I finished Cade’s portrait yesterday and am happy with how he turned out.  I painted his portrait in a looser style than I did his sisters because I thought the less finessed bolder brushstrokes would look more masculine.  Cade has beautiful eyes in real life, very light blue/green.  He has a quiet and kind personality and I think this comes through in his portrait.  I like the feel of his sweatshirt, it looks thick and warm.  His mouth gave me a little run for it because I didn’t want him to look like he was wearing lipstick.  I look forward to seeing his and his sisters portraits together.  I enjoyed the challenge of this one.  I like how it looks in black and white so I converted the image.

 

Last year my little sister Sara built a house.  She and her husband designed it and my mother and her crew helped build it.  My mother is a general contractor, among other things.  It’s a cool house, sort of industrial looking with all white walls,  and wood, metal, and concrete.  Sara was worried that it would feel stark and cold so she enlisted everyone that can hold a paintbrush to make art for her house.  Her kids, my kids, our niece, and I all did some paintings for her.  Last spring we had an art factory going on at my parents place.  Sara wanted big colorful paintings of fruit.  So she bought some big canvases, we bought some pears and lemons, and I painted this still life.  I think it’s 3’X4.’  I really got my Wayne Thibaud on with this shadow.  Thanks Wayne for all your beautiful still lifes.  And thanks Sara for being my biggest fan.  She has a lot of paintings from me because she’s such a good cheerleader.  I’ll eventually post all the stuff I’ve done for her new house.

36″X48″ oil on canvas

He’s getting there.  Yesterday I worked on his blue sweatshirt and the background.  Both came right together and they are done.  Yahoo.  I’ll let this guy dry and then come back and give the skin and features another pass.  But I am really happy with how he is coming along.  Especially his neck and sweatshirt.  He’s a young looking 21 yr old,  but he’s tall.  He’s 6’3″ and I had to stand on a chair to shoot his picture straight on without the weird distortion from my short perspective.

 

Here’s the progress I made on my guy yesterday.  He’s not my guy, he’s my friends son, I could be his mother.

I think I mentioned in my last post about him when he was just a line drawing that I was nervous for this portrait.  I’m not nervous about painting girls and boys, but guys/men are new territory.  I was afraid he would look girly.  But after this first hit I don’t think he looks feminine, so I’m feeling less nervous.  I think I held my breath for several hours yesterday while working on him.  One of these day I will just pass out while painting.  Whatever you have heard, painting is not relaxing, not at all, not for me.  I painted his face and got to the whiskers on his chin/jaw and stopped,  but they sorta look like they are there with the blue underpainting showing.  Today I will paint his sweatshirt and the background.  Then in a few days I will go in for more color and another layer to his skin and focus in on each feature one at a time.  He has lovely ice blue/green eyes that are just about there.  The pencil lines you see help me tremendously, but I have painted portraits without them.

 

 

I’ve decided to zero in on portraits.  I started going in every direction with painting but my real interest for now is painting portraits and figures.  Maybe next year I will tackle the still life.

I painted a portrait of this beautiful 13 year old girl.  I wanted to paint her portrait because I like her and because of her long long straight hair and beautiful rosy complexion.  She has a fun happy personality that lights up a room.  I gave the portrait to her mother for Christmas and it was well received, thank goodness.  It’s scary giving someone a portrait of their child because its fairly easy to paint features but difficult to capture personality.  I love how her brown eyes sparkle in this portrait.

I changed the chroma in the photograph of this painting, just for fun.  It punched up the red and purple in her hair.  It reminds me of the paintings I did last summer of my sisters kids.  I like the painting both ways.

Su padre es mejicano por eso el nombe “Sonrisa.” Ella es bien linda y siempre tiede una sornrisa en su cara.

I’m starting a new portrait today.  This one is of a 20 year old guy, so I’m moving into new territory.  I have painted a few portraits of boys, the oldest being a 15 year old.  But 20 year olds look like men not boys.  Boys still have that pretty look that girls have and I’m much more familiar with painting girls.  I’m have been surrounded by girls all my life.  Men are handsome.  This guy that I’m going to paint is handsome and I’m hoping I can make him look handsome and manly and not too pretty.  He has terrific ice blue/green eyes.  He has whiskers.  I went out and took his photograph last week and he was a good sport.  I took a close up of his eyes and asked him what color his eyes here and he said he didn’t know because he is colorblind.  So I can do anything I want with him!  Not really, this painting is for his mother.  To go along with the “senior portrait” of his lovely sister.  So far I have him photographed and the drawing set up.

8X10

I painted this little gals portrait at the end of last year.  Throughout 2015 I painted several portraits but it wasn’t until the end of the year that I felt like portraits were starting to click together.  They are always hard and a leap of faith when starting, but seeing peoples faces come to life never gets old.  I love her little 2nd grade teeth.  Shortly after finishing this painting she lost a few more cute teeth.  I’m glad I got in some of her little baby teeth.

3’X5′ oil on canvas

I’ve been working on this Northern California beach scene.  This is a close up of one section.  In the painting there are 6 kids playing on the beach, dragging seaweed out of the water, digging holes, and looking for shells.  I took a bunch of photographs on a beach in Fort Bragg one evening when the sun was starting to set and casting beautiful shadows on the kids and rocks.  This is a big piece for me.  I’ll post pictures of progress.  So far I have all 6 figures and all the surrounding painted in.  Next I need to tackle the epic end of the world ocean scene that’s happening behind them and the rocks.

 

2015 art auction project.  Huge quilt.

This years project.  First step.

There are several of us “art mom’s” working together on our kids class art auction project. Every year I’m involved in coming up with an idea and helping the kids execute the project.  The idea is for the kids to produce something that is kid made, that they love, have a connection to, is high art, and that their parents will want to buy for a lot of money.  The high art part is a lot of pressure.  It’s to raise money for the school.  Last year I spent a about a billion hours working on a class quilt with the kids.  It was wonderful and amazing and I will never do that again.  My compulsive quilting phase has passed.  This year we are doing a multi media piece.  I’ll post each phase.  I think there will be 4 phases.

2014 auction project

What do you like to create?

Fall Tree

9X12 oil on canvas

Fall in these parts is beautiful.  I painted this tree back in November when the leaves still looked like this.  This is one of my favorite trees and I’m pretty sure it’s a favorite of lots of locals.  It’s right on the river along the greenbelt.  It’s huge with branches that branch out in all directions from its base.  There used to be an enormous branch that shot straight out to the side low to the ground that kids liked to climb on.  But it got chopped.

I took a Plein Air painting class in the fall and this was influenced by it.  I worked from a photo on this one.  I didn’t want to stand outside in the cold alone to paint this tree.  I’ll post my actual Plein Air painting another day.