Snow Village

Since I don't put my Christmas tree up until about mid-December, I thought I'd start thinking Christmas and do an ornament painting. When I was a child...and really until I left home...we always went out and cut down our Christmas tree. Mother was insistant that it go up around the 14th of December and no earlier because of the fire hazard and pine trees....so...that's a hangover habit of mine for Christmas. Too bad that the fake trees are so nice now as that's what we have, but I still don't put it up and decorate until the second week of December. But, ornaments are bright and happy and say "Christmas" so at least I'm starting to think about it. This is 5x7 and I might even use it for our family Christmas card...I just love reds.

Henry

This week at our art retreat, I worked on Henry's portrait. He will be 8 around Christmas, but I have made him look a bit older I fear. He has tossled hair, a huge smile, and hazel eyes so this is a pretty good likeness I think at this point. Just like the other portraits though, when I live with him a few days...I may have to adjust some things. One thing I know right now, I fiddled too much and lost some of the freshness that I had originally captured. But, all this experience is such fun and it's really challenging.

Mountain Man

Here is the third portrait we did in the workshop last week. The "Mountain Man" is probably as loose as I've ever painted...certainly as loose as I've ever thought about when ever starting a painting. This goes against my usual technique in that this is painted light to dark with different glazes going on rather than charging in with dark to light. I must say that I like the skin tones and freshness of this one. The trick with me seems to be NOT to go back in and "fiddle". Oh, the hangover from my pen/ink years is sure hard to overcome. This also a quarter sheet on Arches #140. This is also painted on about a 5" vertical slant which is a bit higher than my usual 2" block.

Addison

This is the portrait of my precious little granddaughter, Addison, that I painted in my workshop this past week with a wonderful artist, Bonnie Broitzman, from Minnesota. Not only is she a marvelous painter of light...she's a wonderful teacher. I'm not a portrait painter by any stretch of the imagination, but I was very pleased with this one. I'll live with it a few days before fiddling any more as I do want to keep the clean skin tones...just a few adjustments here and there before I show it to my son (who's coming home next weekend...).

I've gone back in and made major adjustments to Addison's left cheek as it was not right and I had to live with it a little while before figuring out what to do. I asked my friend Janie Freeman to take a look and we agreed that the cheek was what was bothering me. Wanted to leave both photos up so you could see the difference. Addy has really chubby cheeks, but just not that chubby.