Newest commission:  Peaches  20 x 20 oil on canvas

This one was tough...I wanted to portray her sweet spirit and not the worry over the hard life she had.  She was greatly loved by the people who adopted her and her owner told me they are setting up a fund at the local humane society in her honor.

New/Old things I'm learning about drawing:

Some things you need to hear or discover for yourself a thousand times before it finally sinks in.  These are some portraits I did on toned paper that brought some old lessons to the surface and made it painfully clear that I still have so much to learn!

1)  For the love of God get the drawing right before you start rendering!  It is difficult to impossible to fix the drawing after rendering.

2)  Get the gesture right...the slightest angle of an eyelid or tilt of the head speaks a million words.

3)  Establish clear boundaries between light and dark early on.  Nothing in the dark should be as light as your lights, and nothing in the light should be as dark as your darks.  Seems like common sense but it's harder than you think!

I'm happy to announce that my recent piece "Good Boy Guinness" has been accepted into the artUnleashed event here in Jacksonville.  Many thanks to Guinness who posed for me many years ago and provided me with a great photo reference!  All proceeds from the sale of the art at this event go to First Coast no more Homeless Pets.  I'm very excited about the event and hope to meet other local artists and make some connections!  

http://www.jaxartunleashed.com/

Daisy at the beach

Newest pet portrait! A co-worker was kind enough to let me use her cell phone pic she snapped of her dog at the beach. Loved the pose, color, and composition too much not to paint it.

A pic that a kind passerby took of me plein air painting. (Bodega Bay) Oh how I miss California, a painters dream! Can't wait for my next trip home...but in the meantime I'll be studio painting in my air conditioned apartment in Florida. Don't know how artists paint outdoors here in Florida with the heat, humidity, bugs, and plain 'ole lack of anything to paint (it's FLAT here).

I'm resurrecting this blog after a long absence! Hopefully there will be more to come...I'm very rusty but I have to make a serious commitment before my skills completely vanish. I feel as though the knowledge is still there ( I can still hear my teachers voices in my head) but I need to work on the brain-to-hand connection. Here is a dog portrait I did out of curiosity, just to see if I can still do it. Which is kind of important since I have pet portrait business cards out on display at work!

Oh I can title these posts! (duh) More Still Life!

More Japanese dolls...not quite finished. The shower scene sparked another idea for a body of work...drips! I love the way things look behind wet glass; the way the background gets fuzzy and the water drops become these little distorted reflections. Hopefully there is more to come....