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. ;)

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!

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

 "Orbit"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas
Sold

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. :)

Teaching In My PJ's

 

 "Purple Arrow"

8 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

Sold

My new online art mentorship program is off to a great start! It's been a couple of months, and the improvements I'm seeing in my students' work are exciting - plus, I'm loving watching them inspire each other (and me). It's like art school, without having to get dressed. Not that I put too much effort into that back in the art school days....

This piece was a demo for one of my students - I recorded our session, and edited it down from over an hour to about 20 minutes. You'll hear us chatting about various things... some related to this painting, some not. Enjoy!

Limited Palette Portrait Painting

 "Beth"

9 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

Sold

 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!

Figuring It Out

 "Humble Prayer"

12 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

Available here

I've been doing a lot of figures lately. I actually spent most of May working on a portrait commission, which I hope to share with you soon. Two figures in that one! I'm also teaching a figure painting workshop this weekend (a couple of spots still available - info here!), and have been drawing, painting, and thinking up a storm in preparation. 

But first, this piece. Painted over two sessions with a live model. And believe it or not....this is Zorn palette! Ok, not entirely. I added Alizarin Crimson to the mix - so the full palette is Titanium white, Yellow Ocher, Ivory Black, Cadmium Red, and Alizarin Crimson. As my painting buddy Farley said, Yeah, Zorn is turning over in his grave.

Sorry, Anders.

 

Left to right: first session, second session.

Want to watch me paint a live model? You can! This Friday night from 6-8 pm, at Whiteaker Printmakers, in fact. Belle will be my model.  

Here is all the info. Hope to see you there!

"Blue Light"

 "Blue Light"

12 x 24 inches, oil on canvas

Available here

A new painting, large-scale for me. Painted from life, before the flowers got too wilty! Hint: always paint the flowers first.

Also, when you're painting anything painted on anything else - the design on this vase, the lettering on this bowl, and yes, even tattoos on human skin - paint the form first. Below, you can see I painted the vase, rounded in space (minus the highlights from the spotlight), before adding the blue design. I didn't wait for the paint to dry before adding the blue, though that's sometimes helpful.

You can see a 30 second time-lapse video of the underpainting for this piece on Facebook.

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!

A New Series: Limited Palette Eggs

 

 "Shell Game"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

Sold

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!

Anders Zorn, I Presume?

 

"Bright Eyes"

16 x 20 inches, oil on canvas

$500

click to buy

Since this pose was set for three weeks, I decided to attempt a two-weeker after my first piece, or a six-hour painting, in the large-for-me size of 16x20 inches. And since simplicity is something I'll take where I can get it these days, I chose the charming Mr. Zorn as a painting partner:

Titanium White, Cad Red, Yellow Ocher, Ivory Black. The Zorn Palette

 Here is my progression from the first week, at 1, 2, and 3 hours roughly. I blended it a bit after I got home, and resolved to face my fear of painting "alla segundo" (the opposite of alla prima: Thanks, Joy, for that one, by the way), and work back into it.

God, I loved this piece after 45 minutes. I should have just left it that way, but you know, closure is good, too.

And now, some shots of my painting friends! Left to right, Farley Craig (or as I think of him, the font of knowledge), the lovely Joy, such a dedicated student, and Barbara, who finishes a powerfully expressive painting in the time it takes me to get my drawing down. Also a delicately rendered drawing by Lisa, a regular whose picture I didn't get to snap last night!)

 

 I would strongly encourage anyone who is interested in the arts, even in an amateur way, to seek out a group to paint or draw with. The camaraderie and interaction is so important. Contrary to popular belief, I say that art is not a solitary pursuit. It's a community of creation.

I Invent a Verb

 

"Sultry Sleepy Eyes"

8 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

$200

click to buy

 I pulled into the parking lot of the Art Center last night still not knowing what I wanted to do, palette-wise. Because I'd been busy all morning, my travel palette was a mess, and with no time to clean it (between the 3 year old's dance class, making dinner, blogging, you know...), I threw a disposable palette in my paint box and ran out the door.

It seemed like as good a time as any to pull something out of the "I've been meaning to try" bag:

The Zorn Palette

Image source

  Red, Yellow Ocher, Black, White. That's it! So simple.

 And I'm going to declare my use of "Zorn" as a verb totally acceptable. I'll even give you permission to use it too.

Here's another Zorn spectrum. Great Zorning, dude!

image source

The Palette That Limited Me

 

"Pale Citrus"

8 x 8 inches

oil on canvas

Sold

I love the gray that a mixture of Cerulean blue and Cadmium red make, so I decided to use them together in another limited palette experiment. I picked yellow ocher as the third primary, because I wanted to keep the red as the strongest influence, as I feel it was here.

 

Unfortunately, I had a beautiful bowl of clementines hanging out in my studio this week, just begging to be painted. And this palette of extremely muted oranges is what I brought to the task. 

I like the muted colors, and those special grays. I feel the limited palette helped me achieve color harmony. And I nailed the values, if I do say so myself: 

 

....but I might have done those juicy, glowing clementines a little more justice with some cadmium yellow in the mix!

My Valentine's Date

 "The Pale Pink Dress" 

8 x 10"

oil on canvas

Sold

Below is my progress, from one to three hours. For some reason, I didn't take a "full-body" shot the first hour, but I was having problems with the legs at that point, so it was probably subconscious.

At the halfway point, I checked my values using a photo-editor on my phone. I find this extremely helpful and usually do it two or three times during a sitting. The app I have is called Camera+, but there are a ton out there that do the same thing.

 As I was organizing my thoughts before writing this post, it occurred to me that I spent last Valentine's Day painting this very same model! She's a total pro, and I've been lucky to paint her (ten million times.) Thank you, Miranda!

An art lesson for the teacher: painting with complementary colors

 

"Orange and Blue" 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

Sold

There's probably a rule of thumb for teachers that they should thoroughly test out any lesson they're planning to impose on those who've signed up for their class. Well, setting rules of thumb (and all common sense) aside, I didn't. Ok, ok, to be fair, I've done this one before! When I was 15 years old, but still. Preparation.

So, knowing *roughly* what was going to happen, I launched right into my demo, and once again found myself learning right along with my students. It blew my mind, actually: with only two tubes of paint and white, I mixed a palette, that, to my pigment-starved eye looked like an entire rainbow!

Click on the pictures below to see them bigger, and read my notes without a magnifying glass:

A closer look at my palette:

 

Then, blindly pretending that this was an all-day workshop instead of a three-hour class, I proceeded to suggest that we pick another color and add it into the mix, just to see what happened:

 

"The Power of Three" 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

Sold

With the addition of Alizarin Crimson, my original complementary palette became a veritable rainbow. Just look at it:

  

If I seem a little excited, it's because I'm brimming with all the possibilities of limited palettes to try. When you call it "color theory," my soul shrivels a little (possibly remembering torture by color-aid, freshman year at MICA), but when it's just me and my palette knife - that is fun.

My first crowd-sourced title, and an (awesome) palette infographic

 

"Orange in Hiding"

8 x 8"

oil on canvas

$200

click to buy

Have I told you how much I love my new phone? I took every single picture in this post with my new iPhone 5. I can't believe how much more I'm able to share, having a good camera on my person at all times. It's incredible to me, and I hope you are enjoying it, too!

I discovered another huge perk of modern-photo-technology-slash-social-media today when I could not think of a title for this painting. I mean, come on: I put together all these excellent progress illustrations, I painted the darn thing - I've got to get creative with the title too?! I may be 50/50 when it comes to left vs. right brain, but my left side was out of the office today. Long story long, my Facebook crew hooked it up! "Orange in Hiding." Thanks!

 

The colors I began with. Click to see it bigger - I made a new palette out of plywood, which I have no idea if I like yet. When I make up my mind, I will do a full post about it. 

 A progression. The real take-away here is that I begin my drawing in paint using the same color I toned the canvas with, and as I get happier with the drawing I firm it up with progressively darker colors. Easier than erasing!

I'm running out to figure night....so, breathlessly, signing off!