Strong light

I started painting some strongly lit portraits...working with some unique color combinations and leaving the pure white of the paper as the lit side of the face...this is the most straight forward portrait...for some of the others I used purples, greens, yellows and blues in the face...I'll try to post those some time soon.

Mill in Red

Another one from my week long retreat...this is the main building where you eat all your meals and they are tasty.  My studio was a little further away from the main campus so I managed to walk most of my meals off, plus gather inspiration like this view on my way there!

pear portrait

 

I made myself another sketchbook recently that I filled while I was away at a week long artist residency.  This little painting was the last one I did in the sketchbook on the last day and was of this red pear that kept me company most of the week in the studio and I thought I'd better commemorate it with its own portrait! (actual size 3.5"x2" or so)

Value

When I first started painting I didn't understand the importance of value..this was the hardest thing for me to grasp...now that I've been painting for many years, value has certainly become more clear and is such an important part of a successful painting.

color and color

This piece is 22"x15" and shows some fantastic tail feather colors..I don't think there is such a colorful rooster out there for real..but I certainly exaggerate the pigment choices and hope it makes for a more exciting painting.

drippy double pears

This was a fun experiment while I was away all week at an artist residency.  I tacked a large piece of paper on the wall from a roll I bought for $5.00 at Ikea and then painted these two pears that I had placed on a nearby table.  Fun to paint so extremely vertical...hence the drips. The paper is about 24" wide by 36" long.

subject revisited

Here's a rooster done a few weeks ago and got me back on a roll for painting my feathered friends..so I will be posting those over the next several weeks...painting marathons or lulls hit everyone...sometimes a subject gets put on the back burner for a while, but resurfaces when you are ready to tackle it again...

is it finished?

This is the last installment of my progress pictures...I don't know if the painting is finished at this point or if there is still tweaking to do...but I hope you got to see the major steps involved in my process.