Always practicing

Mixing the colors of the beard and hair is somehow always a challenge for me. I did the background with a palette knife.

Oil on 11x14 board.

never paint a person head-on

I know that, and even better now! But I was mainly trying out a new palette mix. Not a success, but it's al-ll practice.

Oil on canvas board.

yikes, a blue ear

A looser, more colorful approach than my recent attempts. Oil on Centurion canvas (soft and flexible, comes in a pad, very nice to work on)

falling behind on scanning

Waiting for oils to dry enough to put on the scanner is causing me to forget and delay getting things posted. And my cellphone pictures have been blurry and not as good as a scan. Oil on 11x14 canvas board.

oil painting twice a week

I keep cranking them out, just learning how to mix and push paint around. A portion of an 11x14 on canvas board

alkyd oils

Playing with these just to try them out. I'd heard they dry faster than regular oils. I liked them fine, didn't feel any particular difference in the way they flow, mix or dry. I didn't use any alkyd medium, which would have made them dry faster yet. On canvas board

hands in oil

In the first modeling session, the fingers came out like pink squid tentacles. So I painted over, putting in bones and evening out the tones. It was hard for the model to have his fingers exactly the same between sittings. A challenge for all of us. Daniel Smith oils on 300# watercolor paper.

Portrait of a friend

Painted over a span of about 7 hours, again with guidance from an expert.


Done from a photo, but I changed the dress and necklace color, and background.

11x14, oil.

M, partial scan

One third of the painting, safe for work.

The outstretched shoulder and arm look odd, but that was the pose.

DS oils on 140# w/c paper, acrylic ground.

mirrored bear

Trying a different sort of bear piece. DS oils on canvas board.

the first attempt

I did the painting of the man in the previously posted sketch, and turned him into a white-haired Trotsky version of himself.

Lots of problems here, not the least of which is the jaundiced eyeballs from the gold background showing through.

But for a 2 hour session (that's 20 minute sittings with 5 minutes in between), I felt pretty good about getting a whole head down!

Daniel Smith oils on 140# w/c paper, with gold acrylic ground.

an actual fruit still life

A painting I actually took more than 6 hours to do, in 3 sessions, helped by an expert painter.

The distant background will get more work, but for now, I'm liking the rest.

A viewer can create a story of what is happening here--fruit clumped together, tablecloth pushed back, bowl tipped over.

I like to think this still life is a narrative of an event. Feel free to create one.

12x16 canvas board.

first step on a still life

I set up a still life of a clay and plastic mask with base and fabric. Beginning the layout with a viridian drawing. Oil on canvas board

the earring was the hardest thing

A 3-hour oil painting on Arches oil paper.

In my workshop group we had a lot of discussion about what color the earring should be (it was bright gold in reality).

I thought it should be a shade of gold. Everyone (experienced oil painters) told me I should make it a cool (temperature) color. I bowed to more knowledgeable artists, and this is what came out--aiming for a silvery thing. Why cool? In such an obvious spot?

Doesn't work for me, but will rethink it when I understand more.

bear behind a bush

It's an abstract, of palette scrapings. But when I saw the scan, I saw a bear behind a large bush. It's human to look at any collection of marks and not see a pattern that creates an object. Decoding the world around us, even if we're wrong about the message we get. Oils on canvas.

reading cherub

This model is a cheap clay cherub underneath her rosy glow, but any reader makes a good image. And good painting practice.

Water soluble oils on canvas board.

sunsetlike, I guess

It's actually palette leavings scraped on to an 8x10 canvas board.

scraped palette abstract

After mixing a lot of paint to create various experimental shades, I used a palette knife to spread and scrape them into a linear abstract.

Pure color is such fun!

Oil on canvas board.

G's portrait

Not sure I'll go back to tweak this one, but it's dry enough for scanning.

I'm doing 11x14s, which don't completely fit on the scanner. But I get a better jpg that way compared to taking a quick photo.

Daniel Smith oils on canvas board.

J in the chair, halfway done

This is 2 hours into the painting. It's dry now, and I'll go back to work on it more, but decided to scan it while I could.

I did the ground in chromium green acrylic with a textured finish. Then drew him in ultramarine, before painting the rest during his session.

I'm beginning to get the hang of this alla prima life painting in oils, I think! Though if I go back to work on this, it's not alla prima anymore.

Daniel Smith oils on canvas board.