More work in progress

Alice

I've been playing with some paintings based on my favorite stories growing up. One of them was Alice in Wonderland. First the movie and later the books. Here is the finished Alice.

paintings in progress

The teacups are a fun little painting but all of the reflective surfaces are quite challenging. This one is taking a lot of patience!

The house commission is coming along. Just started the first pass and will be spending most of my studio time on it to get it finished.

Friday figure drawing and House commission

Here is the color study for the house commission. Today I will take more photos of the landscappe and get started on drawing the image on the larger canvas.

Another couple of sketches from our Friday figure session. I found that after about four years of painting I am no longer a line person. Forms are now much easier to identify and use and reference in building a 2-D image. In addition, it has been my practice to mess around with a very overdone gesture to find the form. On Friday I made myself slow down and make more deliberate lines, what a difference! Much less wasted energy and more accuracy from the beginning. Thank goodness we improve with effort!!!

a step closer

a detail from the same image.

This is getting closer. The nice thing about posting these thumbnail size images is that the problems really stand out. Such as the light area behind the coffee pot handle, its distracting, needs to be softened.

Scout lake

Not sure if this is finished yet. Something is not quite right, I'll have to look at it for a few days to figure it out. Maybe some warm tones in the shadow...

Friday figure studio

Three Fridays a month there's a drop in figure studio at the Arts Umbrella where I teach. This was our model and it was long pose so I got a fairly decent sketch out of it. It's fantastic having the session so close to home.

Photo reference

Yesterday morning was beautiful so I decided to head out to get some new landscape shots for inspiration. There is something particularly appealing in layered space, the idea of looking through obstacles to see what is beyond. Growing up in the pacific nw, I am used to lots of trees, hills, bends in roads and paths.

The next step with this image is to play around with some composition thumbnails. Get the essentials in and edit out the superfluous.