Author Archives

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Mel – on the home stretch

Many hours spent developing the portrait of Mel Rothenburger today. Now his glasses are defined and I worked a lot on the background, which unfortunately you cannot see – yet. He’s finally ‘arrived,’ and it took the background to do make this so, which is not always the case.
I find it quite a challenge to work only on weekends on a piece. The time inbetween causes me to loose the connection and the direction. As a woman, how I feel effects things too. 
He’s going to be ok now, I’ve got him where I want him – so to speak – ha ha.

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Untitled – Shadows and Highlights

As promised, here is the drawing showing the shadows and highlights adn the finesses is gone – sigh. 
It’s not precise but it’s enough to give me an idea of what to do in the early staegs of the painting. In addition to dark and light, I added a mid tone; after doing all that drawing I didn’t want to lose the lines or information that mid tone area provides.
I’ll be watching to see if this mid-tone addition gets me into trouble in the painting…

click image to see it larger

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Untitled – changed composition

With a critical look at yesterday’s sketch I changed it today, why?
Even though I love the design element in the furniture, for me it relates to the sculpture found on string instruments, and so it relates well to the guitar, but I find it competes with his face. I could keep it and paint it darkly in the background, but why keep it then? so chop! off it goes!
The composition went from horizontal to vertical which works well with the shape of his face. His eyes are engaging and I want the viewer to engage with him and this new arrangement achieves that.

The sketch below is about to change a lot now; it will loose it’s finesse of line. Part of me hates to do this because  I LOVE DRAWINGS, but I need to define the highlights and shadows before putting it on the canvas. Notice there are little touches of dark already showing.  
Are you wondering why one pupil is larger than the other? It’s not me and it’s not him, that large pupil is on the dark side of his face – didn’t notice this occurs until close observation showed me something new about eyes.

More later…

click image to see it larger

  

 

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New – Untitled

As the days tick by when I can’t paint, subject matter and inspiration build up. I want to do so many pieces and find my self casting about the studio trying to settle on just one and not be distracted by the others in the queue.
This one has been waiting a very long time – years in fact. A title has not come to mind, so have left it untitled for now. This one is not for the exhibition so I have posted a full image.

The drawing is on paper and is not complete yet, sorry for the blue mottled tones, the drawing is quite light so I had to darken it in Photoshop so you could see it – thus the blue… more tomorrow….

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More Mel…

Having taken the portrait workshop and learned a lot of things, and then not painted at all for a week, my mind is scrambling to get back on the horse, so to speak. Flesh tones are much better understood now and I applied some of that understanding to Mel this morning. I say “some,” because there is a colour that was used in the workshop that I don’t have, it’s on order, but not here yet. I came very close to mixing this colour on my own and the lack of it’s exactitude (?) is not going to break this painting. I’m not a big fan of real flesh tones anyway, I like to make the face move by pushing colour and value.

So here is Mel after this morning’s session. I think it’s neat how the lens of his glasses show up even though I haven’t painted them yet

 

 

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Painting the Portrait from Life Workshop

I’ve just returned from the Lower Mainland having soaked up 5 glorious days of Portrait Painting from Life with Artist Martinho Correia, educated in the traditional European oil painting method. It was a very fine experience and I learned many useful practices that will be added to my tool box. There were 15 of us attending and new friendships were made, the days were sunny, and the spirit of the entire process was nothing short of upbeat. 

Below is the progression of the exercise I did using his methods and style (as much as possible)

Each day we painted from a live model. Here’s my drawing and model, Guy.

Above: the set-up where we worked for the 5 days

Above: the canvas has been toned and the dead painting stage is in progress.

Above: Deadpainting complete and ready to begin the First Stage, below.

Above: Here it is finished and photographed in my studio away from the yellow tungsten lights.
It’s still wet, of course, and causing the blotchy effect in the darkened background area. 

Here I am with Martinho, an artist and instructor I greatly admire. 
When is the next workshop?!!!

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The Boat – “Missed”

Earlier this month I posted the image below of a toned in boat, you might remember?

Last weekend I started messing around with it… adding another tonal colour in a method inspired by watching Brent Lynch’s demo at the FCA Passion for Painting last Saturday.

Then some substance…

Reminded me of hyacinths… but I kept on going…

above is where I left off last weekend.

Today’s work is below, adding to the water and the boat only.

What you see below might be close to done. It sure felt good to loosen up and play around in monochromatics. I stopped looking at the source photo for the last stage of painting and just let feeling take over.

 

I called it “Missed.”