Radishes

"Radishes"

9 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

$400

Click to buy

We've been getting a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box every two weeks, and it's fantastic! These ravishing radishes stole the show last time. Summer cooking has been great - in fact, all cooking has been great since quarantine. I haven't cooked this much in years, literally.

Almond Milk

"Almond Milk"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

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Sometimes simple is best. :)

Pears en Rose

"Pears en Rose"

12 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

$450

Click to buy

I've been getting some painting in before I head to my next workshop, in Sacramento, CA. There are still a few spots open, at the fabulous Patris Studio and Gallery, if you know anyone in the area who'd love some Oil Painting Boot Camp! 

Boot Camp is a three-day workshop with an emphasis on loosening up your brushwork - and using a limited palette of three colors and white. Looking forward to it! More info here.

Greensward

"Greensward"

16 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

Available here

Hello, it's been a while! I've been teaching a lot lately - both workshops and online - and having a blast. My studio panting time has been falling into two categories - quick studies and oil sketches, both for personal research and as teaching tools - many of which can be seen and purchased directly through Instagram -- and larger works, of which this is one. 

Thanks for looking!

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! 

Pool Party

 "Pool Party"

8 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

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More fun with my new white ceramic pear. I showed this painting to my dad, and he said "That white thing is unnerving." Do you agree?

Here's the value plan for this composition. It got a little skinnier from sketch to finish....

Green Shadow

 "Green Shadow"

8 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

I painted this alongside a lovely group of workshop students last weekend, walking them through the steps of planning a successful still life. Thumbnail sketch, Notan, 5-value study, underpainting, color! 

These steps are great tools  - I don't do them all, for every one of my paintings, of course. You loyal readers have seen many black and white studies from me, but over time, the other steps have become mental - I look through a viewfinder and try out different compositions in my head instead of doing thumbnail sketches. I think about the Notan, the overall light/dark effect I'm creating. Then I launch right into the value study.

The step I'm leaving out is really preliminary - setting up the still life! Always fun, always challenging. And that's the part that my students don't have to worry about when they're in a workshop with me! I take care of that. ;)

Portrait-Palooza

                                      "Hannah"                                                  "Cupid's Bow" 

                           12 x 16" oil on canvas                                     11 x 14" oil on canvas

A couple of recent portraits. "Hannah" was a workshop demonstration from January, and "Cupid's Bow" was painted just last night. What a face! She looks like a model Rembrandt would have swooned over. 

Here's my progression:

Teaching Figure Painting with Zorn

 

 "Kendra"

14 x 18 inches, oil on canvas

Workshop Demonstration

Price on Request

I taught "Beginning Figure Painting" on my home turf this past weekend, at Whiteaker Printmakers in Eugene. It was an enthusiastic, talented group, and I thoroughly enjoyed painting with them!  

Can you spot me in this picture?

 

We started out with gesture drawings, mixed flesh tones using the Zorn palette, and they painted these lovely pieces - all in two days!

 Here's my color chart, and two little demos - same pose, different lighting, four values.

If you're interested in trying this limited palette technique, I've got two portrait workshops coming up - one this weekend, November 11-12 at Sequioa Gallery + Studios in the Portland, OR area (spaces are still available), and the other in Eugene, at Oregon Art Supply, January 6-7. 

Live models, and lots of painting! Click the links for details.

Green Flash

"Green Flash" 

10 x 20 inches, oil on canvas

$500

Available, click to buy

My latest! Here it is, on the easel:

I did a black and white oil sketch for this piece, as I often do before beginning larger works. This time I actually managed to stick to the plan! If you squint, the values between the grayscale and the color painting match up well. That's the goal! 

The black and white piece is 6 x 12" on Arches oil paper, and it's available. Click here to bid on it.

Thanks, as always, for looking!

Six Cuties, and Stages of the Painting Process

 

 "Six Cuties"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

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Here are the stages this painting went through: still life setup, underpainting, and color application. My favorite phase of the painting process is definitely the underpainting. Still life setup is the hardest part, and the finishing touches are so agonizing...but the end stage can be fascinating.

What's your favorite stage of a painting?

(Click the link to tell me!)

Four Elements

 "Four Elements"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

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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!

Propagation

 "Propagation"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

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Before I became a full-time artist, I was a plant lady - watering plants in office buildings, mainly. That was a decade ago, but my personal plant collection, though it's constantly evolving (along with everything else in life), remains a thing. A pretty big thing. Sometimes people even give me plants! That's how I came by this one, which broke as I was moving it back and forth from my studio, and spawned this cutting... And this painting! 

Propagation.

Here's my underpainting, alongside the finished piece:

And the model: 

 

Thanks for reading!

The Orange Ribbon

"The Orange Ribbon" 

10 x 20 inches, oil on canvas

$500

Click to buy

I love painting ribbon! It's basically a custom-made tool for creating movement in a still life - and lots of fun little shapes to paint. 

I'm in Louisiana teaching two workshops this week - still life AND portrait painting. To follow my adventures, check out my Instagram page. It's really the best way to keep track of me these days!

In Which I Make A Ruler...And a Time-Lapse Video

"Six Inches"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

$250

Click to buy

Although I felt like I brought about half of my possessions to Playa, I somehow left my ruler at home. And, of course, I needed it - so I made one out of a piece of paper. And it found its way into this still life somehow....

If you had been there, you'd agree - this composition was just crying out for a tiny touch of white. Which was perfectly supplied by my homemade ruler. Touch of white, title inspiration, semi-accurate measurement - what a useful life!

I made a time-lapse video of this one - about four hours of painting condensed into two minutes. I like watching that plate pattern emerge in the last 30 seconds. Painless in hindsight.... Enjoy!

Change and Experimentation

 "Two Oranges (Blue Scrap)"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

Click to bid in the online auction!

The last of my 8x8 orange paintings from Playa, and the only piece I made there that I'll be auctioning online. 

It felt good to have familiar subject matter to fall back on during my first week at the residency - in an unfamiliar studio, in an unfamiliar landscape...an unfamiliar landscape with schizophrenic weather, I might add! One morning, I wake up to a rainbow, the next, SNOW! These pictures were taken from the same spot - I was just reluctant to venture all the way out to the railing to take the second one. Can you blame me? (By the way, both shots were taken between 7 and 8 am.)

With nature in such a blatantly experimental mood, I felt inspired to try some new things myself. Here's a pencil sketch on Arches oil paper that I painted over - from memory. It's amazing how having the sketch underneath helped my recall of color details, even with the still life itself dismantled. 

I did spray-fix the graphite before painting on top. 

"Playa Vessels"

6 x 12 inches, graphite and oil paint on Arches oil paper

collection of the artist ;)

Figure Painting Workshop Announcement!

 "In the Gray"

16 x 20 inches, oil on canvas

Sold

I'm taking a break from my slew of Playa residency blog posts to let you all know about a master class workshop I'll be teaching next month at the Conservatory for Classical Art in Edmond, Oklahoma.

It's called "The Alla Prima Figure." Three days of painting from live models, demos, and lots of talk about mixing gorgeous flesh tones. There are several spaces still available, so if you - or someone you know - are in the Oklahoma City area, please consider joining us! 

More information, and online registration here.

 This will be my fourth visit to the CCA. I love the energy there, and am really looking forward to it! 

Here I am demonstrating for a class last year:

 ...And another limited palette figure painting - done in one sitting, about three hours. Alla prima! 

The Artist Returns!

 "The Owl Feather"

12 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

$400

 Click to buy

Wow! Well - I am home from an amazing sojourn at the Playa Fellowship Residency Program, in Southeastern Oregon - and how to even begin describing the experience? The shortest possible way would be to say I made as much work in four weeks there as I would have in four months at home. But luckily, we don't have to settle for the shortest possible way - I'm planning to spend the next few weeks posting my new paintings, and writing about my time there.

So, I'll begin at the beginning - packing! Playa is in a pretty remote location - 60 miles from the nearest grocery store - so in addition to my art supplies and warmest winter-weather sweaters, I had to pack a lot of food. My car was full!

 

 Playa isn't all that far from my home in Eugene, Oregon - a 3.5 hour drive in good weather. I had a much shorter journey than many of the other residents. Here's a photo from near Willamette Pass, crossing over the Cascades

I watched the landscape slowly change, from deep snow and tall pine trees to more open vistas of scrublands and chilly blue sky.

I arrived at my destination at last - after driving right past it. This place seriously flies under the radar. Aside from being in the middle of breathtaking nowhere, it doesn't announce itself. There's a small sign, a rustic gate made of tree branches, and group of unassuming, red-roofed cottages on the edge of a huge, shallow, half-iced-over lake. The atmosphere is down-to-earth and unpretentious - the focus is on quiet, and work- time, space, introspection. And, after unpacking my many provisions with a wheel barrow between car and studio, I attempted to settle in. 

I am a relatively quiet person, used to working alone, used to structuring my own days - but when you can do absolutely anything you want to do - where do you start? I actually showed up without a clearly defined plan of what to paint - on purpose - hoping to use natural light on my setups, paint whatever I found around the place - just see what happened. 

And, in the absence of anything happening, fall back on self-portraits. From life - not photos, as I usually do.

 I made a plan to do a self-portrait sketch every day - and I did it. Here's number one, the night I arrived. I still have that glimmer of civilization in my eyes....

 And soon, still life subjects started showing up. I found this beautiful owl feather practically on my front lawn, just out for a walk in the wind and mud.

 

In this studio shot, I'm just about to begin the painting; you can see my still life on the table, in afternoon light from that west-facing window:

 

 And so it began....

All That Glitters

"All That Glitters"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

$250

Click to buy

This painting makes me really happy. Hope it brightens your day! 

Here's a time-lapse video of me painting it. If you're an email subscriber, you may need to click on this link to check it out.

Unfurled

 

 "Unfurled" 

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

$250

Click to buy

Still Life Open Studio, Holiday Edition, was a bit smaller than it might have been due to some seriously yucky weather, but those who braved the icy rain got to witness firsthand my wretched excess when it comes to ornament still life setup.  Even I had trouble deciding which of the half-dozen paintings I was seeing in the objects on the table to bring to life on canvas. But this curling ribbon kept snagging my eye - and here it is! 

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Collectors! Don't miss this opportunity to browse my paintings, new and old - come find out what I mean when i say serious end-of-the-year deals. Saturday and Sunday, 11-7, at Whitprint: