nice at our life painting group. My friend's daughter was the model, so I guess I just stacked up too much pressure to perform on myself!

 The group was packed so I ended up in the corner, so didn't have a good angle. I think I captured her likeness somewhat, but I also think I was a bit tired of painting after painting the two roses earlier. So I'm hoping she will model for the group again, because I would like another shot at painting that beautiful red hair!

Our live painting group has nudes occasionally. This was my painting from last night. Especially where I live, people don't seem to have very much of an open mind about nudes - they think they are obscene. It seems like every art exhibit I've applied to be in, I'm told "no nudes."

I think the human body is a work of art, and is beautiful - no matter the shape, or age, or size. I also have observed that every true art gallery has nude statues and paintings. But here in Memphis, even the gallery owners admit they have to consign the nudes to a back room. So it appears that people in the Renaissance were much more open minded than we are today! It's a shame, and I guess I will continue to be a "rebel."

So happy to be juried into the Memphis Germantown Art League's 2015 Spring Exhibit!! This is my very first juried exhibit! These paintings will be on display at the Germantown Center for the Performing Arts through May 27th. There is a reception next Saturday, May 9th from 4pm - 6pm

Ok so a winery here is having a label contest, and the name of the winery is "Delta Blues." A friend of mine asked me to enter the contest today, so I did this real quick. Seriously quick - like less than an hour and it probably shows! Haha. But there is something about the rough painting of this man that I really like. I like things not being so controlled and perfect.

Did this last night in painting from life class. Again, I didn't measure. I don't know why I refuse to do that. I was also too lazy to refresh my paints so they were kind of sticky. I ended up making the head a little larger than life size, so was unhappy with that. But I was happy with achieving a semi semblance of curly hair - and thought I got the likeness pretty close. ;)

  A good friend of mine was the model for our painting from life group last night. Again, I did not measure well enough. I did not get her nose in the right position! On the flip side, I thought I got her eyes right and was semi-happy with the skin tones.

Ann Enoch (who hosts our life painting group in her studio) gave me the absolute coolest thing tonight! A red acetate frame! She was sitting next to me, and I commented on how nice and glassy she made the models eyes and Anne looked at my painting and she immediately recognized the problem - my highlights weren't bright enough! She gave me the red acetate frame to look through to help judge my values. I was blown away by how much it helped. Before using it, my painting looked so flat - there was no life in it. Using the acetate I saw that I wasn't making my highlights light enough!
Love this group! I learn so much from them!
As for the painting - I really liked it while I was there but I think subconsciously I knew I needed to work on her mouth more. In particular the right side that is in shadow is too bright red - I should have toned it down with some green or made it more purple. Also her mouth was not as crooked as I made it in the painting. To be honest with myself, I was thinking that the crook in her mouth gave her character - when in actuality her mouth was much straighter. I need to quit adding things that aren't there and stick to painting what really IS there. But on the other hand ... hmmm... there IS no other hand!

I experimented with this, and really liked how it turned out. I have been reading Kintsler's "Painting Portraits" and his backgrounds are turpentine washes or vignettes - so I had to restrain myself but I tried to stay abstract on everything but the face. Even on the hands, I just used a few brush strokes to suggest them - rather than paint every detail (like I usually do).

I tried to make the focal point the face, but I think that making the doll lighter than the rest of the painting shifted the focus somewhat from the face. I am still pondering that.

 This was a rather large work for me - a 24" x 30". I started on it yesterday, and finished it today. I was working from a very tiny photo. I ran out and got a frame for it because the artist group I am in will be exhibiting at Folks Folly - a really nice restaurant here in Memphis starting tomorrow, so I wanted to put this in the exhibit. :)

Did this today - and was really happy with how it turned out. I was working from a black and white photo so made up the colors. Also in the photo her dress had a pattern and it I started to do it, but it was just too busy and competed with the scarf, so I tried to make the dress suede. This is a pretty large work (for me) - it's 18" x 24" on canvas.

I recently bought a book called "Portraits from Life in 29 Steps" by John Howard Sanden. I opened it, and honestly couldn't put the book down until I had read the entire thing. That is the sign of a great book! So armed with my new knowledge, I went to live painting group tonight and tried to put what I had learned to practice. I think this is my best live painting portrait yet - and while I still have soooo much farther to go, I was pleased with my progress.

Okay soooo am trying a little sculpture. I am using an old photo of my son in his football jersey. Its extremely hard to get a likeness of him in clay. I really need other photos from the side at least - and my son is so much older now that I don't know if he can model for me. But it's fun to experiment with other media.

  We had a new model at live painting class tonight. She has very beautiful features and lovely skin tones. I don't think I have the right side of her face dark enough. I think I'm still a little scared of going all out and actually painting what I see. Hopefully I will gain the courage to do it next time!

  I've never done a baby painting before, but this one reminded me so much of one of my baby sisters (when they were babies of course - now they're old women!) that I just had to give it a shot. This is just a small study - a 6" x 8". I did a lot of things different on this. I put some different colors in my palette like a pre mixed violet, permanent rose, and raw umber. The other thing I did was actually mix the colors before I started painting. That saved a ton of time - whipped this out in just under an hour, and I thought it made the skin tones turn out better because I wasn't mixing them on the fly.

I was on a painting frenzy yesterday! Two paintings in one day! Love it! So first let me preface this by saying, this is not a moviestar! Haha! When I was painting it I was trying to reveal the emotion in her eyes.

I had such good response from the last Keanu, that I decided to paint him again. I painted this from a photo I found on creative commons that had a right to modify license.
I painted this on a really big canvas (for me) - it's a 24" x 36" canvas. So to keep things semi in scale I started off by making a grid with charcoal on the canvas and then drew the outline of him on the grid with charcoal. Then I fixed that, and painted over it.
I think the grid helped me tremendously to keep things in scale - which is hard when you go larger. The only problem is my paint is not really covering the old grid lines! I've tried putting the paint on thick, but since I am painting a lighter color than the dark charcoal grid, it's still showing through. Oh well, I guess lesson learned - next time I will do the outline and erase the grid before starting to paint!
Also the angle of his face was difficult for me. He is cocking his eyebrow, with his face twisted and angled - a real challenge! I may go back and do a little more detail. I have not spent very much time on this so it could use more polishing. I am thinking I might enter this in a juried competition, but am running out of time!

Started on this last night, and didn't have enough time to finish - so I worked on it a little more tonight and finished. Posted it on instagram and was really happy because @keanureevesoficial reposted it to their 10,000 followers! Yay! Got some major exposure!

I have never painted a horse before, so this subject was a bit outside my comfort range. I usually paint faces and figures, so it's good to do something else. I guess I could argue that every subject is foreign because you have never painted that particular face or place before anyway.

I found the reference photo for this on flickr with a creative commons license. I loved the yellow light that backlit the horses.

This is quite a large piece - it's a 16x20 on canvas. I had toned the canvas a pinkish color and purposely let a little of it show through in the clouds and the distant mountains.

I soooo wish I had time to paint every day. It's like falling in love - I fall in love with every subject and then in my own way - bring my idea of them to life.

I have been so busy I haven't had time to paint - so very late tonight I started on this. It's funny, when I started I was quite certain it wouldn't turn out well at all. It looked really bad! Ha! But I went back to Sue's methods - block in the darks - block in the lights and before long it started to look like her. It's Joan Crawford by the way - in case you can't tell. I love my moviestars ~

This isn't a good picture. I took this late at night and couldn't get rid of the glare. Also there's a lot more red in this painting than is showing up in the photo. I will take another picture when I'm finished with it. I wasn't satisfied to just do an abstract today - I've been wanting to paint this one, so I got a good start on it. I really love the creepiness of these American Horror story paintings. They are fun to do!

It's icy and schools were closed today. So I had a little time this afternoon to start a painting. I didn't do a lot on the hands - but I'm really liking the abstractness of them. I have to say I find Jessica Lange fascinating to paint. She has such amazing features. Even now, at her age, she's still a very beautiful woman.