oil portrait practice - day 10

 The portrait group at the New Braunfels Art League moved to the second Tuesday of the month, so my painting for today is another attempt to push some oil paint around a canvas board with brushes.
I stuck with burnt umber this time.

The model took a break every twenty minutes, so these shots are at each break. I left after an hour of painting. I feel like I should have quit after the first 20 minutes! Ah well, one doesn't improve without [lots and lots of] practice.

Larry

"Larry" (oil, about 16x17 inches)

The New Braunfels Art League in my home town just started a portrait group again after several years going without one. I've decided this time I'm going to use it to improve my oil portraits (of which I've done approximately 4 in my life! ... Including this one!)

Each first Tuesday of the month (hopefully) I'll have a new oil portrait from life to share with you!

Here are some shots of my progress, and the group. We let the model break after 20 minute sittings, so these shots are at about 20 minute increments.

I don't consider it "finished", but then what painting is ever actually "finished"? I slapped in the yellow on the lit side of his face in the final moments of my last 20 minute allotment, after he got up, in a desperate attempt to add warmth to the light. (Had to leave early to pick up the kids.)

I do like the shirt, and the hat. Lol.

Skimming the Surface

"Skimming the Surface"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

My last remaining gull oil from 2012. Thought I'd go ahead and give it another shot on auction after all this time, since I managed to part with two other gulls recently that way! ;) We'll see...

This one's also unframed.

Wave Tripping

"Wave Tripping"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

Yay! Two major commissions are done :) but I can't show them off until Christmas :( So I'm on to the other two slightly easier commissions, and meanwhile, here's one more of the gulls I have left from the 2012 series.

Knee Deep

"Knee Deep"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

Since the recent gull painting got a good share of attention, I thought I'd take the opportunity to re-post this one from my original mini-series of gulls in 2012. This one and a couple others are all that's left, and they get tricky to sell at art fairs because they're so different from the rest of my current work (and they're not pastel...)

This one fell out of it's floater frame and I haven't had the time to stick it back, so I've letting it have another shot in the auctions, unframed. :)

Itchy Gull

"Itchy Gull"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

My oil demo from the "Why Paint Small" workshop earlier this month in Valentine, Nebraska. I first did a 'grisaille' underpainting with burnt umber. Starting with a wash of a medium tone, then lifting out the lights and laying in the darks. This dried overnight and I painted the colors the next day. There might have been a video of this one, but I haven't got my hands on it yet. Meanwhile check out this gull post from 2012, showing my process for oil painting.

Itchy Gull is a bit looser but I blame that on it being only my second oil painting in almost 2 years, plus I was trying to talk at the same time, lol!

Away from the Overlook

"Away from the Overlook"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

Here's a better image of my one plein air painting in Nebraska. From last weekend after judging the Sand Painters Art Guild show in Valentine. Many of the Sand Painters group are devoted plein air artists and I so admire the dedication that takes, so I was excited to join a few of them on Friday evening. We drove up to a beautiful overlook with several views of the valley below. I found it all a bit overwhelming... so much information! So I settled on the simpler view of the pines, facing away from the overlooks. I do believe this is my first oil plein air. It was hard! All that getting situated and mixing paint, while the gorgeous cloud patterns that first attracted me disappear and the light fades! Arg!

I posted a couple shots from that evening on FB a few days ago, but here they are for you blog followers!

the scene

chasing the light

my improvised 'easel-free' setup

I know you're going to ask: I don't remember where I got the chair. I think I ordered it online somewhere, years ago from one of the art supply stores.. Just Google "chair bag cart with wheels" ;)

Whiteface

"Whiteface"  (oil, 6x6 inches) sold

And here it is, my last painting from Angie Brown's "Fast and Loose" oil workshop, and by George, I think I got it! 30 minutes before the end of the workshop last Sunday and I said to myself, "I don't care, what have I got to loose, I'm gonna' paint fast and loose!" So I picked a SIMPLE image (That's the real trick, folks! Keep it simple!) and whipped it out.

I think I was saving this image for oil anyway. This was from the same photo shoot as my other White-faced oil portraits, Hugo and Nellie. Here's the pic and the beginning:

Thank you, Angie, for the excellent workshop! I hope I don't go another 2 years before picking up the paintbrushes again!

.

Park Trail #35 (and an Angie Brown Landscape Video!)

"Park Trail #35"  (oil, 4x6 inches)  click here to bid

Here's my first painting from Saturday in Angie Brown's "Fast and Loose" oil painting workshop. I've painted this path a few times before from the same reference photo. This time I flipped the photo. I love the simplicity of this path.

Here are some progress shots, and at the bottom is a link to a video of Angie's workshop landscape demo - a beauty! Be sure and scroll all the way down to watch it!

Thanks for watching! Here's Angie's Demo! (Click here to watch the YouTube video)

Wood Duck

"Wood Duck"  (oil, 7x5 inches)  sold

From the second day of Angie Brown's "Fast and Loose" oil painting workshop.

This one was not fast either. I don't know what I was thinking. This one took All. Day. Friday! 80%  of the time was Mixing. Paint. Ugh! Another 19% was fixing crappy application. The last 1% was the water (That part was easy enough.)

I could have done 3 of these in pastel in less time. But one of the girls in the workshop bought it for her husband, so I guess it was worth it.

Tomorrow (time willing) I'll have a link to a video of Angie's landscape demo from Saturday! Meanwhile, here's a few progress shots of the duck:

Thanks for watching! Please share!

.

Road Sketch #32 (..and an Angie Brown floral demo)

"Road Sketch #32"  (oil, 5x7 inches)  click here to bid

Here's my first completed painting from today (started yesterday) in Angie Brown's "Fast and Loose" workshop. Ok, for me this is loose, but it wasn't that fast! It was supposed to have been done yesterday. Angie is teaching us "Alla Prima" which literally means "at first attempt" and in the art world is a term meaning "wet-on-wet"; you start and finish the painting while all the paint is still wet. I kinda learned this in Carol Marine's workshop in 2011, but afterwards had settled into my preferred method of oil painting (for the short while that I was oil painting..) which is creating a monochromatic umber underpainting, which dries by the next day, then painting the color over it on the second day. (See one of my 2012 paintings, "Danger: Gull!")

Yesterday, we first did a monochromatic study of our chosen subject. Most students used black, white and greys. I wanted to be different and being more comfortable with umber, used that for my study:

"Road Sketch #32 study" oil, 5x7 inches

(Man! That wet road was a bugger!) Btw: this study is a separate painting from the color version above; it's not an underpainting, though I joked that I wanted to do my color on top of this one to save time, I was a good student and didn't do that!

Angie had demoed a floral today, in the style frequently used by artists such as Jeremy Lipking, where the subject is a 'vignette' and the painting fades out into the rest of the canvas, which is left bare. Here's Angie at work!

Beautiful!
Thanks for watching! Please share!

.

Nothing to Do

"Nothing to Do"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

My last oil painting from the past few days. This girl's mood was echoing mine! (sigh) One can almost empathize with the feeling of being caged, in this modern busy life of multiple obligations pulling one away from what one would most like to do (roam free!) (or paint!), and not in control of ones own life as a person (or a cat) would most naturally want to be.