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.

 Went to the three hour live painting session at Nysha's today. Our model was very thin, and so I kept thinking the arms looked too thin but then that was what I saw. Now that I'm home, I think her left arm is too long. Again I didn't measure, and I don't have reference photos so it will have to just stay this way. I think the problem is the hand goes down a bit too far and the break in the arm needs to go up a smidge.

 I realized on the way home that I didn't use a single drop of yellow ochre in her skin. But her skin seemed to have very cool tones so I stuck to the blues, purples and cooler reds. I loved the light - Nysha has such a talent with lighting the subjects. His lighting on her was very dramatic and I loved the pose.

Fitting all of this on a 12x16 board meant I couldn't get the detail I'd like on her face, hands, etc. but was a good study and I feel like I learned 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!

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!

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

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!

If you're coming from Facebook - made ya look!! Haha!! The truth is I planned it this way so there is a suggestion of nudity. It really shouldn't be offensive to anyone.

I've been traveling and working a lot so I haven't had time to paint, and I miss it so very much! This morning I was able to go to the Friday paint group and get this done. So happy to be painting. This was the first time I've painted a male nude - I was pretty happy with what I was able to get done in 3 hours. I will be traveling a lot more over the next three weeks so I'm not sure if I will find time to paint, but I hope so!  

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.

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!

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'm not sure if you can tell but I did a little more on my Carnival of Venice piece. My husband said it looked like a Geisha girl in Venice - my son said the mask was not evident. Everyone's an art critic around here!

So I worked on it a little more. I'm not sure that it's any better and I may work on it more.

Last night went to live painting group but I was really not having a good night and that was a real shame because we had a beautiful model. I had been up since 5:30 and I think I was just tired.

Here's my unfinished piece that I am very unhappy with!
I'm breaking a new rule here. I was listening to a podcast on savvypainter.com with Carole Marine and she talked about how important it is not to post your bad paintings. I'm not sure if that really applies to me yet because I'm not selling my work - still very much in the learning stages, but it sure sounded like a good idea.

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."

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.

  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.