First Nation Man

I am a juried member of Vanguard Artists and we just held a show, "Forty Years of Excellence" at the West Valley Arts Council Gallery in Surprise, AZ.  I was fortunate to have my two entries among the 80 painting juried into the show and one sold.  This painting, "First Nation Man" now has a new home in Vancouver, Washington.  

"First Nation Man"

16x20 oil

I Resolve!

My New Years Resolution was to keep my blog up to date.  Here it is February 1, 2017 and I am finally getting around to it.  I can use the excuse that life has gotten in the way of painting and of blogging and that would certainly be true.  But life is always throwing things in our direction.  It is our choice how long to hold on to what has been thrown at us.  Right now I have a strong need to have more balance in my life and painting does that for me.  It brings me back to my place of center and in turn helps me handle what life tosses at me.

Over the next few days and weeks, I'll post some of the things I've been working on.  I would love to hear your comments as feedback is a wonderful motivator.

Being near the sea has always helped me feel connected.  Since I'm not living as close to the ocean as I would like, I've recently been bringing the ocean to me.

"Breaking Wave"

18x24 oil on canvas

Painting Faces- Animal or Human in Watercolor

The Sun City West art club has invited me to do a workshop on painting faces.  Rather than one full day, I've broken it down to two half days.  The first, Sunday, Jan 18th, will be a demo where I'll describe my process as I try to produce a complete or almost complete portrait painting in three hours.  The second part will be "Hands On" where students work from their own reference material or mine.  The paintings will be executed using a warm and cool of each of the primary colors.  Both half days are from 1-4pm.  I'm excited about this opportunity to show how much fun and how easy it is to capture a likeness with watercolors.

Working with Three Primary Colors

Using a very limited palette of colors can be both challenging and rewarding.  Although expensive one can purchase almost every color under the sun but where is the fun in that?  If you are new to a medium, one way to see if you like it without a lot of cost involved is to choose a warm and cool of each of the primary colors.  Since I will be soon be offering some classes and workshops in watercolor, I chose Hansa Yellow, Red Rose Deep and Phthalo Blue as my cool primary colors and Arylide Yellow, Vermillion and Ultramarine Blue as my warm primary colors.  With this combination almost every other color can be mixed.  The first workshop, "Painting Faces - Animal or Human" will be held on January 18 and 19th at the Sun West Art Club in Sun City West.  Here are a few samples of paintings done with these colors.

Poppies in the Sun

I love painting flowers although I haven't painted very many of them in recent years and of all the flowers, poppies always make me smile.  These are just a few of my recent oil paintings of poppies.  They are each 16x20 oil on board.

Just a few of my Pan Pastel Portraits!

I've really been enjoying my pan pastels especially using one color to render the face.  Some of these are from models who agreed to sit and others from personal photos or photos I've found on the net.  I wish I were ambidextrous so I could paint with one hand while drawing with the other.

Taking time to blog

These are a few of my more recent paintings.