six bananas on blue

This lucky bunch of bananas got to sit by the window on a cloudy day and have their collective portrait painted. I was planning to paint them again the next day, from a different angle, browner, but they all got et up too fast! In reality, the blue towel had a bit more green in it than this, but this blue looks so nice, I just couldn’t bring myself to change it. 8×10 inches. $75. …More info…

small barn

Yesterday I finished up the details on this small piece that I began working on a week ago. It’s on a 6×6 inch canvas-wrapped board and doesn’t need framing.
 
 

Maria is done

A couple of days ago I finished this painting of Maria that I painted in class while learning how to work with oil paints. I spent this week fixing her colors, mostly, though here were also some drawing issues to fix. I’m quite pleased with the final product! More Info …
 
 

Dog on her bed

Did this little 4 x 6 painting from a reference photograph of my dog, who will never actually hold still long enough to be painted. It’s challenging to paint detail on such a small surface when the canvas is so rough. Fun, though.
 
 

first figure day 2

Started applying real color on top of the underpainting this week. Except for a little bit of burnt sienna on the very bottom of the canvas, she’s all filled in with real colors. If you look at the full body photo, you’ll see that she’s a bit on the blue side now. I’ll probably warm her up a bit next week.
 

tasty

I found some yummy models to pose for my at-home painting this past weekend. I’ve been inspired by Elin’s way (in her daily paintings) of taking various household objects and painting their portraits — I find that it takes the pressure off of me to do something amazing rather than just do something. If I try to always do something amazing, I’ll never pick up the paints. These two friends are probably bound for a quesadilla tomorrow night.

first figure

I started an oil painting last night of a nude female model. I spent the whole time just using some brushes and burnt sienna (no white or black or any other colors). You can see the result here. Next time class meets, I’ll paint over this burnt sienna underpainting with actual colors.
 

primary colors

Last night, we had a still-life of objects, all of which were primary colors. I picked a yellow watering can with a red pig on it, next to a small heart and some bluejeans to focus on. My canvas was one from over a month ago, when I painted a woman using only my pallette knife, white paint, and black paint. Having her rough ridges underneath my weak efforts last night was challenging!

yellow shoe

The instructions last night were to use only yellows (and white). Cadmium yellow deep, lemon yellow, and some yellow ochre (though over-use of this last was strongly discouraged). I found it somewhat frustrating, because I couldn’t really make dark darks. But the end result is pretty neat. Being unable to use the full pallette is actually quite freeing.

painting at home

Earlier this week a friend of mine and I got together to practice portraits on each other. He goaded me into not only using a medium (oil paints) that I am not anywhere close to comfortable with, but also using color instead of two-tone! After much struggle (I need some new brushes and some extra patience) I managed to make it look human, though it doesn’t really resemble Anthony!

I also did a charcoal of T, which kinda looks like here.