Monday, March 31, 2008

Orange Slices with Tulips

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I did this 9x12 painting in Peggi Kroll-Roberts workshop this last weekend. She has us do several black and white studies before moving on to the color painting. This was the final painting on Saturday. Tomorrow I'll try to post a couple of the earlier boards that show the process better.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Not the Bearded Iris

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This is an 6x6 painting I did today. Dianne brought these beautiful flowers from home to Carole's class. I couldn't resist trying to capture the rich colors.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Heidi in a Red Shawl

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This is an 8x10 painting I did today in the last hour of my class in between working with the students. Again I was trying to show them the colors I saw on stage and how I mix them.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A Drink of Lemons - in private collection


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Sorry for not posting in a few days. I have been getting a show lined up at American Visions Art Gallery in historic Folsom, California on April 12th. It will be a group show with Carole Gray-Weihman and Nobee Kanayama. Google them if you get a chance.
The still life above started out really well as simple color spots and then became a challenge for me to finish up. I hope you like the results.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Old Ford in Mustard Fields

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My friend took her class out to paint these brilliant mustard fields near Petaluma and invited me to come along and paint. At first I was overwhelmed with the mustard. Didn't know what to paint it was so beautiful. And then of course I found this old Ford and knew I had to place it in the forground with the mustard receeding. Would love to have another seesion to paint on it. This is about a 2 hour, 12"x16" painting.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Trio in Red

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I thought it would be fun to set up a simple still life with three apples, each with a little more green in it then the next one. I wanted a strong shadow pattern as a design element and the greens to accent all the warm colors. Hope you like it.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Don in Profile

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This was a two hour pose and was painted with some friends down at the Marin Art School. They're about 15 minutes south of our l'Atelier.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Spicy

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I was at the store buying groceries when I saw this kit for making guacamole. The items looked like they would be good for a still life. Too bad the avocados never made it in a painting! Maybe next time.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Friday, March 7, 2008

Ashley in Tangerine Wrap

This painting is unavailable as it was given to a friend.

This is a little 6" x 8" sketch I did yesterday in about 40 minutes. It started out as a rough sketch to show one of my students in my figure painting class how I see the color that was up there. I set up behind her and put down some spots of color so that at the break she could look at her piece and then look at my piece and see why I chose the colors I did. I think it is a useful exercise that I learned from Ray Roberts when he did a similar thing in one of his landscape classes. It allows the student to compare their choices to what the instructor chooses. I then changed the model into a 90 minute pose and while the students were starting their new pieces I continued to try and make a painting out of a rough sketch without having the model in the same pose. It was a lot of fun!

Glass Color

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This still life was set up out side my studio's barn doors and painted in direct sunlight. There was this really cool (as in I liked it) wavy light coming through the brown bottle and lighting up its shadow.

25 minute head painting demo

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This was a demo I did yesterday in my head painting class. We were talking about designing the shapes in the head into two values to start with. Separating the side lit with the stage light from the shadow side. Keeping all the values in light in the same family of values as not to compete with any of the values in shadow side and visa versa. As you can see I broke that rule in the light side of the hair as I wanted the the hair to hold as one block of value against the skin.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Apple Spritzer

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I felt ambitious when I set this still life up and kept adding objects until I felt it was working. I wanted a transparent object (so I had to add two) and an irregular metal object against the enamel pan. Then I threw in a couple apples for good measure! What do you think?

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Angel's Aqua Glass

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I set this up in direct sunlight. I have been buying a bunch of colored glass objects and grabbed this dark aqua, colored glass to paint along with a Porcelain angel. This was a difficult glass to paint because it's pretty opaque and not very transparent which is the effect I was after. Still a fun exercise though.