Portrait of Paul- WIP

Continuing to build on the values of the skin tones and scumbled the background with tones of raw umber, alizarin crimson and flake white. Also worked on some details around the eyes. A couple of more sessions and hopefully it will pull together. This small study will be a good reference to this portrait much larger.

Stage 2- Portrait of Paul

This is the second day of painting the portrait of Paul. Building up the under painting in thin layers, I began to lay in the shadows and mid tones as well as few selected light areas. I also began to define facial features, eyes, nose and mouth. In this stage my palette primarily consisted of yellow ochre, flesh ochre, raw umber and flake white.

Stage 1-Portrait of Paul

Oil on Board

8 x 10

I have begun a portrait of my son while visiting here in San Francisco. This is the initial drawing and lay in on a pre-toned board. The lay in is of four values using flesh ochre, raw umber and flake white. This is a new challenge for me as my portrait work till now has been very limited. Over the next year my plan is to use my family as models, willingly or not.

As a follow up to my last post, I attended the open figure drawing session at the studio of Sadie Jernigan Valeri and had a wonderful experience. All the attendees were very talented and very sharing which made for terrific evening. I am looking forward to going back next week, it had been a long time since I had done figure drawing and I felt a bit out of my element, but it was such a great experience that I look forward to doing it again. It was such a pleasure to meet Sadie, she is so talented and sharing and we learned that night that she had won First Place in the Still Life category of the ARC Salon Competition, for her painting, "Bottle Collection." What a terrific and well deserved accomplishment.

We have been on the road visiting our family in San Francisco, so have not had time to do much work. We did go to the John Pence Gallery and had an opportunity to see the new show. The work of Carl Dobsky is simply magnificent. I also had the opportunity to see the works of many of the fine artists from the Grand Central Academy, which were very impressive, especially the actual paintings of Jacob Collins one of my personal favorites. Seeing these works up close is an awe inspiring experience.

Tonight I am attending the open figure session at the studio of Sadie Jernigan Valeri, a wonderful contemporary realist painter. I am looking forward to both meeting Sadie as well as getting back to doing some work. Hopefully I will have something to post tomorrow.

Pink Turnips

Oil on board

8 x 10

Field Tulips

Oil on linen panel

11 x 14