Bob Hague Demo

You won't hear "loose" too many times when associated with my painting style, but this portrait was really lots of fun...although a bit scarey in execution. Bob Hague is a marvelous portrait artist from the Orlando, Fla. area and did this demo for us during our little Florida adventure. He starts out with strong color and uses a bead of paint/water and just marches right down the elevated page. Wish I could find the photo showing the "mask of Zorro" when he laid the paint on the eye area...nearly had a stroke...but it turned out very luminious in his demo. My painting got a bit muddy in places, but I'm going to try the "bead" technique on some other subjects and see what happens. If you don't go back into the paint after a certain time, it stays really clean. All in all, this was a really fun paint, and all the others turned out good paintings with him at the helm. I was painting two at a time so I would not get into my usual tight mode and this is the one I thought was better...it's rather scarey to use this much strong color on a portrait for me, but after I started to breathe again after laying in the color I got into the swing of things.

Crystal w/Strawberry Demo in Florida

Have been having trouble with Blogger all day, but thought I'd try to post again. Isn't it crazy when you can't even post to your own blog? This is the "class" photo of the artist friends who met in Florida for a fabulous week of painting and friendship. Sure was hard to come back to the real world of 100+ temps here in Texas. Irene even gave us some strong back winds to whip up the surf and the waves were tremendous. We had one with us from SC and she was really watching the Weather Channel closely.

Only one of the artists finished the painting in this post, but wanted to get the whole bunch together for a photo for me. Just loved the teaching part, and every one of them produced marvelous paintings...I'm so proud. Their colors are wonderful...especially painting reds...and, there was no mud (hum...dirty word) at all... Bob Hague, a wonderful portrait artist from the Orlando area did a portrait demo and it was fabulous. His technique scared me to death, but I'm game to try it again for sure...he is a marvelous teacher. I'll post that tomorrow or so when I resize my pics...took so many good ones that it's hard to look through them all and not want to post our adventures. These friends were from a forum that I love...PaintingFriends...check it out when you have spare time... We had demos the first 3 1/2 days so we really pushed to get it all in...and there were so many things we left for our next "paint/vacation" adventure. One of the artists is showing her cactus demo...I didn't get them all together for a group shot of that painting, but hers will show you the first demo.

Florida Trip Demo

Sorry to have been AWOL for this past month. Truth be told, I've completely redone my ancient kitchen...new paint, beadboard siding in the utility room and kitchen, tile blacksplash, replaced electricial plates...the whole enchilata as far as a kitchen "redo". This Texas heat has also thrown me (and some of my local artist friends) into the grand "funk" of the world as this 47 straight days of 100 to 106 degree weather (with no rain in sight) has played with my head.

So, to escape this I'm leaving this Saturday to join a wonderful group of artists I've met on the internet (Painting Friends) for a week of painting, bonding and fun near Clearwater, Florida. Most of the artists have not fooled around with crystal, so I'm going to have them endure a crystal/strawberry demo on one of the days...it's my real passion so we'll see how it goes. There will be around 15 of us I think, and we'll be strolling the sugar sand beaches morning and evening and painting during the day. Doesn't that sound like a wonderful carefree week for artists? We have artists on the forum for Europe and we'll be skyping during the day and wishing they could have joined us. We do have one gal coming from Madrid, Spain...the rest are from all over the US. I'll try to get some photos of the fun posted...I think there will be several laptops there...not from yours truly though...so...will be back in a week if I don't get anything posted.