- The Work
- Blog – A Day’s Work
- Paintings in progress
- Fluffy Ivy….
- Day Three: Portrait of a kitty
- Day two: Portrait of a kitty
- Portrait of a kitty…..
- The bell tolled for me….
- Inching toward the finish…
- Curly toes…….
- Back to it
- And now in real time…
- “Carving back”
- Faces forming….
- Living Proof
- Drawing – over and over and over – with paint.
- Struggling to remember how to paint….yet again.
- It is VERY slow going…
- Cheating.
- Painter’s process
- Painter’s Musings
- Paintings in progress
- About Gini
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Painter’s process
Almost there….
Ahhh, little Ivy – here looking a bit more like herself, except that I’ve cut into her fur with the background. Never fear, she will be fluffy again soon. Notice that her nose is now positioned correctly, her soft white fur is starting to appear above the shadows, and her little mouth has [...]
Here’s little Ivy again, her handlebar mustache painted away. She’s looking fluffy, no? In this photo you can really see how far afield that little nose has travelled. Funny – I didn’t notice it until I took this picture. That often happens, so if you have an instant camera nearby while you paint you [...]
This is Ivy. Well, it’s actually a painting of Ivy- the beginning of a painting of Ivy. Ivy belongs to my sorority sister, Lani, and her husband Joel. Ivy is rather an old dame, (sorry Ivy) and the photo I am working from is not exactly flattering as it was taken of her in less-than-her-prime, so I will [...]
In my studio classes we have a tradition that when someone finishes a painting we ring a big school bell. (If it’s a tiny painting we ring a tiny bell.) This tradition began when one of the students finished a painting she’d been working on for over a year. We needed some way of signaling [...]
Today was an extremely productive day in the studio – and the boys are getting there. Feels good to be able to actually look it over and see what little fixes need to be done. I am trying to keep everything loose and suggestive other than their faces, so that they will be the focus. [...]
I forgot to take a photo yesterday so I will begin this post with a photo record of where today began…. Having finished the boys’ faces, I moved on to the background, and then to re-drawing their bodies, having lost quite a bit of definition when painting the background. This is where I began [...]
So, today I went to the studio early to get a jump start on the day. I finished the older boy’s left ear in a flash, and then moved down to start on the boys’ arms and legs. Early into it, I lost my mojo. Just didn’t feel like painting arms and legs. I mean, [...]
…that the more you paint the better you paint. Today was my second day in a row to spend hours in the studio, just painting. It helped that my friend Roz came to paint with me. You might think that would be distracting, and it is at first, while we chat and catch up on [...]
I’ve decided to jump ahead just a couple of steps, because I feel I made real progress today, and I want to share it. I worked on the younger boy’s face today, and those damned teeth! But I am pleased with how things went. I brightened his face, reshaped his smile lines, reshaped his jaw [...]
This little boy’s face had grown too long, so I needed to do what I call, “carving back,” meaning using the background or adjacent color to reduce the mass of the face. (Or nose, or hand, or whatever – everything tends to grow in paintings.) This first image shows the older boy’s face at the [...]
Post-measurement day, the boys’ faces are finally starting to take shape. There are layers and layers to any portrait, as I mentioned, and this is not the final one by far. I spent most of this day on the older boy’s face, but did manage a few quick strokes on the younger one’s as well. [...]
Drawing – over and over and over – with paint.A Day's Work + Painter's process + Paintings in progress
People often ask me, “Do I have to know how to draw in order to paint?” And my answer is usually the oft-overused “it depends.” It depends on what kind of painting you want to do. It depends on whether or not you want your paintings to represent something real, with accuracy. It depends on [...]
Struggling to remember how to paint….yet again.A Day's Work + Painter's process + Paintings in progress
My students are often surprised when I tell them that I am struggling with a painting. There are two things I’d like to say about struggling: 1. If there is no struggle then the painting will appear lifeless, cold, routine, average, dull, and probably worthless, IMHO. Struggling, with either an idea or the execution thereof, [...]