Plein Air Painting

Today I gathered up all my oil painting stuff and loaded it into the car in preparation for some plein air painting. I drove for a couple of miles and then chickened out and turned around and came back home. In order not to waste the day and to still get some painting practice, I parked in the driveway and did this plein air painting of the shack. Boy, landscapes are hard!

Little Miss Facepaint

Here she is with a little bit of color added. I'm going to let her dry before I paint on the face paint.

Work In Progress!

I took a photo of this little girl today as she was having her face painted. She's so cute! Usually I paint portraits from life, so the time spent with the model is limited. With this one though, I suppose I can take as long as I want, so I am just enjoying the process. What do you think, is it starting to look like her? A litttle bit?

Portrait Painting

I am trying to learn how to paint portraits and I get to practice every Tuesday night. A group of us meet for life studio where we have a model who poses for us. I am accumulating quite a collection of "people"! Here is one of the portraits. I can wait to paint her again.

"So get a glass of water, put a flower in it and get to work," -Kevin MacPherson

My favorite quote by an artist, from his book, Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light and Color. Simple advice. Here's my glass of water with a flower in it.

Today's rose

This is my rose practice painting for today. Actually I experienced more plein air practice than rose practice since the little canvas was too tiny to adequately depict the rose. I liked doing it though, so I may try it on a larger size.

Painting Roses

I am so bored. But tonight I managed to get up enough interest to paint some roses Alla Prima. It's a technique that I have resolved myself to learn so I've bought some little 5x7 canvasses that I don't mind using for practice.