Faces 10

9"x12", Acrylic, Stretched Canvas,

Faces 9

Starting to see relationships between hair and skin colors, more subtle with blond hair and fair skin.

Faces 6

Profiles are sometimes easier, but I've a lot to learn yet. I'm working from a front and side view photo,comparing the two helps me enormously.

Faces 5

I need to remember these are just color sketches. Spent part of the week laboring over another 5x7, making it worse with every added effort. This portrait was done quicker, and more confident. I'm learning to show facial details by shaping a shadow or light area to suggest them.

Faces 4

Starting to get a feel for the contours of the face, still kind of shaky about getting parts in the right place in relation to the whole though.
I've heard a portrait discribed as "a painting of a face, with something wrong with the mouth" Hopefully not allways!



5"x7", Acrylic, Portrait, canvas panel

Faces 3

I like the idea of doing a series! This portrait has a lot fewer brush strokes, I managed to get the colors and values on the first try and decided to stop. Placement is the other part of the equation and in the best cases is guided by intuition.



5"x7", Acrylic, Portrait, canvas panel

Faces 2

this man's skin color is nearer to pink, and I don't feel I got the shadow colors just right. I know when the two are right there's a sort of color vibration that happens.


5"x7", Acrylic, Portrait

Faces 1

I've had a great time watching the work of Karin Jurick. her 100 Faces series is really inspiring! So inspiring I want to try my own series.

(Face number 1) I've heard that green works as a shadow color, I tried it, it worked! Still a little timid with it, maybe bolder next time.


5"x7", Acrylic, Portrait

China Ditch

I had two goals for this painting; one was to invent forms and show them by value / temperature contrasts, second to show aerial color perspective, so warm and intense in the foreground, and relatively cooler and less intense with distance. The photo I'm working from is kind of hazy, and near black & white, kind of a big job for a small painting.

5"x7", Acrylic, landscape

Mountain Sunrise

A nice place to wake up.



5"x7", Acrylic, landscape,

Chicken Soup

Naomi makes the best chicken soup. We've both been down with colds this week, thankful for the wood stove, wood to burn, and each other.

8"x 10", Acrylic, Still life,

Marionette Portrait

There's an elusive quality in the face of this doll. I've not painted it the same way twice. The features or exaggerated but quite accurate.

Recorded observation

Working from drawings (recorded observations). I've noticed that the number of things I look for has grown, and remember thinking a while back that If you don't look for it you won't see it, much less paint it.

Paint Sketches

I wanted to post these even though they're more like fragmented thoughts. I think it's important to have to have an idea of what the painting is about as I'm painting. Some times I just get part of an idea.


Also read a great post in Marjorie Claymore's Blog about One week resolutions. Mine being to put paint out on the pallet before pouring morning coffee. It has helped me to focus less on perfecting and more on producing, so these warm up exercises work great to get me moving early in the day.

Leaf Hopper

I'm aiming at getting shapes to transition light to dark. (about the number 5 of this subject) A little smoother than the rest, and more fun to do. Getting the blend to work while the acrylic paint is wet is important because it all gets darker as it dries. So I'm working in an alla prima technique, taking a new canvas rather than trying to touch things up.

Foliage Study

Just a try at painting edges and values.

Dark Skies

From a photo of Acadia Park in Maine.

Five Petals

Irises Spring and bright colors.


6"x8" acrylic on stretched canvas

Snow in the Owyhees

A painting of China Ditch Canyon.



5"x7" Acrylic on canvas panel

Field Daisy

Still aiming for simplicity


5"x7" Acrylic on canvas panel