carved encasutic

My daughter, Cynthia and I will be moving to a much bigger house, a bit outside of town, in a couple of weeks. My studio will be more than twice the size I have now with cross ventilation and lots of light.

I walk into my existing studio, and wonder where to begin the packing. So much to organize and walls to scrape and paint. Not only my students have splashed encaustic on the walls and floors, I have bumped  a couple of cans of hot wax off the palette also. Then there are the stacks for my paintings that will have be the first thing in the new house. Moving paintings will be the most time consuming job.

Naturally, I won't have time to make new work before the move, so here are a couple of images of a carved encaustic portrait I did last year. It is all encaustic, no plaster. It is now in the Encaustic  Art Institute in New Mexico.

an oil portrait sketch

 

 This is another practice painting. Each one is getting a bit looser. I will have to make many more.
The link below is a flipbook to show the process.

 http://www.flipsnack.com/7CAFB586AED/fzjfbi85

Do I add encaustic, or not?

I am getting closer to what I want: loose, strong brush strokes, little blending and a fresh look. I can make traditional portraits, but I want something that is "now"

I stopped with this painting before I got too picky. I am going to leave it alone for a couple of days to see if I want to add encaustic to it or leave it just as it is; an oil paint sketch.

What do you think?

More process images

I am making oil portrait sketches trying to get very loose. I have a tendency to get too concentrated on the details and lose spontaneity. Since I am between series and have a couple of hours a week with a beautiful model, I will continue to work on this exercise until I can get the results I want.

I find photographing the process tells me a lot. When I look at the photos, I can see what needs fixing and usually, I have taken the work too far. Too much smoothing and working to get a likeness.

This model has such gorgeous eyes that in this exercise, I decided to block them out. I love painting eyes - who doesn't? but I find they can become the focus of the painting.

I am going to stop on this one today and look at it again tomorrow. I don't like it. I will start another one.

Progress of a painting

http://vimeo.com/95666186

Here is a short video of the progress of an oil painting.

painting in oils

I picked up my computer yesterday and it is like having a good friend come back into my life.

It has been years since I painted just with oils. I have been using encaustic, sometimes combined with oil for about 15 years.


I was inspired by a beautiful new model we are using for life drawing, and will be posting progress of some oil sketches. Photographing the progress is very helpful. I tell my students that after an hour, the eye doesn't see the same, so looking at the photos gives me a new perspective.

I am thinking that I like the beginning painting better than the last. I do start to get picky with figurative work. What do you think?

I'll start with just a few and tomorrow post the whole series of another one.

And The Winner Is......

I still am without a computer. It is being repaired and I really miss it. I have been without it for two weeks. My mini iPad is great, but it can't do what my laptop did, so this posting is minimal, to say the least.

I am announcing that Brenda L is the winner of Pay What You Want and this painting will soon be shipped to her. Thank you to the others who responded . Your replies were heartfelt .

I will post a part of Brenda's comments on my FaceBook page, since I can't figure out how to get an attachment on this blog.

Pay what you want

There is one week left to get me your bid on the painting, and why you want it.
I am sorry that I can't post any images because my computer died last week and I am doing the best I can with my iPad.