One Fabulous Hat

Back to painting after a vacation, I was anxious to see how quickly I could get my groove back. I paint at a friend's studio and boy did she pick a fun costume this day! The model had on a deep blue robe and lime green hat against her pale skin and umber hair! Hat inspiration was instant and off I went.

The hat was a fun almost Triangle shape which I loved, but I was really inspired by the bright lime hat color. The hat also created a shadow across the face on the forehead and over the (facing model) left eye. The light was coming from the left above the model so there are dark shadows under the hat and in the hair along each side of her face.

The model does look a bit serious, I am not sure what I would/could have done to change that... She was looking out toward those of us painting her...I am happy with the eye in the light as it looks like it has depth and the color is fairly true to life. The other eye was in shadow so that was more of a challenge to paint. The light on the nose was strong and bright as was the light hitting the left side of the mouth. I am pleased with the face overall, despite the serious look.

I was also pleased with how the braid turned out. There was quite a bit of light hitting the braid, particularly on the braid from shoulder to chest, nearest the skin.

Overall I am happy with the painting, but maybe someday I will paint her again -- with a Mona Lisa smile!

Anatomy - Stepping Out of the Comfort Zone

My Binder for Anatomy Lite, handouts & notes!

There are some artists who do not believe that artists should take classes. I have even heard a few "I already know how to do that" art attitudes. And, in history, there are a few Self Taught  Artists who have become very successful. However I have an opposite view, I  have much to learn about art! Often I find myself asking other artists questions and gleaning their thoughts and ideas on ways to approach or improve paintings. Another artist friend strongly believes in the necessity of life draw ing. Even though she has perfect life drawing skills she has rearranged her schedule in order to take a life drawing class, it is important to her.

Hand Bones: My drawing of the hand bones.

My passion is painting and I have taken several painting classes and workshops. However,  I hear over and over how important it is to have drawing skills. Having taken Portrait Drawing, I felt the strong need to learn figure drawing. I believe that learning life drawing can only help my paintings.

For winter I took a life drawing class and I really enjoyed it and learned quite a bit. I feel the value in the class and in having a passionate and fantastic instructor. This semester, we are studying "Anatomy Lite". I have never taken a class like this and I find it fascinating. We look at a human skeleton and get a lecture overview of structure (i.e. rib cage) and then look to a live model, keeping the underlying structure in mind. There are so many bones in the body and I probably will not commit them all to memory, but I love seeing and learning and reading about the structure of us!

Gesture Portraits 2015

My post-workshop brain is spinning! Always after a workshop I find that I have painting setbacks. I am not sure why, I think it is my brain fighting itself- the whole analytical verses creative as I try to process what I learned! Art is not easy - I have found that it is quite like college where you have to learn, apply, read, process and interact to glean essential information.

Above are my quick gestures from my workshop last week. None are "finished" and none would go in any galleries, but I did learn something from each and every one. Not only did we study gesture portraits we also dabbled in palettes.

This is a portrait painted with black white and grey (oh value)! And, I always find limited palettes challenging. I learned that I need to spend more time working on value - most especially once one adds color. I struggled with this, but there is a model likeness.

I didn't really have time to perfect or attain exact likenesses but there are some pleasing effects. The man in the green hat is a success, but not because it matches the real life colors. I find it successful because I was able to mix colors using a limited palette. I think this palette was ultramarine blue, cad yellow, rose madder and white. My struggle here was to get darks - the hat was  darker in real life. Another struggle was not adding any white to the grey beard on the shadow side - it is very warm brown and red-ish.

Also important to note is the lack of details. There are no eyeballs, no little details and they are not needed to interpret the face. I do love the painterly style and looseness. I think I will study and pursue this further - quick values and portrait gestures and maybe even limited palettes...

RE-Energizing Creativity - Art Workshops

Maintaining An Active Art Brain

Quick Gesture, limited palette

Now that I have a wonderful group of artist friends, I have learned much about the artist mind. One thing I have noticed is that those whom I consider the best artists are constantly learning and striving to improve their art. One such way to improve is to take an art workshop which is often intense instruction with an art professional and in this case a live model.

Quick Gesture, limited palette

Years ago I took a wonderful Gesture Portrait Workshop and it is what it sounds like - a workshop that focuses on quick portrait gestures done with paint. At the time, my only issue was that I had not yet learned to paint people. And yet, due to my Still Life painting experience, I was able to grasp the light, shadow and shape concepts. And, I was very pleased with some of the results which are posted here. Frankly, these profile gestures are better than some of my recent profile paintings (after more experience and taking more time). All of these Gestures were very limited in time, I think we had 10 and 15 minute (and less) sessions! Impressive, right?

Quick Gesture, one color/tone

After much writing and pleading, I have been able to convince my Art Instructor that she needs to offer the Gesture Portraits Workshop again. Why? Well, for the last year I have painted portraits and figures from life. However, lately I am unsatisfied with my portrait results - I think I need to get back to the basics. What is more basic than light and shadow and limited palette? What will help me the most? Perhaps having to paint quickly with an Instructor under the pressure of limited time. In the way we pencil sketch the figure in one and five minute "gesture" sessions, I believe we need to sketch our portrait and figure paintings (with paint of course)! Isn't the concept for this workshop so wonderful? A resounding "YES!" from me, and the class is full. After the workshop, I will post my new "Gesture Portraits."


Lookout Gesture Portrait Workshop here I come! Now where is that supply list?

The Faces of Sara

Yellow Dress

One model, many styles 

 I am starting to understand better why artists have muses. There are some models from whom I always feel that I get a "good" painting (some models I cannot get a likeness or struggle with features). Sara is one of my muses as I typically like my painting results with her.

Sparkle

The yellow dress is her gown from Pakistan and it was gorgeous with grey edging and diamond-like sparkle. And, wonderfully, she had the large drop rhinestone earrings to match. This day I loved the calm that she projected from the modeling chair. I was happy with the results as I can tell where the light is coming from (left) and I like the bright dress and facial features. Next time I would move the head further down from the top of the canvas, it is a tad too close.

Standing Sparkle

I painted the Sparkle Portrait (right) with my art group. I love the sparkle and shine at the top of the dress and reflected in the earrings. I remember the light was odd, coming from bottom right (creating that under chin shadow). Initially I enjoyed this painting and thought it very successful. Yet when I keep looking at it, the shadow bothers me and I someday will repaint her I think. There are some artists who would rework/fix this piece, but I sometimes do not have success reworking a painting. I am not willing to risk losing this one, I would start with a new canvas.

First Topaz Painting

The standing pose is one that I painted at home, the photo  is from the same session (different View) as the portrait. We all agreed that all women should have clothes like these - just beautiful. Love the coral dress color, the sparkle, even the grey accent. And, I really worked hard to accurately reflect facial features. This face probably looks the most like our Sara model.

I love complementary colors in paintings. The first Topaz portrait (right) is from a session with the art group. I was happy with the head and the diagonal of the scarf. Keep in mind that art sessions lasts perhaps 2.5 hours so it is little time to record a lot of information. I was going to enter this into a show but decided I needed something with more interest (but I had already submitted the Title of the painting)! 

So, I reviewed my art session photos and chose another view to paint. 

The portrait on the left is taken from the right of the model as she faces left into the light. I liked the strong diagonals - hair, scarf, line of eyes, tip of nose and mouth. I intentionally tried to make this work loose and with visible brushwork. I love the background on this as I was reading about Robert Henri and noticing his background brushstrokes. The strokes aren't as strong as I would like,  background is baseline orange topped with big strokes of pink and blues. The three-quarter view of the face is hard to capture as there is a harder edge to the background side of the face (at least that is how it seems to me). I believe that the eyes and ear are successful. If I were to redo this I would work a little more on mouth and tip of nose. 

Eduring Grace

Lastly is my most recent Sara painting, by now you know that I love color! Wow! Loved this outfit of bright so very much! The flowers and background were easy to get in, the figure proportions and dress took more time. Again, I wanted to have loose brushwork. I completed everything but the hands and teacup at the art session. I have found that I often need to study the hands at home. Someday, I want to easily gesture in hands. Ah someday. This painting I am hoping to get juried into the Detroit Society of Women Painters and Sculptors May Show. In the last few months I've come to believe that my loose and less "finished"works may (just might) have more appeal than those which I overwork...

So Much To Do!

Paintings That Needed Finishing (JUST FINISHED!)

My last post was about deciding when a painting is finished. This post is about finishing some paintings that needed to be finished! It often takes much much longer than I thought it would to get a piece to completion...

I love the graphic color blocking of this work, aren't the colors wonderful? I really want you to notice the colors and shapes first!

I was unable to finish this in one session. I had the background down, and the major color blocks and even the face and cap, but I had to go back in to finish painting the hands and the light that hits the top and skirt. Adding the light to the green and purple was fun and not too complex. Of all the items in the painting the hands were the hardest to paint, probably because they are so small. The size of the painting is 12 x16 inches, so the hands are teeny. The painting on the left is now finished.
As a prep for this painting, I painted a large hand (almost the size of the entire figure painting)just to understand how I would incorporate the nuances of the hands.

Next, I had a small almost finished dark painting that I needed to work on. This painting was very dark - lots of black against neutrals with loose brushwork. I love the large black hat and the profile of the face. There are so many layers of fabrics. The model was wearing a nearly see through black dress which I wanted to imply but not draw attention to. Also, there are so many striped patterns here, since I was painting quickly I did not want to spend too much time perfecting each stripe - just implying. When I went to finish the painting I added in the red pattern in the lower right corner and added some red/purple next to the red stripe pillow. I also deepened the red lip color so that there is more red color patterning throughout. The last step was highlights to the hair - the model has blonde highlighted hair but the black hat created shadows so the hair really looked greenish! I am very pleased with this little gem. This finished painting is a small 9 x 12 inches.

BEFORE

AFTER

Lastly, I had a painting that I considered finished until I went to Art Critique. Art Critique suggested that I add more to the left arm so that it felt less "cut off". And, asked that I convey more of the legs so that it is easier to read how the model is sitting. What is funny is I thought there would be more discussion about the model's hair. She has dark black hair that she "Hombre'd" to reddish from the ear point down - but that really wasn't the issue with this painting.  So, following critique advice, I redid the white dress adding more light hitting the knee, belly and bust and more shadows along the leg area (this I repainted with the photo in black and white) so that I could see the values. Hard to tell in this photograph, but I also updated the head piece to coordinate more with the flowers to the left of her head. I really love this little piece, the pose and style are interesting and sweet. While I will take it back to art critique, I won't do any more work on it, it is finished now.

When Is a Painting Finished?

Alla Prima, Loose Painting, Unfinished?

Listen to Your Heart 12x16

In painting, especially painting portraits, composition and skin color are often hard to achieve. And, artists don't always have good days. Some paintings just don't work, some features or compositions or even models may not work for the artist. One of my favorite models is above- I love her orange skin tone and expressive eyes - she is a muse model for me - I can usually get a good painting when I paint her. This painting is loose and looks unfinished and yet I decided it was complete. For me, this painting is finished as it is. I love the colors in the painting, the red pops with the blue and purples. I love the expressive big eyes of the model; I used blue and purple to set off the fiery brown eyes and achieved a likeness in the model and her strength of character.

Girl Chat 12x16

It is unusual for us to have two models in the studio, but I really loved the pose of these two friends. They looked at each other and chatted in their bright fun costumes. I especially love the girl on the left, perhaps it is her pose, perhaps the fun colors - it appealed to me. However, I did not want to be too meticulous with this painting. I wanted fresh and loose and not too tight or serious. I think I accomplished my goal and am happy with the results. In the future, I think I will paint a portrait of the girl on the left.

I know many artists and some are very meticulous and detailed, finishing their works beautifully. I respect and love their style. I am however, not that artist right now. I spent a long time trying to get my still lifes to look like photos and I was very frustrated and didn't love the results (my paintings looked overworked). I relish brushstrokes and find joy in painting in an expressive and loose style. Maybe someday I will have the discipline to get the details and really make a painting that looks "finished" but for now I work to enhance my composition and color.