A Painting A Day

I haven't had time to paint, and our local art league has a show this month, so the day before the deadline, I rush to my easel and paint this picture from a lovely photograph I have of our children.

My son is about to graduate from high school and then move far, far away for College and my stepdaughter is getting married this fall, so both of them have these incredible life events going on, and they are top of mind, so it was only natural to paint them.

Because I was painting under a deadline, I used a new product called Liquin Impasto. I needed the paint to dry (like the next day) and I wanted to work in oils so I am happy to say it worked beautifully. The painting stayed wet long enough to mix the paint on the canvas, and it was completely dry within a few hours. It also comes in a tube which is really nice - honestly I don't think I used Liquin much before because it was so darn hard to get it out of the bottle.

So this deadline was a good thing - I found a new product that I really like. Because I always seem to paint under pressure, I think I'll be using it a lot!

 Happy to get back in the studio tonight. Painted this at Anne's tonight and am planning on painting again on Friday. It's been too long!

Not sure if I'm finished with this yet, but I am having fun with this one. I combined my love of abstract with my love of portrait and figurative work - combined with my current obsession for red and just a little Warhol thrown in for fun - with the repeating figures.

I was actually trying to find a crowd pic but couldn't find one so I thought why don't I just make multiple copies of this model? I thought the crisscrossing legs would be cool... not sure it turned out that way though.

 It's surprisingly hard to paint exact copies. You can see there are a lot of differences between them. It was easier to get the two models side by side but the one off to the left is way off. I plan to do this kind of painting again and see how close I can come to making exact replicas. I don't ever trace things but I might reconsider that - paint the first one and then duplicate it with tracing paper. Tracing has always seemed like cheating to me - although a lot of artists I really respect do some tracing. I might consider it only if I'm tracing the first model I paint. That way I'm tracing my own work.

This is in acrylic and I'm actually really starting to like working with it. It dries so frigging fast! I mean like almost after I put the paint on the canvas. And then it's forgiving... I can paint over things as often as I'd like and can completely cover black with just one or two coats. With oil I can push the paint around but I can't cover mistakes like that unless I wait for it to dry. So I'm liking that aspect.

I also love making drips. Sorry that might sound childish but hey ... the drips bring out the inner kid in me.

There are a lot of things unfinished in this painting, but I think I like it that way. At least I like it today... tomorrow ... who knows?

See if you can figure out why I called it Birdies. Haha