Painting All Summer!

It's been a summer of slow but steady growth in painting. I'll post a small selection of my favorites from this summer. I'm still trying different surfaces, brushes, sizes and colors. It seems too soon to settle on a formula for my work yet although someday that might be nice. I've been mixing it up, drawing in graphite and charcoal and watercoloring too, to see if it shakes something loose in my brain. I know you artists will know what I mean!

Gothic Girl #1 SOLD

On the Veranda SOLD

Laura as a Fairy SOLD

Arnica #2 SOLD

Girl in a Turban available on Ebay (search my name)

The Direct Gaze SOLD

I've put a few auctions up on dailypaintworks.com---

Four new 4x4" oil portraits

Nine New 4x4" Oil Portraits

I think these are getting better and better for the most part--more contrast and better likenesses. Still am not where I want to be consistently!

New 4x4" Oil Portraits

Can't believe a whole season has flown by since I posted. I've had a great month selling oils on Ebay, almost enough to make this year as good as the past 3 when the economy was better. I found some small 4x4" square canvases and got obsessed with doing really detailed (for me) likenesses of my models. I like them but want to get so much better and faster at this. Here are some from the last 6 weeks or so.

More New Paintings

Misty in Black, 8x10"

Cassie (from life), 10x8"

Vera in Black Leather, 10x8"

Vera in Black Leather was the last painting I've done from a photo in several weeks. I think I got too formulaic and posterized the colors too much; the blues are too light and bright. The other two, from life, were more fun to paint although there's always a rougher look to the life paintings due to the short painting time (around 2 1/2 hrs).

5x7" Oil Paintings

Vera in a Red Sequinned Dress, 5x7"

Kristen in a Purple Hat, 5x7"

Laura as a Clown, 5x7"

These were gridded in pencil, then painted. For me this is a tedious process but does help in getting a facial likeness, which is important to me, since I know all the models and consider them friends...

New Oil Paintings

Here are 4 paintings I've done in the past week from model photos I took. I find if I can get the faces right everything else falls into place. I'm still using a grid and pencil underdrawing. Experimenting with different surfaces.

Inspiration! Paintings from Photos of Models

Recently I've had 3 2-hour photo sessions with 2 of my favorite models, Vera Wood-Wright and Waverley Tinsley. I am totally inspired, because I know both models, to get a GOOD facial likeness. This is so hard even though I have drawn faces forever.
I need to study facial anatomy. I'm experimenting with grids and a burnt sienna imprimatura with many of these.