Portrait studies

This 8x10" life portrait study was done last night with finishing touches put on in my studio today.

8x10" oil on linen

These past few weeks I've also done studies of my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, husband and a friend.

I have really been enjoying painting especially portraits.  It blows my mind that in spite of the billions of people on earth, no two people, even identical twins, look exactly alike.

Girl in blue scarf

I love when I have the opportunity to work from a model.  This is a 2 hour study I did the other evening.

"Girl in Blue Scarf"

11x14" oil on linen

My Muse

My muse has been keeping me busy.  I wonder what my muse looks like?  Maybe this?

America West Heritage Center - Little Pioneer

Recently a friend posted a photo of her daughter on her Facebook page.  I couldn't help but be inspired and couldn't wait to paint her.  She is one of the many volunteers at the America West Heritage Center in Wellsville, Utah.  As usual a little tweaking but I'll leave that to another day.

"Pioneer Girl"

12x16 oil on canvas

This is a close up of "Pioneer Girl."

A professional photographer friend, Tom Szalay, invited me to sketch or paint from some photos he's taken of students of his.  This is one I did yesterday.

18"x24" charcoal

I have a house guest coming for a visit and I know I should be cleaning the house in preparation for her arrival but the paint and brushes lured me away from housework once again.  Both of these are done with watercolors and are 11x14" and will probably be tweaked many times before they are ready for my signature.

Sudanese Woman

I usually paint from life or from my own photo references but this week I saw a good friend's photographs and immediately had a desire to paint from them.  My friend, Tom Szalay, is a professional photographer and these past few years has been photographing many refugees some of which are students at the school where he teaches.  Tom graciously gave me permission to use some of his photos as reference material.  Here is the first of what I hope will be many paintings.

Painting in Spurts

I get on a roll with painting and I lose all sense of time and space.  I forget to eat.  I forget to drink water.  I even forget I have a family.  I travel some place when I'm painting and sometimes forget to come back.  Today was like that.  Here it is 4 pm and I haven't eaten lunch or drank anything since breakfast.  I think husband and son have each poked their heads in here but I honestly can't tell you what they said.  I hope it wasn't important.

In last weeks workshop the individual head studies were each done in about three hours.  That included jockeying for position with the others in the class, setting up our easels and giving the models breaks about every 20 or 25 minutes.

I worked on two of the paintings today.  As usual, I'll probably make changes tomorrow or the next day but I wanted to post what I've done today.  Click on the paintings to see more detail.

Blogging each day has helped me to keep my focus on painting.  If I take a break from my easel, I often find it difficult to get back at it but if I continue painting then the momentum builds and builds until I feel like an obsessed woman.  What a high!!!!  Legal and fun.

These are both 12x16 oil on canvas.

I have come to realize that I love painting anything that is living especially people.  At least for now, I don't relate to barns, buildings or other inanimate objects.  There is something about people that intrigues me.  We are each a compilation  of all of our experiences and those experiences can often be seen in our eyes and in our body positions.  When painting people I try and capture that essence - that distillation of who they are or at least who they are presenting to the world on that particular day.

Here is what is on my easel today.  It is a painting that I began last week in a workshop. I've already made some adjustments to the hair but haven't photographed the changes yet.

Art Workshops - Love or Hate?

I'll be the first to admit I find art workshops challenging on many levels.  First there is the part about learning something new that gets my brain to sizzling not to mention being surrounded by what I always perceive as better artists.  These past six days I've been in such a surrounding.  

Mike Malm, a local yet renowned artist held what turned out to be an awesome workshop on painting the figure using live models.  Four of the six days Mike demonstrated his techniques for painting under different lighting conditions.  Mike would paint in the morning and we would paint in the afternoon.  On two of the days, we painted all day.  I can't say enough about what a wonderful instructor Mike is.  He seemed to meet each of us at whatever level we were at.  My experience would have been made easier had I taken a drawing class in the past.  In spite of my not having had formal art training, I think I did ok.

Here are four of the six paintings I did during the week.  (I still need to photograph the other two.)  I will do some more work on these paintings now that I'm home but wanted to post what was accomplished in the workshop.  

Paint What You Love

"What do you paint?" a woman whom I met at the gardener's market asked me.  Before I could answer my friend replied that I painted flowers with watercolor.  "How do you get the watercolor to stick to the flowers" was her next question.  Some questions just have no answer.

When I started out painting I did paint a lot of close up views of flowers.  They sold very well.  I even tied for second place for the "People's Choice" award at a large group exhibit at Palmer's Gallery in Salt Lake City which by the way was my first experience of showing in a big city gallery.  You would think I would stay with that subject and maybe some day I will go back to painting flowers but I want to learn to be good at painting any subject.  Then I can choose flowers or something else because they are my favorite subject not out of avoiding subjects I might find too difficult to paint.  

It is said that watercolor is the most difficult medium to learn and portraits the most difficult subject.  I started out with watercolors and now I'm trying to master painting portraits.  It might be the stubborn streak inside of me that drives me to continue trying to capture the essence of the person but I don't think so.  For now at least I find that I LOVE figurative painting.  Some like this one that I posted last year are done more completely in watercolor.  And others like the man below are just quick watercolor studies and will eventually turn into a full painting. 

Watching and Waiting

watercolor 11x14

Don

watercolor study

I've learned a lot

I've learned a lot from doing this painting and have a long way to travel still.  To see my the beginning of this look back to my Jan 9 post "Today's Portrait in Progress."   I know as this sits in my art studio I'll see what changes still need to be made but for now, I think I'm done.  The light on the back of her head is just a reflection from my camera.  I hadn't realized that last week's pose was the end and today this model was in a different outfit and standing in totally different light so I guess that's a hint to just stop.  Ah - what will tomorrow bring?

Painting that almost paints itself

untitled

oil 8x10

Sometimes I sit down to paint and the brush seems to take on a life of its own.  That happened this morning.  Maybe it was because my studio was a little on the cool side or maybe its just that I let my mind go someplace else but when I awoke, this was on my easel.

Painting and/or Drawing

I really should title this blog site Painting and/or Drawing Almost Every Day.  Today was a painting day.  I returned to the art center to continue the painting I started last Monday and worked a little bit on last Saturday.  I guess I'm not whipping it out as quickly as I'd like but I'm enjoying the process.  Liz, the model, is very good and says this painting looks like her so I guess I'm heading in the right direction.  I still have more to do but this is how far I've gotten this afternoon.

Knowing When to Stop

Girl With Red Hair

oil on linen board 20x16

I took an oil painting workshop from Michael Malm last May. I was new to oils and also new to painting  directly from a live model although I did a few practice sessions with a model using watercolors before Mike's workshop.  Mike would do a demonstration in the morning and we would paint in the afternoon.  I didn't get very far in my three hour session so I took some photos hoping to finish my paintings after I got home.  This girl was one of the paintings I started in the workshop.  I got it out again this  last week and worked a little more on it today.   Painting from a model is so much easier than from photos.  You can see color variations that  the camera doesn't pick up.

I often don't know when to stop.  I also got the painting of Trooper out again today and did some more fiddling with that, too.  At this rate it will never dry and my brother might not receive this gift until next Christmas if I don't stop this.