Pink Ring

"Pink Ring"

9 x 12 inches, oil on canvas on panel

$350

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Experimenting with color in this one - Burnt Sienna and Sap Green, plus white! Proving once again that everything in painting is relative - a tube of "brown" creates gorgeous pinks when offset by its complement, green. 

Purple Coil

 

"Purple Coil"

12 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

$400

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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

Green Onions on Blue - And Thoughts on Using Black Paint

 

"Green Onions on Blue" 

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

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 Here's are the colors I used for this painting. You'll notice that I have black in there - in fact, I almost always have black on my palette. Rather than using it to paint black things, or to darken other colors, I treat it like a blue - a very dark, desaturated blue. Usually, I mix dark greens with it. 

 

I also used it to whip up that little preliminary value study, right in my sketchbook. Ten minutes of planning makes a huge difference in the finished product - oil sketches are a practice I highly recommend!

Lighthouse

"Lighthouse"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas
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Learning to see a complete spectrum of colors in an arrangement that at first seems to only contain yellow, blue, and white - and showing it to you! Just one tiny part of my answer to the big question: "Why paint?"

I Hear the "Click"

 

 "Red Reflection"

9 x 12 inches, oil on Arches oil paper

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If I paint until I'm 100, I'll never get tired of the little tricks light plays on the world. 

This painting exists because of that beautiful red streak bouncing onto the underside of the pomegranate from the silver dish. When I saw that, I heard the "click," that inner voice that says, "This still life is ready to be painted!"

Below is a quick color chart of my palette for this piece: Cadmium Red light and Alizarin Crimson, combined with Hansa yellow, Ultramarine blue, and a green mixed from the two. Then two rows of tints beneath. This chart was a demo for one of my private students, to show the possibilities of having  both a warm and a cool version of one of the primaries in a limited palette. 

 I'll be in the Portland, OR area this weekend, teaching "Color Mixing for Painters" at Sequoia Gallery + Studios - you can still sign up for that! More info, and online registration here. Can't attend a workshop? Check out my online art mentorship program.....

 

....And, as always - thanks for reading!

Color Phases

 "Fall Four"

12 x 24 inches, oil on canvas

$700 

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I've been painting a lot lately, and it feels great! I am ready to move on from pumpkins, though. It actually seems that I've been in an orange phase for a couple months now. I didn't realize that I go through these cycles with color until it was pointed out to me by my 11 year old private student the other day. She was gazing at the wall where I hang my paintings to dry, and said, "You paint a lot of orange, don't you?" And I said, "Well, um, yes, I guess I do!"

Perspective: just one of the benefits of letting other humans into your studio once in a while! 

If you scroll back though my still lives from this year, you'll see that I do cycle through colors - before orange, it was purple/red, and before that, yellow (a perennial favorite), then green, then red.  I tend to be into red in the winter months - and my current orange obsession can't be explained by the prevalence of pumpkins during this time of year - I've got oranges, cantaloupe, and grapefruit under my belt as well. Literally. I ate them.

Here's my work-in-progress. This painting took about three days to complete. 

As always, thanks for looking - and for reading this far! If you'd like to see my recent orange phase paintings in person, I'll be showing most of them during November at Out on a Limb Gallery, here in Eugene. The opening reception is Friday, November 4th, from 5:30-8 pm. Hope to see you there!

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!

Black is the New Blue

 

 "Pink, Purple, and Red"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

$150

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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.

Golden Delicious

 "Golden Delicious"

12 x 24 inches, oil on canvas

Available at Brackenwood Gallery

Here's a new still life, with some fairly serious - at least for this painter - palette knife action. It's an analogous color scheme, and a transition along the spectrum: blue-green-->green-->yellow-green-->yellow. I did a series like this years ago. Bonus points if you remember!

Mindful Mixing

 "Limited Palette Lemons"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

Sold, demo painting

I just wrapped up the inaugural session of a brand new workshop called "Mindful Mixing." It's kind of a blend of color theory with my existing still life workshop exercises.

We started off with a complimentary color painting. Learning to see color as value...how? By painting an all-white still life using No. White. 

Here's my demo, painted with Hansa yellow and Dioxazine purple:

By the end of the workshop, we were doing full-spectrum paintings using only three tubes plus white. My lemon demo above was painted using only Alizarin crimson, Cadmium yellow, and Cerulean blue. Can you believe I got the bowl to feel that deep deep blue using only Cerulean? 

Here are some shots from the weekend, including incredible student work:

I'll be teaching Zorn palette portrait at Oregon Art Supply this weekend - there are still spots open. Mindful Mixing will be run again soon - so sign up for their mailing list for information on that! Thanks for looking.