Giverny Spring

From my painting trip to Giverny.

Playing with color

Our painters group is working on a winter project. You can see the work at http://subjecttointerpretations.blogspot.com/ Every 2 weeks a new photo reference is posted and we are invited to post our interpretation of it. I'm having fun using colors from my imagination. In this case, changing a gloomy day into a vivid nocturne.

Happy Thanksgiving

To celebrate Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, here is my painting of family love.

Chinese Fishermen

I'm posting this to celebrate the year of figure drawing we just completed. I'm proud of those who stayed with it. and I'm proud of the curriculum. I will do it again, but not for awhile. First, I'll see how it shows in the work of my students.

Portrait of James

Beginning the underpainting with two yellows. I like to use primaries in layers as I study the subject and the color. Yellow is easiest to start with since it is a the lightest in value. Then red, then blue.

I do an underpainting in pigment dispersions. To find out more about this pigment preparation, go to Guerra Pigments.
When the underpainting is dry, I continue with pastels





















with some pastel marks




























James, 22"x 17" pastels with pure pigment underpainting, on my sandpaper.

Peoples's choice at my Open Studio

'Leslie in Hot tub' 40"x26" Pastel on Sandpaper

This piece is about my love of painting water and people. Fun to combine them and see the distortions of the figure under water. I did a series of these paintings.

As I painted it I called it 'Handful of Jewels'. I learned a lot painting her backlit head; remembering the backlit figures I had seen in Maxfield Parrish's work. Making the skin glow with heat in the shadows was satisfying.

At the bottom of the paper you can see the underpainting. I have only a few pastel marks there. Water-based underpainting with pigment dispersions gives a transparent dimension to the opaque quality of pastels, when the underpainting is successful enough to let it show.

Bumper Sticker

This morning, at breakfast with my art friends, we spent part of our time exploring the ideas :
What motivates you to paint?
Is art necessary for life?

As I drove home I saw this bumper sticker:

EARTH