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.

Let's Make Faces

I have discovered I have a passion for faces.  I love human faces, animal faces, flowers or rock faces or the face of a mountain.  I love them all but especially the human face.  Each face holds a myriad of stories and emotions and through my paintings, I hope to catch a small glimpse into those stories.

Unlike photos that fade with time or computer hard drives that store our many digital photos yet eventually crash or get replaced by newer and better technology, I hope that my paintings may long outlive me and so the stories behind the faces get to live on, too.

Here is a small sampling of some of the faces I've been painting.  Is there someone you would like to have a painting of?

Where did the time go?

I can't believe it has been a year (actually a bit longer) since I last posted anything.  WOW - where did the time go?  To make a long story, short.  I have been painting.  I have not been blogging but I have been painting.

Today we celebrated the life of a good friend who suddenly passed away last week.  Death is always hard.  Knowing that someone is no longer physically with us is especially difficult.  I wanted to find a way to help his wife through these hard times and what else could I do but try and capture Steve in a painting.

This is an 11x14 oil of Steve

Here is another one I did this week.