New Paintings

Here are a few of the paintings I’ve completed in the last few months –

"Otter"

This portrait was commissioned as a Christmas gift.  It was done on 300 lb 12 x 16 paper with fluid acrylics.  I used violet oxide for his primary color with highlights of burnt sienna and  transparent red oxide.  Also, dioxazine purple for shadows and violet oxide mixed with burnt umber and some sepia for the very dark shadows.

Reference photo

In the process of working on this painting I found an old table easel of my mother’s, it works beautifully on my counter height drawing table.  I find sitting too confining as I need to be able to get up and down to look at my work as I paint.  Easy to do when working on a standard easel but with watercolor its a more bit difficult.  The table is high enough for me to stand while painting and the table easel  leans back far enough so it does not create runs in the paint.  This allows me to do the two step easel dance – one step back, squint – one step forward paint – one step back squint!

   The following day, after I completed this painting , I became a brand new grandma!!  Needless to say, all painting was put on hold while I fell in love with this beautiful new little baby girl!!

In January I returned to planet earth, the holidays were over and  I was ready to paint again.  I started with this little piece called “Up?”  Look at those seductive eyes saying, “you know you want to pick me up”.

"Up?"

An artist friend of mine told me about Aquabord and I thought I’d give it a try.  This was done on a 6 x 6 square in fluid acrylic.  It has the same absorbency as the watercolor canvas, which means the paint floats on top of the surface (not my preference).  However, it does have the benefit of easy correction with a Mr Clean magic eraser.  I was able to easily remove a lot of the acrylic paint with little harm to the surface.  “Up?” was completed in a few hours, world record time for me!!  I purchased several of few of these little boards and over the next few months I will do more of these little paintings and have them available for sale at my shows this summer.

Reference photo

I am a member of a wonderful little art blog called Artcolony, this year we are doing art challenges every month.  For the month of January we had the “White Challenge”.  As I didn’t have a lot of time to do a new painting after the holidays and I was struggling to come up with something new,  I turned around one day and realized I already had something in the works!  This will be completed in the next few weeks, winter will be over soon and the grass will be calling once again.  Stay tuned.

White Challenge

For February we had a Red Challenge and I had the perfect painting.  Once again, Jack is in the starring role…… hope it doesn’t go to his head.  Murry would not be pleased.

"Undercover Spy"

This is 8 x 12″ on 140lb paper in fluid acrylic.  I used raw sienna for Jack’s base color with burnt sienna for his stripes and a little transparent burnt sienna for the yellowie fur on his leg.  For the blanket I used pyrolle red as the base color and pyrolle orange for the highlights.   For the shadows I used dioxazine purple and the for the deeper shadows I used a combination of paynes grey mixed with violet oxide.  I also used  dioxazine purple with sap green in the darkest parts of the shadows.  It’s always an experiment for me.

Reference photo

Live your dream.