Eisenhower House

Ike used this house as a summer White House. His love for golf and the proximity to the Newport Country Club made it a perfect choice. Late afternoon sun washes the building.  Fort Adams overlooks Narragansett Bay and is home this weekend to the Newport Folk Festival.

Fort Adams

Who would guess that this quiet image preceeds The Newport Folk Festival? Lovely time painting before the traffic and crowds arrive.At Fort Adams, a beautiful state park.

Low Tide Maine

What's better than being out painting just after sunrise, when the world around you is so quiet? Low tide offers a myriad of color between rock,sand, water, and algae. Squinting to find the lightest light,the darkest dark.

Bar Harbor Pine

Made time to paint on our camping trip to Maine. This beautiful tree stood alone, its trunk twisted by the wind, each day beckoning me closer. What a gift to be in such a remarkable location, and then get to lose myself painting a piece of it.

Echinacea Purpurea

A hot,steamy afternoon in the garden following the guidelines for this weeks challenge from The Daily Paintworks. Stand between 1-6 feet away, limit the palette, and keep the time to 1 hour. I love these flowers which multiply each year; also called Coneflower.

Anna Week 7

Only one class left...model was sitting high upon a dias...Catherine asked, "Where is this pose from?" I have loved this painting by Henri Matisse which is at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, so I recognized the setup. It was also the painting of the week on Powers of Observation, which I'm having trouble linking to. Sorry!

Eakins Copy

Simplified the hair by just showing a light and a dark side, added small areas of higher value, highlights to arm of chair, just tweaking this after critique last Thursday night. I think I'm finished with this.

Week 6

Alot of thought to crop this pose, in the end went with the full monty, as I had done last week. Many lush fabrics of every hue. Catherine Kehoe , true to her mission to teach us to see the colors that are really there, said, " Now paint THAT red, not an approximation of it!" When others might start to clean up she urges us to keep going until the final minute the model is on the stand. Bleary eyed, we leave smiling.

Leslie

My dear and longtime friend agreed to sit for a 2 hour portrait. She is so beautifull,with translucent skin and lovely bone structure that it was almost harder than painting someone plain that you don't know! I wanted to do justice to her, to the cause! Alas, I fell short of my own expectations. However, there IS a Leslie ness to it, and that's good. Putting the paint into shapes of the right color,right value, and in the right place is the top priority. Happiness.

Complete?

I will be taking this up to class tonight to see if I have "gotten" the assignment : ie. breaking the piece apart into shapes, then painting the shapes. To some this may appear unfinished....unworthy, but it was a valuable exercise and I hope to be able to paint more in this manner going forward.

2nd Pass

Decided that it is easier in a way to just apply the paint with the knife (which I never do), after mixing with the knife (which I had rarely done before this class with  Catherine Kehoe). I am trying to learn to mix the exact color I see with,of course!, the right value. We are supposed to simplify the shapes as if it were a cut out collage, or a paint by numbers. This is so hard to do!

Week 5

Went a little larger this time,with a 12x12 panel. The pose went well with a square, centering the figure in that classic triangular composition. The model was a lovely young dancer, and yes, her neck really was that long! All the fabrics gave me plenty of opportunity to get the color and value right. I'm lovin' it  :)

Masterpiece 1st Pass

I will be working on copying and simplifying this painting by Thomas Eakins over the next few days. I brought it to class last night for an initial critique. First thing Catherine said was, "Why this intense ground color? You have to fight it all the time. Why not start with a NEUTRAL ground?" Other than that, she liked my choice of painting to copy. Going to the studio this morning. Check out  Powers of Observation, and see student paintings from the class.