Grape Time - And A Private Workshop!

 "Grape Time"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

$350

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I taught a private two-day workshop at my home studio this weekend, walking through my process from start to finish. Here's a look:

Thumbnail sketch on the right, 5-value study in the center, and the finished piece on the left.

My student's work, and a shot of her, painting away. It was a really nice weekend, thank you for painting with me, Valerie! 

Swedish Ivy: A Painting and a Video

 

 "Swedish Ivy"

12 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

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This painting began as a demo for my online students - unbelievably, my art mentorship program is almost one year old! Time flies. And time certainly flew while I was doing this demo - in over two hours, I only got as far as the image on the left. As usual, the group and I covered a wide range of topics - and I DID edit the recording down to about 90 minutes, so you just get the good stuff!

Watch this painting come together! If you're reading this in your email, click here for the video.

Interested in studying with me in person? I've got a list of upcoming workshops in the right-hand sidebar of the blog -----> including this weekend, Intro to Oil Painting, in Eugene.

From Drawing to Painting

 "Squash Game"

14 x 18 inches, oil on canvas

$500

Click to buy

Another painting, mining my maybe-excessive Hillsboro pumpkin patch lode.

I brought them all home from Still Life Open Studios and threw them on the studio table, where they were very conveniently waiting when it was time for my next daily sketch. As I was drawing, I began to see that there was a painting there, somewhere.

There are lots of reasons that artists draw - and there are plenty of artists for whom drawing is the main medium of creation. As a painter, there are several things that make drawing an integral part of my studio practice.

 For one thing, it keeps me in touch with my love of line. I'm always trying to paint more tonally, with fewer outlines, so junking out on lines and hatchmarks feels really good when I sketch. 

I've got a brand new workshop coming up October 29-30, here in Eugene called "From Sketchbook to Canvas: Drawing to Improve Your Painting." Despite that maybe-excessive title, it's going to be a simple class: we're going to draw, then we're going to paint. And we're all going to learn something about ourselves as artists, and our own unique artistic process. More info and online registration here!

Orbit: A new allaprima still life, plus workshop announcements!

 "Orbit"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas
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Here's the progression for this one. On the left is a 3-value oil sketch, in which I resolved to keep my lightest lights in the foreground and on the left diagonal half of the composition. In the center is my underpainting, in a mixed up warm orange - you can use any colors you like for this stage as long as you don't add any white. 

 

For a lot more about my process, consider joining me for a workshop! I've got several coming up this fall, but my baby is the 3-day Dynamic Still Life class in Oklahoma City this October:

info and registration here!

If you're looking to try oil painting for the first time - or get a new perspective on a familiar medium - I offer a one-day Intro to Oils every month at Oregon Art Supply. September's is coming up, on Saturday the 10th. 

Info and Registration here!

More workshops, including two in the Portland, Oregon area, can be found in the right hand sidebar, or here. :)

Color Has Value

"Cantaloupe Slices"

9 x 9 inches, oil on Arches oil paper

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If there's one thing I say over and over again to my students, it's this: you can paint something any color you want, as long as you nail the value, it will work! 

The single most important element of realistic representational painting is value: how light or dark something is on the gray scale. And that's relative to everything else in the painting - so our goal as painters is to train our eyes to perceive that hierarchy of values. 

Sketching is great for this, but black and white oil studies are even better. You kill two birds with one stone, really - focusing on values, and also practicing your mixing and brushwork.

Self-Portrait, With Video

 "Self-Portrait (Hopeful)"

approx. 8 x 11, oil on Arches oil paper

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This self-portrait began as a demo for an online student. At the end of our session, it looked like the first image on the left - so that was about an hour-and-a-half. I worked on it for several more hours, and you can see the progression:

I really enjoy painting for my online students - it's like having excellent company in the studio, with the added bonus of having video documentation of my painting process! I edited this one down to just the block-in - it's about a 15 minute video:

It's One-Dollar Auction Time!

"The Red Snake"

approx. 8 x 11 inches, oil on Arches oil paper

One-Dollar Auction!

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This was kind of a demo for my Online Mentorship students, a couple of whom are working on loosening up their process this month with one-hour paintings. They are doing some incredible things! Here is a blog post one of them wrote - I promise, I'm not making her work THIS hard, she's just incredibly motivated. When I say I get as much from my students as they get from me, this is what I'm talking about. What an inspiration!

And speaking of inspiration, I had some help naming this painting. You know who you are, and thanks. ;)

Limited Palette Portrait Painting

 "Beth"

9 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

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 This is my two-hour demo from Limited Palette Portrait, which I taught right here in Eugene over the weekend. Below is the progression - I tried to snap a picture at each model break, so every 30 minutes. It went through an ugly stage just before the end, eh? 

 

The limited palette we use in this class is also called the Zorn palette - cadmium red, yellow ocher, and ivory black - plus white. We started the weekend with a simple color chart. 

As one of my students recently described it - the difference between just mixing up the colors on your palette, and actually painting them on the chart is like the difference between driving through a neighborhood and walking through it. I love that analogy! 

 

If you'd like to try walking through this neighborhood yourself, you can find my color chart template here.

Two intense days of painting for my students! I saw a ton of progress in a short time - their work speaks for itself!

Color Mixing For Painters

 

I  seem to be blogging about nothing but teaching lately - probably because I've been lucky enough to be doing a lot of it! Last weekend found me in Shreveport, Louisiana, mixing up a storm of paint, and enjoying some real storms, some serious humidity - and serious air conditioning.

This workshop, "Color Mixing for Painters," is designed for beginner/intermediate students, but I firmly believe that exercises like these can benefit painters at every stage in our development. I know I get something out of them each time. 

Grayscale value studies help us practice seeing the relationships between adjacent values.
You can watch a short video of my demo (on the left) on YouTube.



 Translating those values into color is the next step - and if you're familiar with my painting and teaching, you know how much I love using apples for studies like these! Check out this incredible student work:

 

 

 Thanks again, Shreveport. I will be back!

Apricots, Fake Milk, and Art Mentorship

 "Apricots and Milk"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

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A very good example of a complementary color scheme: yellow-orange and blue-violet. Limiting the range of colors within your painting is a great way to keep it simple and harmonious - and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with using a limited palette (though if you're looking for color harmony, there's no easier way to find it than to use one). 

For me, setting up a still life is an exercise in color mixing - before I even take my palette out of the freezer. (What, you don't keep your palette in the freezer? You actually have food in there?) 

Speaking of food....in the interest of full disclosure, I admit that this is not real milk. I gave up eating dairy products four months ago, so almond milk is the model here. I never knew changing my diet would have such a profound impact on all aspects of my life! Ha.

Before I end this post, I will sneak in an announcement: I've begun offering online art mentorships, and I'm pretty excited about it! More information here. :)

The Primary Palette

 "Cut Apple" 

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

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This weekend, I taught at two-day oil painting workshop called "The Primary Palette," painting still lives using a three-color palette. Color choice is up to each artist - any red, yellow, and blue combo they like.

I chose Cadmium red light, Azo yellow, and a new-to-me color, Maya Blue, by Rublev paint. 

Painting with a palette like this is a great way to get acquainted with new-to-you colors.

Above, you can see my color wheel - beautiful oranges and greens, very dull (but beautiful) violets. That's the result of a yellowish red combined with a muted blue - and my demos of the awesome "Stroke Economy" exercise. A workshop favorite!

And here is some of my students' work. Fabulous!

Inspired By Teaching

 "Faith's Fruit"

14 x 18 inches, oil on canvas

Available here

I've been working with this young lady, Faith, since the middle of last year. When her mother, who also happens to be the force behind the online arts magazine Combustus, first approached me about teaching Faith, I was hesitant - she was only 11 at the time, and my students tend to be, ahem, just a bit older than that. 

But I snapped out of that very quickly - after all, had I myself not been the recipient of mentorship and lessons at exactly that age, in the home-studio of an artist? The first time I ever oil painted was during one of those lessons, and I will never forget that day... 

Also, she's quite talented, as you can see!

 I set up this still life for her last lesson, and the next day, I looked at it and thought, "Hmmm..." Add a few white objects, and voila - a still life for me! I know I can take some lessons from the freshness and immediacy of Faith's painting.

I love teaching all my classes - workshops, demos, and private lessons. Who can say who gets more out of it, me or my students? 

I've got a brand-new workshop coming up April 23-24th in Eugene. It's called "The Primary Palette," and it's all about how I paint with three primary colors (or stand-ins for what we typically consider the primaries) and white. More info on that here.

I'll also be doing a 1-day intro to oil painting workshop, April 30th, which looks like it's filling up fast! 

And, since I'm plugging away....private lessons are always available, at my home studio or yours. Email me for details.

Introduction to Oil Painting

 

 "Demo at OAS, January 2016"

9 x 12 inches, oil on Arches oil paper

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I just wrapped up the first-ever session of my new workshop, Intro to Oil Painting. It's funny that I've been teaching for three years now, and this was my first beginner-level class. The most challenging part was keeping it simple - especially when it comes to talking color!

Luckily, the first day was all black-and-white. First, we mixed up a value scale, then we painted with it: all-white geometric objects, then red and green apples.

The second day, we mixed up a full-spectrum palette from the primaries. I like seeing my demo painting in sequence with the palette and color wheel: 

I've got plenty of workshops coming up - you can check them all out in the right-hand sidebar. Don't hesitate to sign up if you're interested - all levels of experience are welcome in all of my workshops!

Black is the New Blue

 

 "Pink, Purple, and Red"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

$150

Click to buy

Here is my demo from last weekend's "Mindful Mixing" workshop. I painted it with - you guessed it - Yet another limited palette! This time I picked Azo yellow (a lemon-type yellow), Alizarin crimson, and Ivory black. For those of you not familiar with my limited palette technique - that's a color to stand in for each of the three primaries: yellow, red, and blue. In this case, black is the blue.

Here's another demo, using the same palette. My "Stroke Economy" exercise: 25 brushstrokes to paint a pomegranate, this time. Always fun, and kind of scary! Did I say scary? I meant - um, challenging.

And here is some student work. Another amazing group - I was really impressed!

Want to get back into painting in 2016, or make the switch from water media to oils? My next workshop is for you! Intro to Oil Painting, January 9-10, here in Eugene. Info and registration here.

A New Series: Limited Palette Eggs

 

 "Shell Game"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

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I enjoyed this limited palette demo at my last workshop so much that I've decided to do a series based on it. This trio of colors is a strange choice for painting eggs since the yellow is so muted - and egg yolks are such a vivid, vibrant yellow - but the subtleties and harmonies are pleasing. And, as with all limited palettes, in the absence of anything "Yellower," Yellow Ocher does just fine!

My colors for this series: Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Ocher, and Alizarin Crimson - with Titanium White, of course!

The paint brand is M. Graham - my favorite.

Below is my underpainting. I put a wet tone on the canvas - with this limited palette, I use a red-orange, but any warm neutral orange (such as Burnt Sienna) works well - as long as there's no white added. Next, I sketch into my tone, pulling out the lights with a clean brush or rag and Gamsol, and deepening the darks by adding some red, purple, or blue to my toning orange. 

I think of the underpainting as the first two "stages" of my three-stage painting process. The first is layout, or drawing - the second is values - and the third, of course: color! I'll be discussing this and much, much more during my still life workshop at Winslow Art Center this weekend. There's still time to register, if you're interested!

Still Life Painting Workshop....Day One!

 "Wedges" 

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

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I just finished up a fabulous three-day workshop here in Eugene. "Wedges" was my first morning demo, and below you see some of my students, painting up a storm!

Here are their pieces....and this was just the first day! Awesome, right?!

My next still life workshop will be November 7-8th, at Winslow Art Center, on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Spaces are still available, and all the information can be found here.