I love starting the week with a new painting and I’ve been eager to work on this one ever since I did that photo shoot at Bunches last summer! It’s part of my Los Gatos Shop Girl Series – (or least that’s what I’m calling it for now, there are only two so far). There are a lot of good things going for this image to begin with. My subject, …
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Today was the first day I had to turn the heat on, painting this little ( 4 x 4″) rose bud in the cool morning fog. I painted out a loose gestural outline of the rose on a prepared pink ground. I blocked in some major highlights and shadows with color. I blended the tones in the base of the rose and built up the highlights , curving …
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Dahlia days are almost at an end so I salvaged some still lovey heads from some very floppy and mildewed stems and set about photographing them. Now whether you are painting from life (or still life) or shooting for later reference – or for that mater, taking photographs for the sake of photography, there are some keys to a successful image. Here you can see that the tungsten light casts …
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Here’s the newest little rose out of studio and how it came together. This little rose reminds me of one of the ones made from frosting!
It’s like a breath of fresh air to whip up a little rose painting after laboring on a larger work! Here is how Rose Mandala IV came together – with only a few mishaps along the way. Opps! Easels often have an adjustable top bar that secures the painting in place but with a painting this small (6 x 6″), I just rest it precariously on the edge and …
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Day 1 It’s so good to be back in the studio! Summer vacation is drawing to a close and all that intense holiday travel is still fresh in my mind. It seems only appropriate to work on something that’s loaded with nostalgia for the Annapolis Valley from which I’ve just returned. This great image it based on yet another fabulous photograph by my dear friend (and novelist) Christy Ann Conlin, …
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Novelist Christy Ann Conlin loves her some Flannery O’Conner! Southern Gothic may not only influence this author’s writing (Heave & Deadtime) but also her photography as evidenced from her shot of a dead robin on a shovel which she so kindly let me paint. It’s the beauty in the ephemeral fleeting nature of life that makes this melancholic image so poignant for me. Here’s my process of rendering her photo, Sadness …
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This week I’ve been painting the lovely cupped rose that blooms outside my studio. It’s called Spirit of Freedom, a David Austin stunner. Beyond it’s sweet fragrance, I love the hypnotic experience of looking into it’s myriad of petals. That’s why I’m calling this painting Rose Mandala, a meditation circle. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
We were really fortunate to have Cuong Nguyen share his pastel technique with us today at the Los Gatos Art Association! He’s not just a fabulous, award winning portrait artist represented by John Pence Gallery in San Francisco and teaching at Triton Museum of Art but he’s really a pleasure to be around funny and insightful and he has a wealth of knowledge to share! He demonstrated his process of …
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Is painting a portrait so different from painting a flower of a tree? Isn’t it all just color and lines and angles? Perhaps this is so for some figure painting but when it comes to portraits there is heightened question of likeness, emotion, expression and character and maybe all of this can be said of a twisted old pine but we are not hardwired to conifers, our neurons light up …
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One of our family’s New Year’s traditions is to spend the day seaside hiking at Año Nuevo or Point Lobos. So, while we were skiing in the Sierras this year it seems appropriate that my first painting of the year should be a seascape. Cypress Crescent is a view from Cypress Grove at Point Lobos. I love the blue horse shoe of roots clinging to the rock.
It’s good to be back in the studio painting again now that the holidays are over! Here I am working on another vista from Point Lobos. In this one I’m interested in the crescent shape that is formed in the corner in the upper right, it seems a welcome contrast to all the lines and angles, much like the contrast between the vegetation and the stone. I really enjoy how …
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I had been commissioned to paint some pond lilies for a client in France. She had taken beautiful photographs of the white water lilies from her husband’s childhood cottage on Dessert Lake in Ontario, Canada and wanted to present the paintings to him as a surprise Christmas gift. They’re celebrating a little early so I can go ahead and post the images. Here are photos from different stages of the …
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I hope to capture the precarious nature of life on the margins of land and sea in this painting I began last Friday. I’m using one of the many photographs I took in the summer of the cypresses in Point Lobos as inspiration. It’s just so stunning to see these lone trees clinging to sheer rock face, pummeled by the Pacific! I like how the tree is dwarfed by the massive outcropping …
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I love the way Frozen Thoughts has turned out! I can imagine an entire wall dotted by these convex paintings in various sizes. I think that this format completely emphasizes the ephemerality of the fragile floral subject matter like bubbles of moments caught in time.
I have lots of must dos and should dos on my agenda. Too many musts and shoulds can stifle creativity and I really needed to do something just on a whim. On Friday I took out a convex canvas I had kicking about the studio and knew it would be a great match for the heartsease paperweight I had photographed earlier this fall (sometimes you don’t even know you want …
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Each painting takes its own path. Some paintings effortlessly appear as you draw your paint across the canvas with your brush. Not so often. More frequently you need to do more than just show up. Usually it’s a process of really looking, laying down what you think you see and then really looking again. Sometimes you need to rethink your approach and paint over or scrape off or even toss …
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One of the advantages of studio painting is the control you have over your environment, your light, your time and even your perspective. Why not turn your painting on end or upside down? When you look at things from a different angle you can trick your eye into seeing things as they are instead of as your brain thinks they should be.
I’d like to share the process of creating Cherry Blossom ( A Little) Demure. I love these little paintings because they seem to materialize before my eyes as rapidly as scrolling down these images – at least on a good day! Half the battle is won by starting with good reference material. In this case I’ve used one of my own photographs that I’ve cropped to isolate a great composition. …
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Watch as I whip up a little 8″ x 8″ Cherry Blossom Cluster painting. You can follow as I lay down values, layer hues, drop in details and edit out the background.