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....

Radiate

 

 "Radiate"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

$250

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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!

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. ;)

Long Shadows

 "Long Shadows"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

$250

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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!

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.

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!

Easter Doings

 "Easter Lily"

14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas

click to buy

I had a lovely Sunday! Through a liaison with my local gallery, I was invited to paint during an opulent Easter brunch at the Eugene Hilton hotel. Of course, I chose an Easter lily as my subject. 

Below you can see my value sketch, done with two grays and a black Copic marker. I tried to stick to that value structure as I moved into the painting, but I think I ended up too dark on the ground plane.

I always benefit from preliminary studies - and opulent brunches. Shrimp, salmon, and crab at 11 am? Yes, please!