Unusual Formats

I often hall around several sizes of canvas to the various open studio sessions. Sometimes a pose seems to cry out for specific size and format. These are 12x24. Most of my portraits are 16x20. I no longer go smaller than 12x16.

More Portraits

More recent work. I am seeing much more these days. The shape of the orbit, the pit under the lateral upper lip, the temperature of the shadows...... The painting seems to flow with less effort...the next step being obvious. I am more sure of what designs I like, and I choose badly less often. I am greedy and want more time. I haven't enough energy to paint more than three hour a day.

Another day....another painting!

Catch Up

I have been ill and haven't posted so I am catching up. I have been painting only three days a week. All these are finished in one sitting. I have no energy to photograph the models and finish up later.

More Recent Paintings.

Enough said.

A Good Week

Two weeks ago I had a really good week painting. Five days of class and open studios and four good and one fair painting. It is rare I am this pleased by my work. It didn't last. The next week I had health issues and didn't paint a stroke. That's the epitome of a bad week. No paintings at all!

The Successful Failure

I try to learn from my failures but it is tough. If I could see what's wrong I could fix it. Right?

But sometimes, if I go back and look later I can figure it out. This time I took the time to get some help and Terry Miura was kind enough to lend me his eye. I started out with the concept of the Perky Young Lady and I morphed the drawing to push the concept. I ended the initial painting session with a figure that had some charm but a painting that did not make it. 24hours later even I could see I had distorted the torso too much . Terry helped me see that I had also erred in that I used the tonal approach (large value shifts between the light and the shadow) in some areas and the colorist approach (little value shifts but more color shifts between light and shadow) in other areas. The result was a schitzo painting that did not hang together. After spending just a few minutes over multiple days I feel like I greatly improved the painting but mostly like I learned a lot! It really showed in my next paintings.