More progress pics of Annie~Portrait of a Wild Mustang

Thought I'd get this commission finished by this weekend, but chores, B's Scottsdale Dr. visit and an all day headache on Thursday kept me out of the studio most of the week.
I did make headway though these last few days and should (in a perfect world) finish tomorrow. Finally got her 'eye' done just the way I wanted so the rest should be fairly easy. Her mane is still just blocked in and needs finishing and a few value adjustments are needed on the shadow of her muzzle, but that's pretty much all that's left to finish.

So, here's where I left you last post.

I started adding warm colors and definition to her mane while still leaving bits of blue peeking out on the hair's edges.








And I wasn't digging the far right sky area, so I rewashed it with the Phthalo Blue until I decide what I want to do there.

Her coat and eye are still roughly blocked in here.

Here, I continue to fine tune her eye and mane.
I've also softened her coat and almost have the shadowing correct.
The shadow area of her muzzle is still blue. That will be softened to a light, almost white lavender at some point.

I've decided, before working on any other part of the painting, to get her eye completely finished.
It's the focal point and the window to her soul. It needs to be just right!

Yay! I finally have her eye just the way I want it!
It has so many pretty colors in it! 
And, she now follows me around the room with her gaze.
I love it when a portrait's eyes come to life!




Next, I'll soften some of the shadows on her coat and start working on her still blue muzzle.

This pic shows the client's reference photo on my laptop.
You can also see the small blue monitor on the easel's shelf for helping me keep connected to B while I paint.
No Luddite here, I love technology! 



Her coat is now shadowed and softened just the way I want it, I've almost got her muzzle done and I added a nice sky blue to the far right area of the painting. 
The value of the muzzle shadow is still a bit too dark so I will lighten it next.
I love the hints of lavender and violet in her eye, mane and muzzle shadow.

I've taken all these pics with my iPhone so far so quality isn't top notch but it's sufficing.


When the portrait is complete, I'll use the better camera for final pics. 


So far, I'm digging the results of this commission, but I've decided I don't like painting with a deadline. If I accept another commission, I'll be sure to add a few extra weeks to the finish date so I can spend more time with B.
But, this piece has definitely got me 'back in the painting saddle' again. And for that, I'm grateful it came my way.

Annie~Portrait of a Wild Mustang

Started a new commission piece. It's been a long time since I've accepted any commission work. As many of you know, B's illness has kept me out of the studio for quite a long while.

The gracious client of this commission is okay with me perhaps missing the delivery deadline if any issue with B's health pops up and keeps me out of my studio for a while.
That said, I've got a few days of painting in and I'm actually making pretty good headway so far. Hopefully (in a perfect world) I will be able to deliver this portrait of my client's wild mustang, Annie, right on time.

Annie's owner wanted me to work from a photo she had with this unusual cropping of her horse's face.
This cropping feels like pop art, so I'm taking a bit of artistic liberty, and will include very small hints of a contrasting color peeking out along edges here and there throughout the painting. This will add to the painting's modern, bold feeling, while still allowing me to be true to Annie's beautiful reds and golden white colors. It will be yummy!

Here, I began the painting by adding a black border on the
24" x 36"
canvas to accommodate the reference photo's unusual long, narrow size.
Then, I blocked in most of her dark lines with black and purple.

Next I washed the whole canvas with transparent Phthalo Blue and a bit of Thio Violet.
Almost all of the blue and violet will disappear as I add the opaque top coat colors. I will only let small bits of these under painted colors peek through here and there to add interest to the finished piece. I can control how much or how little I let show as I proceed and will let the painting tell me what is right. These hints of modern color will work great with the bold cropping.

Below I've started to add the opaque rusts and red tones of Annie's coat. I also worked a bit on her eye, although it still needs some tweaking to make it come alive. It is the main focal point, so I want it to be spot on when finished. It is, after all, the window to this beautiful horse's soul.

I still haven't worked on Annie's mane, which will be a warm golden color with white highlights. I'll start that in my next session. Remember, most of the blue you see will disappear, with only smidgeons peeking through around the edges here and there.

Here's a close-up detail of the eye. You can see the rough brush strokes that will ultimately be softened as I finish bringing her to life.








My 60's painting (below) is on hold until the commissioned piece is done.
I did block in a tambourine, VW microbus and another flowered square before I accepted the horse portrait, but those squares look like the pages of a coloring book, with just black outlined drawings. I still love playing with coloring books and it will be fun coloring in these new designs.

" Do not take for granted, each opportunity to stop and smell a rose."
~ Jenna Millward Corkill ©


©
click image to enlarge

"Forever Autumn"1997
Detail of 22" round Art Glass Panel
178 glass pieces...with small faceted Topaz jewels in flower's circular center.

I have fallen in love with my studio again.

Two years ago, I lost my sense of smell. Suddenly. Completely.
The cause could have been a side effect of a nasty med I had taken for a stomach issue at the time, or my chronic sinusitis. No telling, but after that first scentless year, I sadly resolved myself to the fact that it was probably gone for good.

Gone for good!? My sense of smell! The, makes food taste better and, lets you know when the dog needs a bath, sense? Forever lost, the smells that trigger a sense of well being, happiness, warm memories? Fresh coffee brewing, cookies baking, a favorite soap, a freshly bathed baby, the smell of glazing dap and paint? Yep, gone, along with all of life's other little aroma therapies I now desperately wished I hadn't taken for granted. Yep, it was gone, and after two years of not being able to smell anything, I figured, definitely gone for good.

Then, unexpectedly, about two months ago, I caught a brief whiff of my morning coffee brewing! It was fleeting, but I definitely smelled it! Delicious! Through out that week, other scents would surprise me briefly and I began to cautiously hope that maybe, just maybe, the mysterious loss of smell might just as mysteriously, be coming back.

Happily, now almost everyday, I notice a new smell that I'd thought was lost forever.

Yesterday, when I walked into my studio, one of those long lost favorite smells was waiting for me. Glazing dap! Paint! Turpentine! That unique, blended, workshop smell that an Art Glass/Painting studio developes over time. Delicious! Dizzying! Heaven!

And a perfect reason to feature one of my Art Glass panels and my studio today.

My studio is a good size, 14' x 18', with half of it occupied by my art glass... 3 work benches, several glass storage bins filled with small to good size sheets of glass, tools, light tables and such. I haven't worked on any new art glass in the last 6 years, but I can't seem to bring myself to say I'm done with that form of expression. If and when I do, I'll have a heck of a painting studio, with tons of room, but for now I'm OK with being a little cramped in here.

I simply love the smell of my cozy studio and every single time I walk back in there, I feel peaceful... and thankful, for the gift of smell, which I will never take for granted again.


click image to enlarge

This photo shows the amazing glow that my art glass panel "Forever Autumn", produces when the afternoon sun begins to set behind it... the entire studio is filled with brilliant red, orange and gold streaks....it is truly breathtaking and one of my favorite times of day to be in my studio. If you look closely at my easel you can see I was working on 'NIGHT NIGHT LITTLE SIS' at the time I took this picture.

tucson tornado watch
last night tucson was under a tornado watch... highly unusual for us... actually i can't remember ever being under a tornado watch before... and i've lived here since 1971.

i am excited about this new style of painting i'm exploring.... the indian yellow/thio violet wash over a painted sketch.... i have used it on the last two paintings i've done and really liked the resulting little patches of that underpainted warm glow left peeking out here and there.

while painting these last few weeks, i kept glancing around at the half dozen or so paintings in various stages of completion surrounding me in the studio... bigguns and little uns, all abandoned because i wasn't excited about what was happening on the canvas.... it's not unusual for me to put aside a canvas that's not working...could this new style work to bring them back to life?

several of those unfinished canvases kept catching my attention ... they looked like perfect candidates for this new warm wash underpainting i am playing with, even though they were a bit beyond a painted sketch... the biggest drawback was that they already had color on them... and the warm IY/TV wash would look dull over the existing blues on these canvases.... any existing warm and white areas would be just fine with this glaze over them.

this morning i went into my studio and picked up a painting i had started several years ago... a landscape with a tornado about to skip across a rural road....it caught my eye...hmmm....wonder why? ......decided it was the one to be reworked with the warm glazed underpainting.



this old tornado painting needed to be readied for the IY/TV glaze underpainting.....kind of creating an underpainting for an underpainting... not something i usually do, but if this works, maybe those other lonely ole paintings might finally have some attention paid to them too.

unfortunately i forgot to take a photo of this painting as it has looked for over a year, tucked away in a corner of my studio. ...it was simply a very rough washed sketch...it had some dark details with washes of ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson in the sky...the road and fields were washed in warm siennas.

as shown above, i decided to block in white over any areas of blue, to remove as much blue hue as possible ...my reasoning was orange over blue = mud... and i don't want a muddy sky... i also dry brushed white over most of the canvas to soften all the other colors.... i like to see the little canvas nubs created when a dry brush of paint is dragged over it. ....i'm thinking, these little white dots will also become warm when the IY/TV wash is added... of course, this may not work in the real world, but nothing ventured, nothing gained... i mean, after all, this painting has been waiting quite a while to come back to life.

a small hint of blue did still remained after several quick layers of white... but not much, so after letting those layers dry thoroughly, i applied the wash....when i need a layer to dry quickly, i will often times use a blow dryer to speed up the process....can you believe i sometimes need acrylic paint to dry even faster than it does naturally.



here it is with the wash... kinda neat... next session i'll start blocking in the opaque colors, and bring out details, making sure i leave this wash here and there....how much i leave showing will depend on what the painting tells me to leave...i envision the finished work an abstract landscape.... bringing it to life should be FUN!

A New 'TALL TREE' Painting!

The last few days have been quite productive... and fun...... in the midst of launching my new little website several weeks ago, i kept mentioning to brian how slloooowww my computer was, that i thought it needed a bigger brain... i was spending quite a bit of time working on the new website, but was in 'wait mode' a lot, three steps ahead in my mind, trying to be patient while my computer took it's time thinking about ????... i was getting frustrated which is unusual... i'm usually a really patient person.

So imagine my delight when a few days ago the birthday fairies delivered a new computer!!!.....for me!!! ...i thought all i had wanted was a bigger memory card until this new thing showed up with it's fancy big monitor and sleek design... i've gotta say it was love at first sight!

The computer i had been using was a hand me down from brian... and trust me, his hand me downs are just fine, but it's computer brain was way too small for my newfound geek adventures..... it took brian a few days to get all my data transfered and load the programs i use, so now i'm playing catch up for the few days of lost computer time... i'm having so much fun with this new speedy computer.... thank you bunches brian!

I did a lot of painting while i was computerless... and had a blast!...worked on multiple canvases, including emma's gerbera daises, some WIP's and a new 'tall tree' painting.... it has really neat texture and the colors remind me of warm cherry wood tones... i also used a few metallic copper highlights that look great.... the tree branch texture is especially nice.

"FOREVER AUTUMN" 1997
22" artglass panel

As promised, here's a detail of my flower artglass panel... lots of glass pieces!... i love the colors in this window... the circular highlights in the flower's center are small faceted topaz jewels.

This photo shows the amazing glow this window produces when the afternoon sun begins to set behind it... the entire studio is filled with brilliant red, orange and gold streaks....it is truly breathtaking and one of my favorite times of day to be in my studio.... if you look closely at my easel you can see i was working on 'NIGHT NIGHT LITTLE SIS' at the time i took this picture.

I love my studio!

This is the southeast corner of my studio... my main easel is just out of this picture, on the right, facing my Eames chair...the sunflower lamp on the table is one of my original designs, from my lamp making days... the studio is a good size, 14' x 18', but half of it is still occupied by my artglass... 3 work benches, glass storage bins from small to good size sheets, tools, light tables and such... i haven't worked on any new artglass in the last 4 years, but i can't seem to bring myself to say i'm done with that form of expression... if and when i do, i'll have a heck of a painting studio, with tons of room, but for now i am a little cramped in here... i love the smell of this room... it still smells like an artglass studio and every single time i walk in, i feel peaceful... it also has a great stereo to play my current favorites while i paint... I LOVE THIS SPACE!

There was a time, over a decade ago, when i was really into sunflowers, so consequently i received a lot of sunflower related stuff for my birthdays, Christmas and such... the sunflower things seen in this studio shot are a few of my favorites i've kept from that period...i am not a person who wants to be defined by the collections i keep, so if i start to have too many of any one thing, i will downsize to a favorite few....... i've kept the sentimental sunflower things that my kids and friends have given me, including a handmade blanket that Eva made for me and the two foot long blown glass sunflower gift my friend Rob Cuttieta brought me from the chicago museum of art... because of it's fragile nature and size he had to hand carry it all the way back to tucson on his flight home from chicago (thanks rob, i love it).

In my next post i will feature the west side of my studio, or more specifically, the west window in my studio.... i have artglass panels in all my studio windows, but the one in the west window is unique... every afternoon as the sun sets, it fills the studio with an amazing magical glow... it's really something special.