This is my copy of Gabriele Munter’s painting, Woman in Black. Something that drew me to this piece was how there seemed to be a softness in the eyes, even though they’re kind of just blobs of black paint. I wanted to learn how Munter could capture something as refined as a soft look in the eyes in spite of her generally imprecise style.
Oil on hardboard, 18×24 inches.
This piece was inspired by a small potted plant I keep in my art room. I love the pronounced lean to the left. Many of the livelier elements here weren’t part of my original plan, but developed as I painted. I love it when paintings grow that way.
Oil on panel, 5×7 inches.
My latest piece was inspired by my own desk at home, which didn’t take long to evolve from a work surface to a storage surface. There’s never enough room.
I love the colorful funkiness of this piece.
Oil on panel, 5×7 inches.
It was a relief to get back to painting after a brief break for garden work and puppy raising. This piece was inspired by a floral arrangement I put together last fall. (I love the flower section at the craft store.) The colors of the flowers here closely resemble the colors in my original arrangement, while the other colors in the piece (the vase, the tabletop) are inventions for the composition.
For this color study I used only ivory black, raw umber, and white. I love how the colors and tones work together. I also think I’m getting better at creating intentional design within these assignments. So far I’ve liked almost every color study better than the one I did before, which is a trajectory I’m happy with. (The one exception was the primary triad color study, which I don’t like. But it still helped me develop my design ideas for the next one.)
Acrylic on paper, 7×10 inches.
I love this illustration from the book The Hundred Dresses (page 14). The original artist, Louis Slobodkin, actually studied as a sculptor before finding his way into illustration.
I had to warm up with a colored pencil sketch and then a still-not-very-precise study before I was ready to try copying the whole illustration. My final version is large-scale compared to the printed reference, measuring 20×22.5 inches.
Ink, watercolor, and oil pastel on paper.
Meet Cicero, my cat. The day I started this I was full of disappointment about a different piece, so I decided to start pouring all that energy into something new. It started with a sketch in pastel pencils and grew into a cozy-feeling oil painting. This is my second no-gesso painting.
Oil on hardboard, 11×14 inches.
This is my work so far on an assignment to hand draw a copy of a DaVinci drawing. It is painstaking work. And for the next step I’m supposed to make second copy, this time without looking at the reference while I draw! I can look at the reference before I draw, and I can stop drawing to check the reference again and see how my work compares, but I won’t be able to put pencil to paper while the reference is visible. And no measuring. Just thinking about it makes me tired.
I’ve also been getting a little more practice with figure drawing. Same parameters as last time. First, just capture gestures, then add structure and shadow, and, lastly, just draw the shadow shapes.
This is my interpretation of a portrait done by Gabriele Munter, one of my favorite painters.
To imitate her style of painting on un-gessoed cardboard, I painted this on the un-gessoed back-side of hardboard. The texture is a little intense so next time I’ll try sanding the surface before painting. But other than that, I liked how the un-gessoed surface enabled a different style of painting.
I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure what the object in the lower right corner was, but a hat seemed like an okay guess.
The woman’s face in my painting is flatter than the original, especially the eyes. I’m still deciding whether I want to go back in and add more depth there.
Oil on hardboard, 8×10 inches.
mind and heart 