Katie's World

Haven't been posting nearly as much as I should, but this one deserves it. My dear little Katie has been a student of mine for two and a half years and today was her last class with me. As a good-bye present I painted her as she painted, dropping in behind her all her favorite things to paint from over the years: daffodils, her nieces and nephews, trees. She's gotten so good. You'll see the picture she was working on today on the table in front of her. This is from my phone, so it's not brilliant, but it will have to do.

Left-handed drawing, right-handed painting.

Darte

I apologize for the less than stellar quality of this photo-- I used my phone. This is Darte, the creature who lives under my coffee shop. The only part of him visible to the common observe is his back fur. This looks extraordinarily like grass, and would be mistaken as such on Google Earth. I painted him one slow shift when the wind was being particularly frisky and his fur was rippling gloriously. Thankfully he doesn't mind having it cut. You can find out more about him from the text on the painting. ☺

The Latest

Last week I was at some friends' watching their darling children. They have a stunning view of Mt. Rainier, as you will see from the photograph, and I couldn't help painting it as the sun set. All the light was shifting, so I had to catch it as I could, but I like the result. Then, the oldest and I had a deal: I would paint him and then he would paint me. My picture is below, and I wish I had his. Isn't that monster truck great?! It's definitely the first one I've done. ☺

My favorite part of our deal was that when he was posing me so he could sketch he wondered aloud how I should sit. "I know!" he answered his own question, "You can draw!" So he sketched me with a marker in my hand. ☺ Made my (very early) morning.

Written-up!

Here's something fun! Chelsea did a write-up on the painting I did for them (Lucy, below) on her excellent blog, which can be found here.

Lucy

Yea!!! I can finally post the project that has occupied a great deal of my artistic time lately. Chelsea, a school mate from Ecola, commissioned me to paint two portraits of her daughters. This is the first of Lucy. They live on a ranch in Eastern Oregon, and I truly enjoyed capturing that is this image. I tried to tell the story of Lucy more than render her precisely and I was pretty happy with the result. There is something delightful about children and puddles. The best part, of course, was that Chelsea likes it. ☺

Magwyn

I've been wanting to post this for months, but first it was a Christmas present for the family, and then I decided it needed more work. So I've finally got it done to my satisfaction (or as close I get to it), and have put it back on the wall. I used the trace and transfer method of this, and did most of it in a fit of inspiration. Took about four hours to get the bulk of it done, then probably that much again to tweak it. The victory? Maggie didn't like the picture of herself, but loves the painting. ☺ Happy sister.
Learned how to do eyes on this one.

Steven's Snowball Fight

This was actually homework I assigned for my class on Tuesday and decided to do myself. I wanted high contrast with the dark right next to the light. This took me a couple hours from sketch to finish and I really like it. It doesn't really look too much like the original subject, but I got his hair (which I've been trying to capture for a long time now). The tongue stuck out and clamped between his teeth is confusing, but if you know the story (he's in the middle of a gleeful snowball fight) it makes more sense. Still, context needs to not be the savior of a piece. So it needs work. But I like how different it is from my normal stuff, and how much more it is like the portraits of my favorite artist, John Singer Sargent.
I also learned that I need to be careful of copying the mistakes of the photograph: his real nose looks nothing like that, and the picture sent me the wrong way.