Oranges and Plumb

This painting was a four color challenge with three colors close on the color wheel, blue, turquoise, and purple, with the compliment, orange.

It turned out better that I thought it would. I was very leery of the background blue being so intense, but then I watched Carol go even more saturated with her demo. Very exciting.

Tea and Strawberries

This is my second painting from the workshop...I also painted these strawberries 8 times in an exercise in quick 2 minute intervals.

By the time I was done with these berries, they were roasted from the lights.

I noticed that the interior ellipse on the cup is off.

I practiced ellipses because they are challenging and Carol said to stretch and be challenged. There are 4 in this painting. Can you count them?

Some Like It Hot

This is the first of the paintings I did for Carol Marine's workshop this last week.

It was an excellent jump start for me after a year of not painting much.

The exercises were challenging and met with much whining on my part, but I learned a lot from each one. And I would have not done them on my own.

Carol is very attentive and a really good teacher. Which I can't always say about good artists whose work I admire. Having both talents is unusual.

Songs of Sorrows

This is my current painting. I am trying to express my feelings of the last year and in particular the last 3 months of depression. My intention is to paint relevant images of experience instead of decorative work. Most of my work does have personal reference, but I would like to push this alittle more.

This is my dog, Queenie, who used to wail with my other Corgi, Duncan when the sirens hit a certain pitch. I am also a wailer when my heart is struck with a certain pitch of emotion.

Painting her at night was an interesting challenge because the colors are all very effected by the cold colors of reflected light.

This picture doesn't accurately show the blues that are in the painting. Queenie's white fur is quite blue.

Liam McCabe

This is a commission for my cousin that I have been working on. I started with pastel pencils and moved to hard pastels and soft pastels. I will put a few finishing touches on it, but am pretty satisfied with it. I will work on the eye lids some.

The big challenge here was the mouth. I didn't want to contend with all those teeth. You can't really see it in this reference photo, but the big smile in the original photo has lots of teeth and the grin closed the eyes somewhat. So, I changed the mouth to being closed
To do this, I had to shorten the chin and narrow the cheeks somewhat. Just a small amount, but these little adjustments requires knowledge of a face. I also changed the colors of the shirt and sweater for more color near the face.

I hope his grandmother likes it.

Big Carriage Horse

This is the finished painting. I quit using the hard pastels and went to very soft ones to punch up the color. I had fun doing this one and let myself take 2 weeks to do it.

This big guy was in Canada when we visited this summer. There were lots of draft horses in the streets, and I can still smell their horsey smell when I look at this.

Next step

I am continuing to work up the areas with more color. This one has the main areas in proportion except the pupil of the eye. It isn't right at all. I also want more intensity of color on the left side to balance the greens on the upper right.

It helps to see it on the blog and get another view of how it is looking. The mane on the left needs to be punched up also. And a few more very dark values.

I have used multiple layers of fixative to be able to go back in and rework areas. I have probably 8 layers. Still needs work.