Now the fun begins

My daughter Cynthia and I  combined 2 homes, work spaces, and in the last 4 days there have been many trucks loads of stuff coming in. I still have somethings to do at the old apartment, but today, I am looking forward to finding things and at least get my bedroom arranged.

Gallery in the new house

We have been moving since Thursday; mostly paintings. Two wonderful friends, Connie and Ernesto,  spent most of Thursday lugging paintings out of the studio, down the stairs and into trucks. I don't want to count how many paintings were transported. I do know that I saw paintings from years ago that were tucked away in the stacks and I hadn't seen in a long time. Some still pleased me and some others will be painted over. Once settled, I want to have a sale  of some the older paintings.

This photo show the room that will be the designated gallery space. Friday the track lights were installed.

The movers come tomorrow to clear out both my apartment and my daughter Cynthia's as we are joining forces and will become roommates. The house is big enough that we each have our separate work spaces. My gallery already has the first floor coverings down. As soon as I get the stacks installed, I can get the paintings off the floor.

I hope I never have to move again.

packing

The packing up our homes and getting all the details settled is taking time. Moving is always a big job.

To take the tedium out the packing I hold the vision of my new studio in my mind - as well as all the open spaces for living and art our new home.

Here is a shot of what will be the studio.

lots of light and air. There is a full bath attached.

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.