Delicious - pencil

pencil, 2019

available, 8"x10"

      Happy Halloween! This is a sketch for a painting I haven't had time to get to before the unholy horrorday.

Larissa - watercolor

watercolor, 2019

available, 11"x15"

      This figure is one of my favorite paintings of the year. Everything about her turned out exactly as or better than planned. The nearly monochrome color palette draws attention to the highlights and pulls you to the focal point, her face. The obvious raw drawing at the bottom and the seamless bleeding of her skirt into the background create an abstraction that highlights the realism of the rendering of the rest of her form. This one is a culmination of almost everything I've been working on. I really couldn't be happier with this one.

Skully - pencil

pencil, 2019

available, 8"x10"

     I caught Skully in just the right light for a sketch.

Decoy #4 - watercolor

watercolor, 2019

available, 8"x10"

      It's been a while since my last decoy painting. I experimented with leaving this one a bit looser and more impressionistic. A bit of Holbein's Grey of Grey straight from the tube - a very opaque watercolor - blended along the beak helped to bring out the contour and emphasize some dimensionality. 

      The occasional use of opaque pigments in otherwise "transparent" watercolor allows me to add a little sparkle on top of dry passages without resorting to gouache or gesso. Not that I'm above using gouache or gesso or anything else that works for a particular painting. But some people and many organizations still are quite picky about what you can and cannot use in a transparent watercolor. Some would even disallow the use of any opaque pigment if it's visible on top of a darker hue like this one. I don't want to get into a long, drawn out thing here. I don't like anyone trying to apply "rules" to art (though there's nothing wrong with placing limits on yourself as a self-challenge). But, I do try to start off with every intention of keeping a painting purely transparent even to the point that almost all of the colors on my regular palette are transparent or semi-transparent. Of course, things happen; every piece takes it's own twists and turns. In the end I always do whatever the piece warrants, not what some organization or academic demands.

Bobbie - watercolor, charcoal

mixed, 2019

available, 8"x10"

      This is a quick portrait painted in watercolor on a gouache-tinted sheet. I restated the drawing with charcoal pencil after the paint was dry to emphasize it. Leaving part of the portrait unpainted draws the viewers attention both to the painted focal point and to the abstract nature of a two-dimensional rendering.