Ballerina Three

Oil on canvas panel 20x18. I see one or two areas I want to work on a little more. My challenge is to make her seriously elegant and still retain a bit of whimsy.

Ballerina Two

Oh this was such fun to paint - such glorious color and light! The painting is 14 x 18 oil on canvas. The bottom photo is the start and the top photo is the finish. A good painting day today and I am happy!

A Vagary of Happenstance - finished

A few final tweaks and highlights and I will call this done. The color in this piece is somewhat unusual and was foremost in my mind once I captured the gesture of horse and rider in my initial oil sketch and then connected them to their spot in the landscape. I wanted the painting to be mostly high key and developed a palette of soft warm whites surrounding the cool, crisper whites of the horse. The orange and lavenders in the landscape and the lowering blue of the sky suggested themselves as I moved forward. Thank you to Susan Roux http://susanroux.blogspot.com/ for her comment in the previous post concerning color - I do love color and am constantly fascinated how color, value, form all play their role in translating the artistist vision in the mind to the final observable rendition. I think oil paint is a purely magical medium that allows me to place on canvas a glimpse into otherwise unobservable realities. Art and creativity is such a joy!

Work in Progress

Untitled so far - 18x24 oil on linen.

Quick Study and a Request

Quick study today of a large ballerina - oil on canvas paper 16x12.
I received an email from a friend earlier today with this request:
When sending out Christmas cards this year, please take a moment and send one to a wounded warrior at the following address:
A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20307-5001
Please feel free to copy this and post it on your own blog and Facebook wall. Thanks so much.

Workshop Efforts

You may have wondered why there are 3 separate pieces of one painting - I wanted to post the life figure painting I did today in my evening class but did not want to put the nudity warning on my blog as I rarely post nude paintings. I was pleased with this one and wanted to post it - I wonder if it was worthwhile editing it like this - lol! The painting took about 3 hours and is 18 x 24 linen board. The instructor, Alison Harris, had to assure me that the model really was green in the shadow areas and once I allowed myself to see that, I did okay. The pose was difficult as she faced me fairly directly but I do believe that I caught the way her weight was balanced on her left hand and arm - if you could see the whole painting you might agree with me! The other pieces are pencil drawings of our previous model Ron - each one about 25 minutes. I am thoroughly enjoying this workshop and am sorry that it will be over next week - it zipped by so quickly.

Christmas Elves

I wanted to paint some of Santa's helpers as if they were very real but not quite of the same dimensions we humans inhabit! I did not want them to appear cartoonish but I did want to keep a bit of whimsy. In any case, it turned out to be a rather ambitious undertaking and here is where I am now with this - almost but not quite done. Its 24x18 oil on linen.
Please check out Gina Brown's blog - she has posted a very touching story of the painting exchange between her daughter Blaire and myself. http://ginabrownart.blogspot.com/