Sunshine Girl

This is another portrait of my granddaughter Isabella and my object with this one was to see how far I could push reds. My refererence photo is of her sitting in one of my yellow rocking chairs on the back patio...and she is literally "sitting in the sun". If I'm honest, I must admit that I used too much aliz crimson on her right cheek and couldn't scrub it out so I had to go deeper and deeper with the reds. But, she was in bright direct light...that's my excuse. This will probably be my last attempt at portraits for a while though as I seem to be getting a heavier and heavier hand...so...back to crystal and glass for a while. Although I am not happy with this one, I do believe that everything we paint is a learning lesson and when we start something...we should finish it.

DonkeyWIP

Why in the world I chose to paint a donkey as my first painting of the new year is really beyond me! Yesterday when we met for art retreat, I didn't have anything at all in mind and found a black/white photo of this little guy in our "stack of stuff". The only area I think I'm finished with is the eye and fur in that general area...need to knock down that masked fur to the left of his eye. I started with the blue on the right ear and intended to paint a rather funky portrait using blues, reds, golds, purples (ala Kay Smith color selections), but my realism got in the way. When my leaf raking chores are finished this afternoon (we have glorious sunshine here again in Texas), I'll try to get back here and finish. This was a 2 hour challenge thingie (where you stop and evaluate after 2 hours of straight painting...photograph it...post it...then get back to it and finish, promising to take another finished photo and posting that). This is one of the fun things we do our our PaintersFriendsForum and it's always a fun challenge. This is a half sheet in size...hence my being able to paint it so quickly (when I paint on the large size, I don't get so bogged down with details...unless, of course...it's crystal.