Backyard Pond

My last commission for this season. I learned alot with this painting. It is watercolor with pastel on top. I had a hard time with the reference photos and creating a focal point that didn't look like a black hole in the center on top of fairly flat colored greens. So I pushed the colors and shadows and am happy with the results. It ended up to be fun. 8x26inches

A Good Friend

This is a dog portrait I just finished for a commission. The story behind this dog is wonderful and is all about friendship, patience, loyalty and always ready with a smile. Kind of like my "Buddy." Which reminds me that I need to do a painting of my dog too. Stay tuned....

8x10 inches, watercolor

Field Trip

Every December I take my class on a "field trip" to a local garden center (Quality Gardens) to paint pointsettias. It is so lovely in the green house, full of color, texture and warmth on a cold day. While I was painting this demonstration one of the employees told me the type of pointsettia I was painting was called "Monet." How appropriate!!!

8x10 inches, watercolor

pastel portrait

I have been working on a pastel portrait and thought I would share what I have already. It is pretty much done. I will go back and tweek here and there. Anyway I decided to use pastel for this portrait since the reference photo was alittle blurry. I had no access to another so we thought pastel would work out fine. This one is pretty straight forward, reference photo taken with a flash... tried to keep it soft. Oh and we had to keep it small 8x10 so that I didn't have to make up detail that I couldn't see.

Update---- The finished portrait after alittle tweaking...

Oh, and now I see one more thing to do....

Mr Personality!

I just finished this 8x10 in watercolor. This portrait just had to be done with a bold background to fit the big, bold, in your face personality of this pint sized dog.

Faces

So for my last tuesday class, we finished the vintage portrait lesson working on a portrait using the smaller studies and paintings we did. Remember to use the contour drawings, value studies and painted sketches to keep the lights and darks in the proper places. The rest is just coloring! The painting is about 8x11 inches on watercolor paper.

I also included a watercolor sketch I did of my son. He is working on his portfolio for school and left a photo reference of himself, lit from underneath, at my studio. He is pretty creative and it inspired a future class to do with my students... If you take away the familiar, you are forced to look at and draw what you see, not what you think you see. Kind of like drawing upside down... This is also about 8x10 inches.

Continuation of vintage images

My tuesday morning class has continued to explore painting people using vintage photographs as inspiration. We have been practicing with value, color and quick studies. The class is doing well and we have a few that have put together complete paintings... some alittle abstract, some very charming and all work to be proud of! Next week we will continue with more quick studies to warm up and then work on composition. These are my quick, small, simple, demos done on an 8x10 inch sheet of paper.

Vintage man

I had the class work from black and white, vintage photographs. I like the way that old photos fade. The students don't get all caught up in detail and can simplify their paintings to just shadow shapes. They also can choose their own colors and ended up using some fun, unexpected colors. All of them did a great job. This is my demonstration, about 8x10 inches done in watercolor.

acrylic demos

I have a student who enjoys working in acrylic and I try to do demonstrations for her as often as I can. We have been looking at how colors relate/reflect... warm, cool... light sources... It is so interesting if you take the time to do your value drawings, take color notes and study the image before you paint. We have been painting from life in the studio.

eggplant, 7x5 inches garlic, 4x4 inches

Student Refresher

It has been a great week having all my students back for a new year of fun! Last week the adult class did a still life watercolor of pears in a basket. This is my demo about 10x10 inches.

The student age class did some drawing refreshers. I wanted to make sure they could still see shapes, shading and highlights. They started with contour drawings and moved to shading & highlighting.

And today the adults did the

drawing refresher (contour, value, shading...) and a lemon painting (about 7x10 inches).

It is going to be a good year!