Happy Dance

Doing the Happy Dance (a la Snoopy) today! So great to be back in the studio after too long an absence. Some classes had been cancelled and then I missed some while re-organizing my entire life (oh that little thing?)....Missed, missed, missed the paint, my fellow students, my fabulous teacher Tom, and even the smell of clay dust in the room. So, only one session with this model who was new to me. Hope I get to paint Mitch again; she has fabulous features and a spirit that just shines out of her. Will have to try to get a better photo of the painting when it's not raining...there's more green in the background than this.

And have missed the blog! Hope this finds all of you well and prospering. Aloha!

Cheryl Ann Final

Final session with the model, but not a final painting. Ran out of time! So, will touch this up later if I get the chance. Aloha!

oh, yeah, part 2

Hard to believe I forgot to post this progress picture on Tuesday...best I could do on the image. Having lots of fun with this one... Sadly will miss the next session with this model, so will just have to hope for the best at the last session in 2 weeks. I'll try to find something to post in the meantime....Aloha!

Silver and Gold

Thank you to our friend Karen for posing for this sketch. Karen is a friend who counts as silver and gold, new to me and longtime to my Sweetie. We had a delightful weekend visit before she headed back North, but only after trying Carolina style BBQ and having an adventure with an Eastern Red Bat who was thinking of moving in. We'll be looking for other excuses to have pumpkin pancakes now, too. It's the time of year to treasure friends...Aloha!

The color of courage

Portrait class this week seemed to be a lot about color. The subject maybe be basic, but not simple, even when we break it down into Hue, Value, Temperature and Saturation. For the beginning artist, the technical "how" of achieving a desired color is imperative. The use of it, though, that's where expression  the fun begins!

Art keeps changing over time and culture with differing emphasis on symbol, or line, or form, or color or "reality" or "abstract"...there's no permanence or perfection or even progress, necessarily. As Tom says, we just keep trading our problems in for more interesting ones. Mastery begets new questions and on we go. And as Casey Baugh reminded us last spring at the Portrait Society of America meeting, Art is truly a universal language, at least to humans. What a grand adventure!

This is the final week of the How Do You Paint Courage exhibit which is finishing its tour at the Center for Creative Leadership.  [link How Do You Paint Courage]
In the photo on the left you can see Tom Edgerton's painting which I finally got to see in "person". I know the colors in the painting were chosen very deliberately and the result is quietly powerful. As courage often is.

And here is the beginning of a portrait with a new model who brought some nice colors into the sitting. It's going to be a lot of fun. Aloha!

Simply Jean

The day started gray, but now the colors outside are shining and glowing...even in the studio I think they are echoing within us. Hope you are feeling it, too. Aloha!

Value Relationships

Sounds like something to put on a Tshirt...along with Love One Another. We were speaking primarily of value relationships today in portrait class. Looking not just at the question of what value is this particular spot, but what's the relationship between these two areas of light and dark. Value shifts, even when subtle, do so much to express form in painting.

Still, Value Relationships is not a bad thing to keep in mind on  Election Day...it's easy to feel "unloved" when we allow issues to divide us. Sometimes it's easy to equate "issue" with "value", but we might find perfect agreement on values and yet find ourselves on opposite sides of any particular issue. Where some say that the end justifies the means, Gandhi said the end is the means. So, every day,  I'll  try to keep patience and respect close at hand. After all, we're neighbors. Aloha!