Category: Portraits

Open Studio Tour Coming.

5/3/2012

I am taking part in an open studio tour on the 19 and 20th of May. That is giving me the motivation to refresh my studio space, so I have decided that new paint is in order. Presently my studio/gallery is painted a great green that does compliment most artwork very well, but is a bit dark when working on portraits inside. I think I will go with a more traditional gallery white so I can control my lighting more effectively. You are invited to come out, see some new paintings, and inspect my renovation. I will get the tour info up on my exhibits page. See http://studiotour.wordpress.com/
I am soldiering on with my portraits, so I'll share a few recent ones with you. . .

Here is Carol. I am still painting in the same size but have flipped my canvas' into a vertical format.
This gives opportunity to try different compositions from what I have been working on in the horizontal. This one is pretty straight forward. I have placed Carol slightly off centre with pretty even light falling across most of her face.
I would describe this one as a high-key painting. The shadowed areas are pretty high value with plenty of reflected light bouncing into them.
I chose to introduce some low value areas on each side of her face in order to accentuate her left earring and balance the composition on her right side.

Torin is set up in artificial lighting because the outdoor lighting was too unreliable. I really do need a proper studio with plenty of north facing windows (whine, whine).
My subject was a very patient sitter, so I was able to get my head into the final painting early on. I wanted to introduce his hands as well as his casual posture. I think it all hangs together pretty well.

Steve was a good sport on this one. I really enjoyed working with him. His tats have great significance for him, so I wanted to make them a big part of this piece. I did have to respect the tattoo artist's copyright, so I kept things vague but recognizable to Steve.
The orange flesh hues are complimented by blue and violet/white in the background. This thing really "pops".

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Delivery Day! A new website and a new blog.

4/15/2012

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The big news is today's launch of a new web presence. My wonderful wife Joanna has been laboring over a new website for the past couple of weeks, and it is now time for the birth of this baby. Also, I have been planning to move away from my existing blog host, so it seems wise to launch a new blog today as well. So we have twins!

It would be great to get some feedback from you if you have the time to explore the different areas on the site and see if it is intuitive or if you experience any problems. Any comments will be appreciated. If you are an artist looking to have a web presence, we highly recommend Leah Markham's how-to video series.

I'm posting a few of my recent portraits as well.

Here is Tami. Looks a bit grainy as I only load small files to the blog. Everyone's skin has very subtle hints of green, especially around the nose and mouth, as there is a concentration of blood vessels in those areas. The greenish-ochre background really amps up the green skin hues, especially when contrasted with this mass of violet. I had to be careful to pull back on those colors for this one.

Alison actually started off as a three-quarter portrait. I wanted to work on her hands and try to compose something interesting . The original painting works pretty well, but I was limited to painting her face with horrible little brushes; I have unresolved issues with small brushes. I will have to overcome those weaknesses someday but I decided not to at Alison's expense. So I worked up this one, and I'm happy, and it is all about me so........

Kim gave me some great design possibilities with a turquoise wrap and plenty of hair. Nothing is better than finishing off a portrait of someone with some righteous hair. You stand back and use the whole brush. Great fun.

Jack has a photographer for a mother, so he has had plenty of experience posing for her I imagine. He copped this pose very naturally. It is tempting to stay with a composition like this and work it up into something that really communicates an idea, but I gotta stay focused on my present project. All these pictures will inform my more ambitious paintings in the days ahead.

This is Tula Belle. Wow, she was very easy to paint. Her pose is just so expressive. I was just along for the ride on this one.

I have a show on at Little Straw Vineyards in West Kelowna for the month of April. You can preview the pieces that are available there on my exhibition section of my NEW website.

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Open Studio Tour Coming.

Delivery Day! A new website and a new blog.

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