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!

A Completed Portrait

Portraits such as this one take me soooo long to complete, and I am always happy when I call it done and paint my signature on it. Someone just asked me the other night how I know when to stop, how I know when it is finished. The answer is straightforward. When I can't find anything to do to it that will make it better. Now that doesn't mean that I won't see something later that I might have done differently. As Burt Silverman once said, "The dynamic of a painting does not end with the signature." As you grow as an artist, and let's hope that we are growing every day in some way, you will see things differently, may learn something new that you could have applied to an old work. You may have reached a greater understanding on resolving particular problems in a painting. But for me, once it is done, I rarely, if ever, go back to an old painting. If anything, I might repaint it (not a portrait), applying the newer philosophies or techniques to a new work. Then I have the advantage of comparison.
I hope you like this painting. Chance is the third grandchild I've painted for this client, with one more to go. (Chance's cousin, Ben, is in the right hand column of this blog.) But I have another portrait in the last stages (Alexandria) and will have that finished by next week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cane Hollow Farm

Outbuildings, Oil, 9 x 12
Cane Hollow Farm, WC, app.15 x 30,

I don't know what it is about a particular image that draws you in, that ignites a spark of creativity, and beckons you to return to it repeatedly. I have a photo on my computer that I took some time ago of a particular group of farm buildings and each time I see it, I am drawn to paint it. First I painted it on a small 9 x 12 canvas in oil (Outbuildings, shown at top)as a demo in a workshop, using only a palette knife, and I stayed fairly true to the proportion and the scene as it appeared in the photo. I did, however, push the autumn colors beyond what appeared in the photo. The second time I used the image as source material, I altered the concept, changing the weather to a blustery winter day, with snow and stormy grey clouds, painting in oil again but this time on a 12 x 24 canvas. (That painting is almost complete and not pictured above.) Last week, during a watercolor workshop, I once again used the photo as inspiration, this time painting in watercolor on 300# rough paper (Cane Hollow Farm, bottom photo). I used a landscape format, larger than the one before it, using a 15 x 30 sheet. Again I painted a winter scene, but used a limited palette with what I felt was a pleasing mix of warm and cool colors. I added a typical white Georgia farmhouse to the scene as well as a dirt path or roadway, and kept the painting quite simple.

A funny aspect of this is that I could not remember where I was when I had taken the photograph and it was really frustrating me as I was working on the second painting. A couple of weeks ago I went to visit friends. Across the road from their house is a wonderful huge pasture, usually filled with cows and an inviting vista. With the trees bared once again in preparation of winter, I was able to see some barns in a clearing and thought, "Gee, that looks like that gambrel roofed barn in my paintings. Oh, and that other building looks like..." Yes, indeed, there was the image I had photographed, probably two years prior. And it held the same excitement for me then as it did when I first snapped that picture. I have no doubt I will paint these buildings again!