Ben in the ocean...

So I had the kids at the beach and took a ton of photos. I wanted to paint my son and I was inspired by these photos:

I liked the water in the second photo and the way my son was positioned in the first. So many neat colors in this water...

The lay in:

 Ben thought that I was painting him in hell...ha!

So I spent lots of time with the lights and darks. Once I started putting in color I was almost overwhelmed with what was here...violet, gray, blue, green...

Ok, I got carried away with green at first:

my daughter said that now Ben looked like he was in a field of grass! Ha!  Too much green...

 Joyce recommended that I start using more cerulean blue to relect the sky, which is what the water does...yes, perfect.

 More and more cerulean put in...plus violet, yellow, grey for the sand. Toned down the waves. Realized that you can't just throw on pure white. I recall asking Joyce "how can I make the white whiter?"....well, you can't. It's the colors that surround it that make it pop.

Almost finished painting. I want to work on Ben more...his shoulder blades are too "poppy".

July 4th painting

So, I was very pleased with my last painting. On to my fourth painting. My inspiration is a photo from July 4th of my kids ogling Uncle Sam on stilts...plus, it was summer and I was feeling patriotic...sort of.

the lay in:

I wish I had taken more time with getting the lights and darks just right as I did in my previous painting. You can not rush this step.

Here I put in the sky and started fooling around with the background. Those striped pants are giving me pause...

Figuring there's only one way to do them I add the stripes one at a time trying to make the folds apparent

work on Uncle Sam

More detail. The girl's dress is muddy looking and the shoes on Uncle Sam are awful

Uncle Sam's face is giving me a hard time. And those dang shoes (which really aren't real shoes, but silly stilt shoes)

I think the girl's dress looks much better, but I've over painted Uncle Sam's face and it is too blank now

"finished" painting. I like the girl and the boy, although I'm not crazy about his shorts. Still not liking those shoes, but I think I got the face on Uncle Sam better. I am going to put this one aside until later. Truly not a favorite and still needs a lot of work.

Sand Castle Smashers

So, at this point I am ready to move on to my third painting. I am working from a photo of my kids on the beach in the Caribbean:

Adorable, right? Great colors and all those sand castles!

So, as before, the lay-in:

but this is all wrong...I learn that I am not "copying" a picture when I paint. It's a reference. So, you can see my initial lay in was exactly (or my take on that) like the photo. Wrong.

Wiped it and redid the lay-in:

Okay. So much better (thank you Joyce). Now it's interesting. I spent a good deal of time with the lights and darks on this painting and it made a world of difference.

I like "carving" out the figures, so I started to work on the horizon a bit.

 Added color to the boy. Pretty happy with it. Just starting to fool around with sand color. It's quite pink.

Like I said...it's quite pink! not sand color as you see here. Color on the girl looking good (to me)

Castles...looking way too phallic here :) First go at them..

I'm taking some artistic license with the castles.



Here's the finished painting:

I added a lot more pinks and violets and grays into the castles and sand...maybe a bit too much violet.
I like the shadows and the sky. The water truly is that color, so I'm happy for the most part. This was a painting that I was proud of. It took a long time and made me smile...which is why I paint (for the smile, not the long time part).

A person...why not?

Painting Number Two. Eager to become a famous painter I decided to try my hand at a figure. I had this lovely photo of my daughter on the beach:

Great light and nice lines.

So first I roughed in the figure:

Measurement was really important here and getting her arm over her head at just the right angle proved challenging. Just starting to figure out the lights and darks.

Here I add more light and dark:

 and you can see how distorted this is. Her face is looking the wrong way, her midsection is huge and that arm is placed wrong...

carving her out a bit:

I think it gets a bit better here, but the arms are way too big and her upper body is huge. Measure, measure.

I've toned down her thighs a bit here...probably started working on the water out of frustration!

 Starting to work a lot with shadows and light...again, she's not "skin color", but a blend of so many colors (I'm just grasping this concept).

This is toward the end of the painting, I've added in a lot of light and her reflections on the water (which I like). Midsection still too big and I'm not crazy about the transition between shadow and light on her body.

Here's what I finished with:

It's really not one that I am gonna grab and show my friends! The sky is wacked. Her upper body is way too big and her face is still not facing as it should. The ocean is not doing much for me either. I like her legs and the reflection on the water...that's about it :)

It's been on year since I began my oil painting journey under the tutelage of Joyce Hall, master painter and owner of The Studio in Charleston.

One of the very first things Joyce taught me was how to work with placement and color and grasp a seemingly simple painting of onions (every new student paints the onions :) Rather than bore you with photos of that painting, now hanging lovingly in my mother's kitchen, I will move on to my first project, Mr. Pelican:

here the photo from which I worked:

 I loved the colors on this guy...who knew a pelican could be so beautiful?

After initial lay in done with burnt sienna my first attempt to add color was a bit disastrous:

The thing I have come to learn about painting is that the colors you think you see aren't really making up what you are seeing. I will never forget Joyce coming and saying in my ear "by the way, there is no brown in that pelican". Huh? Oh and measuring...very important.


oh and the beak...really tricky, but again, I was painting what I thought was there and I was wrong...so here's some progress:

The piling became green, the beak red. A scary prospect at first, but it started working.

I was pretty pleased at this point, but the eye of the pelican looked all wrong. Here I added violet to his body and off set it with green for feather detail.

This is my finished work. Not bad for a first go. Looking at it now, I would have used the canvas space better (his head is running off the canvas) and toned down the transition between the neck feathers to the body. I was pleased with the piling colors and the sky.

Next up...a person. Why not?