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!

I'm tired of trying to second guess the art buying public and so decided this weekend to just get back to my roots and paint what I want to paint - which is people.

So did this painting of a boy fishing. It reminds me very much of my brother when he was young. I didn't start it until like 5:30 last night, and I never hooked up my lamp so it was hard to see the colors. I didn't realize how purple the rock was until I looked at it this morning. Maybe I need to work without light more often! Haha - because I love the colors.

This is a large piece - 30x48. I wouldn't have been able to finish it if there had been more detail. I spent a great deal of time on getting the green color right on the lake. I still had the light while working on it. I started off using viridian in the mix but quickly abandoned it and just mixed my own with ultramarine blue, lemon yellow and cad red light.

 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!

So much has been going on that I'm having to put painting on the back burner for now. But I did get to go to a live model session last Friday - this was the result. I absolutely loved the lighting and the working from her profile - it made it seem very dramatic to me.

I am thinking I won't have much time to paint until the Christmas Holidays, so I'm looking forward to that!

Painted this over the weekend. It's large for me - on a 24"x48" gallery wrapped canvas.

I did it in acrylic because I didn't have time for oil paint to dry. I wanted to get some work out to Market Central because my artist friend Glenda Brown and I are sharing a wall.

Janice Joplin is incredibly hard to capture. Her looks and even her features seem to change from picture to picture... so I just focused on the picture I was working from.

Acrylic is also a challenge for me because I don't use it very often. I was really impressed with the masterson palette I used, because over the course of the three days I was working on it, the paint didn't dry out. That was really impressive. But working with the acrylic seems sluggish. The paint gets sticky so fast there's no time to blend your colors on the canvas. I used a gel medium with the paint to try to keep it pliable but it still dried too quickly. I do believe there are some mediums on the market I can get to slow down the drying time - I might look into that. I just need the paint to stay workable for long enough to blend. It may have also been that I wasn't using enough water while painting. On the flip side, the whole reason I used acrylics was for the fast drying time. So I guess you can't have it all!

 I was encouraged with this portrait because my husband liked it so much, he actually wanted to keep it!

I I'm having a bit of a painting problem lately where I can't seem to find a subject that holds my interest. So I started looking on you tube and found a ton of interesting faces. This one in particular stood out to me. Love her full purple lips!

Painting from life at Nysha Studio in Bartlett this morning.

We had a great model! Beautiful girl. And it was a great group of artists - Sue Foell, Holly Wolfe, Terry Kenney, Jenny Miller, Tim Minshew, and Nysha.

 I really enjoyed this pose. I think the back is so beautiful. The skin tones were so varied with her tan lines and the lighting - making for an interesting study! So that's why I'm calling it "Bikini Line!" Haha It's a 12"x16" Oil on Board.

One of the hardest things for me (besides choosing a subject to paint) is to know when it's finished. I started to correct my mistakes - but after a few little brushstrokes decided that I like it just the way it is.

If I were to do more I feel like I would overwork it - and perhaps ruin it. So here's my final portrait of Mark Landis.

By the way, they posted the portrait on the Art & Craft Facebook page. You can see it here:
https://www.facebook.com/artandcraftfilm?fref=nf

I watched the best documentary I've seen in a while the other night.

It's called "Art & Craft" and it explores the forgeries of Laurel, Mississippi native Mark Landis.

Landis' crime was (in my opinion) fairly harmless because he didn't profit from any of his forgeries - he was being a philanthropist.

The thing is... the guy is really a great artist.

Anyway, I did this really - really quickly tonight. Just basically throwing the paint on the canvas. I plan to refine it more - I see about a hundred things I need to change. But I wanted to post a before, so I can gauge the "after"!

By the way, I'm planning to send this to him.

I feel like I've been on a painting marathon! Haha! The deadline to enter the MGAL National Show is today and of course I leave everything to the very last minute!

I started this yesterday. It's pretty large - on a 24x36 canvas and although I would have liked more time to work on it, I'm pretty happy with it. Cross your fingers that it gets in the show!

 Always love painting from life group on Wednesday nights! This was our model. She is getting married in two weeks so I don't know how she fit this in!

 I had a difficult time painting her but I was really proud of the pillow! Haha!

Yesterday I celebrated my ten year anniversary with this guy. So in celebration, I did a quick painting from this picture on our honeymoon.

I don't think I've attempted many self portraits, so it was a bit difficult to paint myself!

We had another drop dead gorgeous model in painting from life group tonight. Anne is on a roll! She had beautiful features - full lips, long neck, bright blue eyes.

I think I am bringing too large of a canvas to the group because I tend to paint a little larger than life, which I really don't like.

All in all, I was semi-happy with this one. Half way through I messed up all the edges like I've seen Sue Foell do so often. It seemed to help because my painting was too controlled up until then.

There just isn’t enough time to do everything I would like in 2 and a half hours!

I don't do enough pencil sketches these days. I usually just jump right into painting without doing any drawing. I did this quickly today, and enjoyed working with a different medium so much! It's a study for a larger painting I plan to do.

I am such a weirdo! Haha! I wanted to do a quick painting tonight and was just so fascinated with the Carnival of Venice pictures I found online that I did this.

 It's surprisingly hard to do a blue sky, and blue water, and blue boats. They were all different shades of blue. The sky graduated from an ultramarine to a cerulean to an almost yellowish light blue. As you can see ,I didn't spend a lot of time on them.

 But the thing that just absolutely fascinated me was the figure in that mask! I don't know if you can actually tell it's supposed to be a mask.... but that was what I was shooting for!