Dart

"Dart" 

18 x 24 inches, oil on canvas

$1500

Click to buy

A new one, which is actually an older one, reworked. I'm glad I took the risk to experiment with altering it. Here's the before and after:

Clarity in Black and White

"Clarity (Black and White)"

11 x 14 inches, oil on canvas
Sold

 

 

Many of my black-and-white paintings are done on Arches oil paper, but this one is on stretched canvas - one that was toned with a sepia base layer, giving the resulting painting a warm glow.

Radiate

 

 "Radiate"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

$250

Sold

For this one, I did a quick study with black sharpie and grey Pitt pen on white paper - just three values. When you have your composition all planned out before you get to the canvas, painting is even MORE fun!

Sorrow

 "Sorrow (Three of Swords)" 

14 x 18 inches, oil on canvas

$600

Sold

I'm loving learning about Tarot by researching each card as I use them in my paintings. This one, the Three of Swords, when it's in the upright position, is kind of a bummer - but not entirely without sunshine. Yes, the card represents a painful episode in life, but pain can be seen as an opportunity to grow stronger, to change the direction of your life. While the pain may cloud your vision for a certain period, it will eventually allow you to see clearly and to put the past behind you. 

If you let them, the Swords cards can rid you of your denial and teach you valuable lessons.

...And if you paint them, they can teach you valuable lessons about color mixing and edges!

As always with a piece this large, I began with a black and white study. This one has already gone to a collector who saw it on Instagram, but you can see a lot more of these oil studies in my Etsy shop.

Black and white studies really help me plan my paintings - specifically, the way my big value shapes will affect the composition. What shape and gesture do the darkest darks make on the canvas? How dark are my cast shadows, really? And where is my area of strongest contrast? I keep the study close to me while I'm painting the color version, to remind myself of my intentions.

Ace of Wands

 "Ace of Wands"

12 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

Sold

I paired this Tarot card with my baby Hoya because the wand has leaves growing from it.  The card symbolizes inspiration, and enthusiasm for new creative ventures. Sounds good to me!

Though this painting sold right off the easel, via Instagram, the black and white oil study is available:

$100 (unframed). Frame available on request.

Click to view on Etsy

Long Shadows

 "Long Shadows"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

$250

Sold

The 30 in 30 painting challenge I'm doing this month is already giving me a lot of food for thought - and not just because I'm painting apples and oranges! 

I wanted to revisit daily painting because it's how I got my start with this blog - ten years ago this month. The concept was incredibly freeing to me, that every painting didn't have to be a precious investment of time and materials, that tomorrow could be a new day. 

I'm hugely grateful to artists like Carol Marine and Duane Keiser, who inspired me early on - and continue to. Before I discovered daily painting, I had been out of art school for almost seven years, and was starting to believe that I might never actually get back into painting. Today, I plan to paint for the rest of my life. Maybe not EVERY day, but on the good ones!

Here's my setup and sketch:

A lot of people on Instagram have been curious about these black-and-white sketches. They are made with ballpoint pen (mine's from the Marriott, fancy), black sharpie, and white Pitt Pen, which is a permanent India ink marker made by Faber Castell. The sketchbook is Strathmore Toned Tan, 6x8 inches. You can check out some of my favorite materials here. 

And, as always, thank you for reading!

Purple Coil

 

"Purple Coil"

12 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

$400

Sold

When I posted this color scheme on Instagram, a friend in Louisiana shouted, "Mardi Gras!" I'm fascinated by the psychology of color - especially color combinations, and why some appeal to us and others don't. Purple and green is one of my favorite combos - and orange completes the triad of secondary colors.  

 💜💚🧡

Fun fact: did you know that in ancient Rome, purple dye was made from snails? 

 

Sketch for "Purple Coil"

oil paint on Arches oil paper

approx. 8 x 8 inches, unframed

$100

Lemon Light, and Black and White

"Lemon Light"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

$350

 

This is the third time I've painted this little green glass. I found it in a labyrinthine antique mall in Oklahoma City the last time I taught there, and it's rapidly becoming a favorite still life object. 

I like it for its form and color, but most of all for the light patterns it casts into its shadow.

There's a time-lapse video of the beginning stages of this painting on Instagram. Check it out!

The black and white sketch for this piece is a fun one - but I'm biased. I think all my black and white sketches are fun!

$100 (unframed)

 

Strawberries for the Fourth!

 "Four Strawberries"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

Sold

Red, White, and Blue. Happy Fourth of July, all!

Three-And-A-Half Lemons

 

"Three-And-A-Half Lemons"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

Sold

 I'm able to bust out these little black-and-white oil sketches so quickly because I keep a pre-mixed value scale palette on hand at all times - in my freezer. Oil paint will develop a dry "skin" after a day or two when left out on the palette, but frozen it will keep for weeks. 

I also find it incredibly helpful in my color work, not to have to start from scratch each time I set out to paint. If the thought of all the preparation involved has ever stopped you from heading into the studio, consider keeping a pre-mixed palette on ice!

 

So many tips and tricks stored (like palettes in a freezer) in the recesses of my brain... I'll be unpacking lots more of them this weekend at my still life painting workshop, here in Eugene. Spaces are still available - click here for info! 

Four Elements

 "Four Elements"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

Sold

This still life was not originally intended to be an allegory of the four elements - it got its name because it has, literally, four elements. Looking at it just now, however, it came to me that they could be symbols - the fish dish for water, the orange ribbon for fire...the blue cup for air, and the white for....earth? It's "feet" are on the ground, anyway. 

I recently visited an astrologer, and was told that I have a lot of the Air element in my birth chart. One interesting thing about that: air signs are connected to birds and their feathers. Go figure!

A black and white oil sketch for this piece. Paint in my sketchbook - something I've been doing a lot lately!

In Which I have a Rockstar Moment

 "The Apple Barn"

12 x 24 inches, oil on canvas

Framed, $700

Click to buy

I'm just going to say this at the outset: I'm really proud of this painting. We artists all know the feeling: a piece is working right from the beginning. I say, "It painted itself," "It fell off the brush," or "It was a rockstar moment," but I think the best description of this particular magic is that I felt in control the entire time I was painting it. And that doesn't happen all that often - maybe once every 20 paintings? 

As you can see, it was a heartbreakingly beautiful day - one of those fall afternoons that make you feel grateful to be alive.

I started with a 3-value sketch - oil paint in my sketchbook. This was extremely helpful, especially when it came to painting mid-value areas like the grass and distant hills. Green just doesn't feel all that light to my eye - in general, it's a mid-to-dark value color, and it's very saturated and beautiful in the sunlight. But, referring to my sketch, I told myself to keep it as light as those rooftops. 

 

Understanding that color has value - and how that works in our paintings - is a huge benefit of practicing in black and white. So, if it's been a while since you went back to basics, give it a try....you might have a "rockstar moment" yourself!

Avocado and Tomatoes in Black and White - and More about Notan

 "Avocado and Tomatoes"

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

Sold

After reading this post by James Gurney, I decided to try some notan sketches on brown cardboard as a warmup for this painting - and it was fun! It's so satisfying to put thick white paint over a midtone surface. Why? Who knows - but I'll be back for more. 

The idea with notan is that midtones have to get lumped into either dark or light - you only have two values to work with. These forced choices remind us that we are interpreting, not copying the subject; composition is something we impose on nature. Two artists will not come up with the same value scheme in a notan sketch. There is no right or wrong way to do it. 

Also, it looks cool!

Color Has Value

"Cantaloupe Slices"

9 x 9 inches, oil on Arches oil paper

Sold

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.

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!

Painting Grays in Color

 "Token"

16 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

$500

Available here

I use these white geometric objects in some of my workshop exercises, and lately they've infiltrated my home studio as well. Though I'm usually painting them in black and white while teaching, I also love exploring the spectrum of grays that occur when white objects are surrounded by colorful light. 

When approaching a gray - or the modeling of an object whose local color is white - I ask myself a series of questions. What's the value of the gray? What's its temperature? What colors in the environment are influencing its color? Often, to arrive at the gray I need, I'll start with one of these surrounding colors (like the purple in this painting), and neutralize it until it works on the white object.

Another way to "see" color in ambiguous areas, like grays, is to use a color isolator. Sometimes I'll just squint through a half-closed fist. 

 And here is the preparatory sketch for this painting, on canvas instead of the oil paper this time:

 "Flame (Black and White)"

12 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

"White Object, Lemons" Still Life, Work-In-Progress, and Black-and-White Sketch!

 "White Object, Lemons"

12 x 24 inches, oil on canvas

Available here

It's been a while since I painted this little plate, let's see - can I find any examples from the past to show you? Yes!

It's hand-painted, which makes reproducing the design with my own hands so much more enjoyable. At one point I actually forgot I was painting on canvas. I felt like I was painting a plate myself! This twisting floral style is common to decorative pottery made in Jerusalem, where my mother bought it in 1979 - when she was pregnant with me! Can't say I remember much about the trip.

Here's a progression. I didn't tone the canvas for this one, instead letting the underpainting create its own tone. The color is a neutral orange I had left over on my palette - probably a mix of alizarin, cad yellow, cad red, ultramarine blue.....you know, all the primaries. As long as there's no white in the mix, it works.

...And my black and white sketch. I love love love making these. If you're going to use Arches oil paper, I recommend brushing a thin layer of Gamsol (or your OMS of choice) onto the surface before beginning. Although this does tend to make the finished product dry at a snail's pace, it helps with the absorbent/chalky feel of the surface I've heard myself some artists complain about.

"White Object, Lemons (sketch)"

8 x 11.5" oil on Arches oil paper

click to bid

Introduction to Oil Painting

 

 "Demo at OAS, January 2016"

9 x 12 inches, oil on Arches oil paper

Sold

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!