We Portrait Artists

We Portrait Artists

Jackson, Oil on Canvas, 24w x 30h, by Pat Aube Gray

When young, we noticed a person with awesome beauty or features seemingly carved from stone, or a mature elder, a long life etched into his face, seeping from the outer corners of sentient eyes.  That face elicited a persistent gnawing, an ache too overwhelming to ignore.  We took crayon in hand, then, later, a pencil, and naively drew that face on paper, any paper, even a napkin.  We placed cockeyed features on out-of-shape heads and produced quasi-likenesses.  To become better, we turned to those who were - in books, on videos, at schools, at workshops - for drawing skills, technical knowledge, color and temperature comprehension, composition and edge sensitivity.  We sought enlightenment - to learn to “see,” which is to feel, an attitude suggested by a pose or tilt of a head, and the often elusive emotion emanating from the eyes.

We worked in graphite and charcoal, smearing ebony dust into shadows with tortillons or our fingers.  We used pastels, sticks of chalk-like color; we needed hundreds of them, one in every hue, in multiple values, because they could not be mixed.  We employed aqueous media, managing to control with a brush the unbridled flow of tinted water on specially treated paper.  We painted in oil, which, in the days of the Old Masters – Rembrandt, DaVinci, Caravaggio, Vermeer - was finely ground pigment, found in nature, mixed into linseed oil.   More recently, brilliant, audacious oil colors contained chemical additives.

We prepared our surfaces, wood panel or canvas, brushing on layers of rabbit skin glue or gesso, sanding between coats until they had the preferred texture.  We placed one on our easel, its center at our eye level.  We wore old clothes or an apron dappled with dried paint that had been dripped or wiped from hands or a brush.  We twisted caps off tubes of paint, squeezed a mound of white near the edge of a palette of varnished wood.  To its right, along the edge, we placed a smaller squirt of each warm color, from light to dark (yellows, oranges, reds, siennas); to the left, the same for cool colors (blues and greens), followed by earth tones (ochres, umbers, greys.)  We left the center empty, space for mixing colors.  On our taboret stood an old can of our best brushes, bristles up, a jar of turpentine, a small cup of damar varnish, palette knives, and lint-free rags or paper towels.    We placed our model before us, usually on a platform, at our eye level, and shone a light on him for the best pattern of light and shadow.  We took a deep breath, tried to calm our nerves.  It was time to paint.

With a brush loaded with a thinned, middle-dark neutral, we loosely drew the head and shoulders and blocked in shadow areas.  On our palette we mixed four or five values, from light to dark, of our subject’s skin tone.  With brushes, we carefully laid them in, leaving the shadow areas as they were, squinting at the model to distinguish the lights, middles, darks, and then warming or cooling the color as necessary.  We roughed in the ears, the eyes, the contours of the face, the nose and mouth. We added a little more red here, a little blue there.  We mixed and loosely scrubbed paint into the hair and clothing.  We stepped back so, with just a slight shift of our eyes, we could view the model and compare it to the painting.  We assessed proportions; was the bottom of the nose the right distance from the eyes, were the lips the right distance from the bottom of the nose, was the chin too long, was the forehead too short, were the eyes too far apart?  We moved back to the easel, rubbed out paint with a rag and made corrections, constantly measuring with our eyes.  Once we saw our subject on the easel, we reveled in the joy of it, felt the flutter of euphoria in our very being.  We lovingly touched the surface with careful, deliberate strokes, “combed” the hair, softened edges, moderated transitions in value, sharpened edges.  We perfected the eyes, the color of the irises, captured the magical translucence, dotted in the highlights.  When, finally, the portrait looked back at us as the model did, that thing we were meant to do was done.  A wisp of air escaped our lips, a sigh of relief, a soft whisper of fulfillment.  We smiled.  Then we wondered who would be next.

It's a New Day!

Oh, my, it has been almost eight years to the day since I last posted!  SO much has happened in all that time!  But I am back...back to painting, teaching and writing,  eager to immerse myself once again in creative endeavors.  I just read my last post and it certainly brought back thoughts of the unpredictable world of art.  Be that as it may, my thrust is different now.  I have nothing to prove, no one to impress, no living to make ( though any extra income will help!) I will paint for the pure joy of it.  I will teach because I love to share what I have learned and know that I will learn more in return;  I will write because it gives me that same gnawing in my gut that drawing and painting do.  Looking forward... always looking forward. Please join me on this renewed journey!  Enter your email in the sidebar under my photo to be on the blog mailing list.

A Sea of Unpredictability

Life as a visual fine artist is remarkably different from most other life pursuits. It is a path taken when the passion to create art and become better at it usurps even the most rational thought processes about traditional academic education; about steady, reliable income with reasonable expectations of financial growth; about licenses, degrees, certifications, or just the consensus of experts that our knowledge, skill and qualifications are sufficient to earn a living or gain entrance into specialized organizations; about acceptance and acknowledgment from experts in the field; about social interaction at our daily workplace.

The life of a visual fine artist is rewarding, satisfying, and, sometimes, necessary. Like many other endeavors, it has its good points. We enjoy what we do. We can do it anywhere. We can do it in our pajamas. We enjoy the process. We can often make money at it. We can teach it, earning extra money, and enjoy sharing our knowledge. We can listen to music while we work, we can decorate our homes, we can make gifts and donations of our life’s work. Our families can be with us. Our friends, relatives, clients, teachers and our peers pat us on the back and tell us how “good” we are.

But the life of an artist also has its not-so-good points. Art is one of the first products to suffer in a recessionary economy. The quality and beauty of our work, even for the most successful and skilled artists, is always subjective, always in the eye of the beholder, and subject to trends and fads. While some may think our work belongs in the Metropolitan Museum, others, including jurors, newspaper critics, gallery owners, and art collectors (and even some relatives and “friends”), may tell us to keep our day jobs. We may get into a juried exhibition and win a ribbon and not even make the cut with the same art in the next one. We may apply to one prestigious organization and be welcomed with giddy gratitude for “someone like you” being willing to participate, only to be rejected by another for work that is not to their standards, or lacks maturity and depth. The style and quality of our work may earn us a highly touted exhibition in a reputable gallery, while an equally successful venue nearby wouldn’t consider showing our work. A piece of art we consider our best work sits on a gallery wall without notice, while one we didn’t want to sign our names to receives a stream of accolades.

While our real “mission” is to make art, selling it, having it positively judged, and having it accepted and praised are integral factors in the measurement of our success. Confidence, a positive spirit, and motivation can be difficult to maintain in this sea of unpredictability. One week we are on a high due to an acceptance or award, and the next we are trying to understand why our work was declined. We have difficulty assessing the quality of our own work. We fully understand that each juror who views our work will have a unique opinion, we understand that we are at the mercy of that one single person, yet we can’t help but feel inadequate if our work is not “accepted.” Now we may even consider going back to our day jobs! Or, in an effort to preserve our psyches, we may decide that the juror doesn’t know good art when he sees it!

So how do we cope with the emotional roller coaster, with the ups and downs of our careers, with the less than steady incomes? The answers to that question are as different for each one of us as the art we produce. I believe it is important that we support one another, not just with praise, but also within our organizations, with critique groups, with educational opportunities, with shared information about techniques, tools, methodology and theory. And, yes, help with constructive criticism or suggestions. Read, share with your friends, and comment on each other’s websites, newsletters, blogs, facebook entries, and photos. The more we put art in the public view, the greater the number of artists we promote. The more the public views our art and reads artists’ comments, the more aware and, hopefully, appreciative they become. Maybe they will even become collectors.

When our muses are sitting on our shoulders and we are free from insecurities, we are able to paint with excitement and vigor. But even on less inspired days I believe we must continue to work hard, remaining vigilant for that elusive sensibility that will allow us to move closer to excellence, and tune in to the satisfying realization that the artistic hunger of our souls is fed by every mark we make.

Completed Oil Still Life with Progress Photos

Oranges, Pear, and Eucalyptus, (Only Just Begun),oil on panel, 16 x 20, copyright 2009 Pat Aube Gray

Oranges, Pear and Eucalyptus, (Almost There), 16 x 20, oil on Panel

Oranges, Pear, and Eucalyptus, oil on panel, 16 x 20, copyright 2009 Pat Aube Gray

This painting was started in April the week that Charles Walls was a guest instructor in my teaching studio. This was the first painting I had ever done on Ampersand's gessoed panel and I absolutely LOVED the surface! I only got as far as somewhere between the first and second photos that week, and worked on it many more hours than I thought I would have to in the following months! But I was very happy with the finished painting, which was sold before I finished it! I just love it when that happens!

Because the surface of the panel is relatively smooth (do not confuse this surface with Ampersand's clayboard surface or much earlier version of this panel), toning it first helps give the paint a little more to grab hold of. As you can see in the first photo, the background, for example, is still rather transparent. There are a few more layers on the final version, but the luster of the finished painting is wonderful! (I used M. Graham's walnut alkyd medium, which also adds to the quality of the finished surface.)

You might note that there is a fourth branch of eucalyptus in the finished work. The actual set-up contained only three, but the space between the eucalyptus and the highly lit pear really bothered me. It was as if there were no connection between it and the remainder of the subject matter and tended to lead the eye up and out of the picture plane. Adding the fourth, rightmost branch, directed at the pear and catching some of the light, helped to tie it all together nicely. As artists, we must continually reassess the painting in and of itself, regardless of what the actual source displays. However, I must admit that a more thorough assessment of the set-up in the first place may have revealed this shortcoming!

Oil Still Lifes, Still a Work in Progress

Time for Tea (Just Started), Oil on Panel, 24 x 18, Pat Aube Gray

Time for Tea, (Still in Progress), 24 x 18, copyright 2009 Pat Aube Gray

I have wanted to paint a still life revolving around tea, and this is my first attempt to do that. I started this painting when Charles Walls was a guest instructor at my teaching studio. These were all objects that I brought from home and set up for the concept Walls was teaching, that of of using depth and aerial perspective in a still life set-up. I did not get very far on this painting that week, but worked on it a good bit at a later date. As you can see, it is far from finished. These photos were shot in a very dark environment, so they are very grainy. Hopefully the photos of the completed painting (if and when) will be much better!

The Homestead, Watercolor, with Progress Photos

The Homestead, Watercolor, 22 x 26, copyright 2009 Pat Aube Gray

I truly enjoyed painting this commissioned watercolor for one of my favorite collectors. (It was of particular interest because I was teaching a weekly class in linear perspective at the same time I was working on this.) This was her grandmother's antebellum home, located in Athens, GA, and my client has amazingly detailed memories of the house and playing there as a child. Sadly, the home burned to the ground in the recent past, but this painting will serve as a lasting reminder of family ancestors and a cherished childhood.

3 Portraits Accepted in Portrait Society of Atlanta Exhibition

Click on Image to Enlarge

I am pleased to announce that the above three portraits, "Katie", "Ben" and "Chance," have been accepted by juror, Michael Del Priore, into the Portrait Society of Atlanta's Spring Members' Exhibition. Membership in this organization is national in scope, and some of the nation's best portrait artists are included in their ranks. Today I delivered the paintings to Mable House Art Center in Mableton, GA, the venue for the show. The show opens June 1, 2009 but the opening reception and presentation of awards will take place from 7 - 9 p.m. on June 6, 2009 and is open to the public. There were some outstanding paintings standing against walls waiting to be hung, so the competition for awards is keen. This will be an exhibition worth seeing.

I retrieved these three paintings from my client's home on Sunday. It was the first time I have seen the paintings in their "home" and the first time I have seen all three together, as they were painted one per year. It was really a strange feeling seeing them that way, as each one gets so much of my personal attention and hours and hours and hours of work. Seeing them together in their completed state, not having seen them two of them in quite a while, gave me a "first impression" of sorts. I was actually astounded at how "alike" they were, in style, in finish quality, in feeling, though each child's distinct personality was present in the paintings. Perhaps the strangest sensation was that of recognizing that they actually looked like they had been painted by the same artist. I don't know why I found that so surprising, but I really did. I remember years and years of wondering when my "style" would surface in my work. I think perhaps it has!

Michael Del Priore is the juror who awarded my painting, "Nicomas", the Second Place Award in the 2003 Portrait Society of Atlanta's Fall Exhibition. My understanding is that he will be presenting the awards himself at the reception on June 6th, which is unusual. Though I have met him before, I look forward to seeing him at this exhibition. And maybe I'll see you there as well!

The Magnificent Seven

On what can only be described as a less than desirable plein air day, seven of us, myself included, braved blustery, windy, cold and uncomfortable weather to paint at this incredible site today. As I said in my earlier post, photos lie, and the farm across the water was oh, so much closer to us than the above photo depicts. Okay, I will upload another photo to show you what it really looked like.

Now click on it to see it larger! As if this wasn't great enough, cows suddenly appeared, as if on cue and out of nowhere, mooing to beat the band, and almost in rhythm with the harsh honking of the Canadian geese that flew, swam, fought, and did some other things (tsk, tsk) right in front of us both in and along the lake's edge. What a fabulous site! Did I tell you we were on National Forest land and only about a mile from my studio? (If this had not been National Land, I think we'd have lit a bonfire with all the dead wood on the ground!)

The Magnificent Seven, as I will now call ourselves, endured the weather today under-dressed (can you believe the forecast was wrong?) and with only one coffee run and search for more outerwear. I am ashamed to say that this girlie group voted, while I was on the coffee run, to return to the warm studio to eat lunch as opposed to sitting at the freezing cold concrete picnic table on site! Oh, ye of little endurance! (I jest, of course. I was secretly thrilled!)

I'd show you the paintings we produced, but nobody stayed around long enough to take pictures of them once they were through! Perhaps I'll post them at a later date!

Oh, yes, and the Magnificent Seven included Henne Karavitch, Judy Holland, Terri Reilly, Dru Sumner, Amanda Fullerton, Susan Williams and me.

My Doctor and Her Grandaddy

My Doctor and Her Granddaddy, Watercolor on Paper, 18 x 25 Sold
Copyright Pat Aube Gray

Yes, you read that right! That adorable baby is now my doctor! Following the recent death of her beloved "Granddaddy", I was commissioned to paint this portrait from the doctor's favorite (obviously old) snapshot! The doctor is partial to watercolors and this painting lent itself beautifully to that medium.

Painting portraits from photos is something one should seriously undertake only after drawing and painting from life, and then only when painting from the person is not feasible. (Posthumous portraits, of course, fall into that latter category.) Photographs flatten form, alter values, diminish truths, and are subject to the quality of the camera, the digital resolution or film development, the color calibration of developers or computers & monitors, the lighting, and the expertise of the photographer. To drive this point home in a class recently, I gave students multiple photographs of the same subject, each developed, photoshop enhanced, and/or printed differently so that they could see that the resulting portraits from each one of these photos would be vastly different. I then posed the model, the subject of those photos, on the model stand. They were immediately able to see not only the difference between the photos themselves, but also the difference between all the photos and the model!

Once you have painted from life long enough, you understand what will be lacking or altered in photos in comparison to the actual subject, and you learn to make appropriate corrections when painting. Creating the illusion of depth and three dimensional form in a two-dimensional medium is a practiced skill. In today's world, time constraints often disallow the luxury of having a subject sit for us. So if you really want to paint portraits, it behooves you to paint from life whenever you can to prepare you for that inevitable commission you will have to execute from a photo.

And speaking of portraits, next week I will be attending the Portrait Society of America Conference in Reston, VA. I missed last year's so I am really ready to attend this one. It promises to be a great conference, with many portrait demonstrations and guest speakers. This is something I look forward to and always hope I will be a little more enlightened when I return home. Following the Conference, I will be teaching a five day portrait workshop in LaVale, MD.

Successful Workshop with Guest Instructor, Charles Walls

Charles painting his second great demo of the workshop

Tom Paul and his "first-ever" still-life

Kathy Fain, a long-time student of Charles Walls

Elaine Wiley having a great time painting

Susan Deryke took still-life very seriously

Anne Armstrong quietly pursued perfection in her own private corner

Dru Sumner and her perception of deep space

(L-R) Elaine Wiley, Anne Armstrong, Kathy Fain, Charles Walls, Dru Sumner, Susan Deryke Missing from the Photo - Tom Paul

On occasion, I invite guest instructors to hold a workshop at my teaching studio located at Carriage House Art Center in Blairsville, GA. Happily, Charles Walls accepted my invitation to do a still-life workshop in March, and it was a successful week for all who attended. Charles has studied in New York, primarily with Peter Cox, and more recently with David Leffel, becoming a devotee of the latter's philosophies and visual language of light and space, concepts he presented throughout the five day workshop. Two painting demonstrations, one on Monday and the second on Wednesday, successfully (and beautifully) depicted, first, the concept of light and objects moving across the picture plane from left to right (see Tom Paul's painting above) and, second, light moving across objects that moved from front to back in the picture plane (see all the other paintings above.) Thanks, Charles, for a great week!

Class Demo and Plein Aire Landscapes

Plein Aire Painting: Park Bench, Downtown Blue Ridge, 11x14 Oil on Panel, Custom Framed, $450
Copyright Pat Aube Gray

Plein Aire Painting: West Main St., Downtown Blue Ridge, 8 x 10 Oil on Panel, SOLD
Copyright Pat Aube Gray

Creek at Cartwright's, Oil on Canvas, 11 x 14, custom framed, $750
copyright Pat Aube Gray

In a recent class for oil painters, I painted the demonstration, Creek at Cartwright's, above. The primary emphasis for my students was the aerial perspective, which allows us to see the depth and distance in the landscape, and the strong value contrasts and color intensity in the foreground of the painting. I painted this scene in watercolor years ago, also in a class, but I found I liked it far better in oil. I was particularly pleased with the impact of the reflected light on the tree on the right as well as the realistic look of the little land mass stretching into the creek.

The top two paintings were painted in plein aire (outside, on location) in downtown Blue Ridge last weekend. The Southern Appalachian Artists Guild organized this paint out for both Saturday and Sunday, with paintings turned in mid-day Sunday for an Exhibition. The work completed was really nice - very professionally executed art in such a short span of time. Many of the pieces were sold, including my West Main St., Downtown Blue Ridge, the middle painting above. A big thank you to Marsha Savage for her work in organizing this event.

On Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, I am taking a group out to paint on National Forestry land right on Lake Nottely. Across a very narrow strip of water there is a farm with great red-roofed barns and a farmhouse with the mountains behind them. I have wanted to paint this place for years and I now have my chance! I am planning five such outings this year (April, May, June, Sept., and October); I arrange for a picnic lunch and beverages and we always have a great time! Look forward to photos of paintings in a future post.

Artists Doing Great Things

Sketch done in Walnut Ink made at the Fine Arts League of the Carolinas School
copyright Pat Aube Gray

A little more than a week ago I drove to Asheville to meet my friend and good watercolor artist, Carol Parks, for what I thought was to be a day of visiting galleries. Carol and her husband, John, have been in many of my workshops and we share a passion for good art. They have been attending life drawing sessions recently at the Fine Arts League of the Carolinas in Asheville and Carol surprised me by arranging for us to have a tour of the facility. By its name, I did not realize that this is actually an art school. It is a non-profit organization founded several years ago by North Carolina native, Ben Long, an accomplished artist and painter of frescoes and winner of the First International Leonardo da Vinci Award in Florence, Italy. Ben apprenticed under Maestro Pietro Annigoni in Florence, Italy.

We were met at the entrance by "Gully" (I wish I had gotten his full name), a gracious young man with a most beautiful smile and warm and paintable face. Gully both works and is a student at the school and had arranged for us to meet Ben Long as well as several other faculty instructors including John Mac Kah, whom I had known previously, Mark Henry (a great pastel painter), John Dempsey, and Rebecca King. We were treated to a couple of great cups of coffee and a wonderful round table (literally) discussion in the library with Ben, Mark, John, Gully and Chris Holt, a student, that lasted for several hours.

The school is located in the old industrial area of Asheville, in recent years a haven for artists and their studios. The interior is what, as a teenager, I imagined an art school, an atelier, to be like. With bare floor studios lighted by skylights and otherwise naturally lit by old factory windows high on the wall, easels, pedestals, skeletons, plaster casts, still life setups, and beautiful art set the stage for master-apprentice style learning, as used by the Old Masters and in many of our modern-day ateliers. Students here are taught how to make their own materials including gessoed panels, grinding pigments for paints, ink made from walnuts, picture frames.

The mission of the full-time school is to preserve and develop the traditions and techniques of the old masters in representational art that span the periods from classical Greek to contemporary realism. The curriculum is designed so that graduates of the school will possess solid refined drawing and painting skills in the four genres of representational art: figure, portrait, landscape and still life. Students are immersed in anatomy classes, drawing, and then, when they are ready, in painting. Instructors work alongside students in producing works, a boon to students able to observe the professional artist overcoming the challenges of the work.

A real surprise for me in the library was one of Gully's drawings, a wonderful charcoal portrait of Carol's husband, John Kidd. John has been sitting for the life drawing sessions and Gully really captured him. A great drawing of a great guy... and by a great guy!

We visited the individual studios and saw students, each with their own still life set-up, painting in oil; the room where students gesso panels, grind dry pigments and make walnut ink; the classroom where anatomy is taught, complete with muscular and skeletal diagrams and drawings on a chalkboard; the studio full of plaster casts from which students begin to draw from a 3-dimensional object as in nineteenth century European academies; and the gallery of very impressive faculty and student work. I could not have been happier!

At lunchtime, Carol and I ran out to see one downtown gallery and returned in time to visit Rebecca King's portrait drawing class. The students were all doing a great job drawing in charcoal alongside Rebecca, who was in the midst of a wonderful three quarter charcoal drawing of the model. I was graciously invited to join in but declined due to time constraints.

My thanks to Carol, Gully, and the faculty for a wonderful and most memorable day (and for the walnut ink!) I would encourage any student looking for full time art instruction in the academic tradition to consider the Fine Arts League of the Carolinas.

Turning Myself Around

Pam, charcoal on paper, 16 x 13, copyright Pat Aube Gray

Each Tuesday night artists who belong to my "Studio Club" come to my studio and draw or paint from a model. Following a family tragedy in 2007 followed by shoulder surgery, it was well over a year before I was participating again on a semi-regular basis. I found that my interest in this had waned, even though, as a portrait artist, it shouldn't, and working from the model used to be one of my favorite things to do. At the start of 2009 I vowed to participate regularly once again and get myself back in the swing of things.

Well, I was there, but my ability to do well seemed to have disappeared! Whatever I once had I didn't have anymore! I was painting in oils and wiped clean my canvas repeatedly, seemingly unable to produce anything the least bit satisfactory.

Trying to work my way out of this block, I decided last week to draw instead of paint. I love to draw and thought it might make a difference if I changed mediums. To further distance myself from what I had been doing unsuccessfully, I also decided to draw in charcoal, something I rarely do. (I usually draw in graphite or conte pencil.)

I am happy to report that this seemed to do the trick. Getting out of my element, so to speak, working in a medium that I still have to "work out" because I am not used to it, forced me to concentrate on the medium and not on the actual drawing process. So the drawing ability, which is more or less second nature, kicked in while I focused on the use of the charcoal. I think I wound up with an acceptable rendering of our model, Pam, and, hopefully turned myself around!

Oranges and Sycamore

Photo of Actual Still-Life Set-Up

Oranges and Sycamore, 11 x 14, oil on archival linen board, copyright Pat Aube Gray

I have completed this still-life which I discussed in a late January post, "The Value of Light." I changed the backdrop and table cover considerably from the set-up for two reasons: 1) I wanted my painting to differ from those of students painting the same subject, and 2) I wanted to do away with the fabric folds to simplify the composition. In the January post I discussed the value of the light in the composition so I won't repeat myself here. You may note that the color in the pitcher is played up considerably in comparison to the real pitcher as I felt it added to the color harmony by playing up brighter orange tones that can also be found in the oranges. I also painted some orange into the brown section on the right side of the little ceramic piece, once again for harmony but also to play the orange tone against its blue complement for added impact. (Click on the images above to enlarge.)

I am very happy with this painting and hope that you like it as well! It is available for sale at Carriage House Art Center.

I've Received a Blog Award!

Sara Jacobs Chambers has honored me with this special " I love your art blog" award! As the recipient, I have to list seven things that I love and then pass the award on to seven other artists whose blogs I admire. (See who they are below.) Thank you, Sara! I truly appreciate it.

Sara is a wonderful artist who resides in New Mexico. She uses pastels, oils and other media to produce vivid , bright and bold colorful compositions. Today I saw on her blog the most delicate of floral images that were just wonderful. See them for yourself at Sara J Chambers Art and Philosophy. I will add her site to my links and perhaps she will do the same for me!

So... seven things I love:
1. My family, my dogs, and special friends.
2. Beautiful art.
3. Painting snow.
4. Living in the North Georgia Mountains.
5. Learning.
6. Yarn.
7. Writing.

My first award will go to California artist Sadie Jernigan Valeri. I have watched her develop as an artist only through her blog for a long time now. I love the beautiful classical work she is doing and reading her informative and interesting posts, and I admire her pursuit of excellence through extensive study with many of today's top artists and contemporary masters. Kudos to Sadie.

The second will go to Indiana artist, Jacqueline Gnott, whose highly praised and poetic watercolor floral paintings have graced my emails and given me pause on more than one occasion to marvel at the beauty of her work. She also has a good sense of humor and, through her blog, I've also learned that she really loves her dogs! Thank you, Jacqueline, for your daily inspiration.

I will dole out my third award to United Kingdom artist, Paul Foxton, whose blog/website (not sure which it is, but I am subscribed to it) I came across quite by accident when he had done a painting of an old iron that was so very well done. More than that, I found that this man writes so much and so well about the process of his art, about the ruminations of his mind as he is learning or realizing new things about drawing or painting, and about methodolgy, technique and theory that I am enthralled. I have never seen an artist's site where there are more reader comments! Thank you, Paul, for all your insight!

Number Four shall go to Katherine Tyrell of the U.K. for an incredibly informative blog filled to the brim with information that is thought provoking as well as informative and useful. Links on this site have taken me in many different directions, to new sites and some previously undiscovered communication wonders of the internet. Be sure to visit Making a Mark. I promise, you will not be sorry!

Karin Jurick of Atlanta, GA gets my vote for a blog that is a marketing marvel. I have been following her blog for about two years now. Karin is steadfast in her painting (she is as prolific a painter as I've ever seen), the quality of her work is consistently top-notch, she markets herself (vis-a-vis her paintings) fantastically well, she has gotten into several top galleries in a very short period of time, she has acquired a great following and her blog is well done and published almost daily! As for her work, it is executed in intense color with a mimum of strokes and is always eye-catching!

Well, I am lacking two blog awards, but will have to get to them when I have a little more time.
I should mention that I do not personally know the above artists nor do they know me. They have just caught and kept my interest for a long while.

And now I'm off to the studio for what I hope will be a full day if painting!

The Value of Light

Having just completed eight days of teaching a workshop on still life painting, the value of light has been very much discussed. Good paintings are a combination of good drawing, good composition, good use of color, good control of edges, good handling of the paint, and, very importantly, a good value scheme. Value is an element of art that refers to luminance or luminosity - the lightness or darkness of a color. Most beginning painters readily grasp value differences in monochromatic drawings or paintings, but they may have a harder time understanding value in color. Still harder is recognition of the fact that like objects, say oranges, may have different light values (those values that are in the light and not in the shadows) depending upon their distance from the light source, the focus of the light source (where the light is actually directed), and the quality of the light (how strong or weak it is) hitting each object.
In the above still-life setup, the orange on the left is receiving very little light; you can tell it is receiving light by the fact that it casts a relatively dim shadow and has a highlight, albeit not very bright. The two oranges on the right, however, are receiving strong light, as the hooded light was aimed directly at the peeled orange, which is receiving the very strongest light; the right-most orange is in the range of this strong light, but it is a little further away from the light and back behind the direct focus of the light. The light was set up this way deliberately to make the peeled orange the focal point of the painting. The painter must be sure to diminish (darken) the light values of the right-most orange in comparison to the light values on the peeled orange, and must diminish them considerably on the orange on the left if (s)he wants the peeled orange to remain the focal point. If the light values were the same from orange to orange, it would not be possible to follow the path of the light through the painting and all three oranges would compete for attention. If you look at the photo, you should be able to tell that the peeled orange is the focal point. It is important to note that if the peeled orange wasn't peeled, the lightest value would be lighter and the highlight would be stronger than on the orange to the right of it and even more so than the orange on the left.

Workshop Paintings (click to enlarge):
Rene Abney
Gretchen Wurth
Mary Bryson

Carol Parks
Bhupinder Obhrai
Molly, Carol, Mary Working
Molly, her painting, her setup
Mary Bryson

Sorry. I am missing works by Bert Schafer and Charley Kelso

2009 Class & Workshop Schedule Available Now

I have just completed my schedule for the year 2009 for classes and workshops. I am excited to offer many new classes this year, including ongoing drawing classes, workshops on that bugaboo, linear perspective, and many painting classes and workshops in several media. I have a guest instructor from Atlanta, Charles Young Walls, in March, and I will be teaching in Maryland at the end of April. I hope to see you in one or more classes this year!

You can download the schedule by clicking in the upper right hand corner of this blog.

Happy Painting!

"Alexandria" Completed

I am very happy to say that my painting of Alexandria is complete and has been delivered! Delayed for several reasons, including my inability to paint because of my shoulder surgery for almost a year, I have worked many, many hours to complete it before Christmas. Alexandria hangs beside a portrait of her brother, Jonathan (the boy with the skateboard), featured in an earlier post. One of the most time consuming parts of this painting was the skirt, with all those folds! I faced a few challenges in this painting which, fortunately, I overcame. I am now very happy with the result as are Alexandria and her family.

I am having a lot of family here for Christmas and hope to enjoy my time with them. I wish all my readers a wonderful Christmas, some of you a great Channuka, and all of you a healthy and happy new year. Keep your loved ones close and treasure your moments with them.

Still Life in Oil Workshop

What a great still life class we had in early December! Seven students and three set-ups (sorry, one is not pictured) provided an interesting and challenging four days...yes, for them! Still life painting is sucha wonderful training ground for all genres of painting. Painters included Susan Deryke, Henne Karavitch, Sharon Mullings, Susan Phillips, Linda Rubenstein, Dru Sumner (recently married and name may have changed!) and Bert Schaffer. Great Group!