News.

Ahem. I finally finished two paintings that I've been working on for the past year.

The first is this small portrait of Annie, it's 6" x 6", oil on panel. I started it last October, out in Palm Springs.

The second painting is called "We're A Happy Family", and is about 5 feet high and 7 feet wide. Here is the whole thing and a couple of details.

Sorry it's been so long, I've been busy!

I went to a couple of art openings in Orange County, both at Sarah Bain Gallery in Anaheim. The first was for artist Ray Donley. His work is classical in style (and also in content, unfortunately). While he is a good painter, I think I would have liked it more if his subjects looked like real people today - he tries to make them look like they are in the 1500's. Clearly, his models don't really look like that (think: piercings, tattoos, glasses, make up, contemporary hair styles, etc.), so it really made the paintings look inauthentic to me. His models were just basically being actors, portraying models from hundreds of years ago.

The second opening was for Brooklyn painter Alyssa Monks, and it was terrific. I really like her work, and in fact went back a few days after the opening to look at the paintings again at my leisure. Some pictures:

In other news, I finished my painting "Kirk 1993" in October. Ginsu enjoys lying in the sun underneath the new picture.

I hope to post on a more regular basis!

Life drawings

From last night's Meetup session in Costa Mesa. The first one took 1 hour, but I made her hips/torso too large (sorry, Stephanie!).

The second one was 25 minutes, looser, and better. Both with a #2B charcoal pencil and a white charcoal pencil on gray paper.

Even more progress!

I was very busy this past week and didn't have as much time to paint as I would have liked. Still, I was able to make some more progress on the large painting. I worked on the blanket, Annie's shirt, and the background people. Everything still needs work, but I now pronounce it about 1/4 to 1/3 done!

A little more progress

Worked on the painting for about 3 hours this morning, before it got too hot. A little bit here, a little bit there. Trying not to get too fixated on any one thing - yet.

Progress

Worked on the big painting lots this weekend. This is where it was at the end of the day yesterday:

And here is where I ended it today:

Happy.

The big green monster

No, it's not at Fenway. I started adding color to the large painting that I drew on the canvas last week.

And then - I ran out of yellow medium hue light! I've ordered some more paints and other supplies from my online art supply retailer of choice, aswexpress.com (check 'em out, best prices I've found online). I'm using a different yellow for now. I plan to get up early tomorrow before the studio gets too hot and get in a few hours of painting. It was 102° outside today, and hotter than that in the studio.