My Little Shadow - SOLD

My good friend, Deb and I just returned from Cancun.  I loved taking pictures of little families on the beach.  This Mom and her little girl were sitting under an umbrella that Mom was holding to shade her little girl.  My friend said it reminded her of her own little girl when she was small and the way she was a "little shadow" always with Mom.

This is a 24" x 12" oil and was submitted to Daily Paintworks Challenge to the Paint it White Challenge.

OnyeOma - SOLD

This week the challenge on Daily Paintworks is to paint a friend. I have been waiting to paint OnyeOma.  She is the daughter of one my friends and I fell in love with her sweet face.  Her name in the Nigerian Dialect means "Good Person" and if she is anything like her father I know she is a good person.  This is a 8" x 8" oil on artists canvas. 

At The Farmer's Market- SOLD

This was a DPW Challenge - a painting of a Farmer's Market. 

Learning to Paint with Roger Dale Brown

I have great intentions of completing my summaries of artists I have studied with but somehow painting gets in the way and writing the summaries feel similar to writing term papers in college so I seem to get side tracked but I do not want to leave out Roger Dale Brown, Peggy Kroll Roberts, Dreama Tolle Perry, Qiang Huang or Colley Whisson. 

Roger Dale Brown believes, as the historical master artists, such as John Carlson and Edgar Payne, that "plein air" painting is an essential element in being a great artist.  His workshop was one of the best I ever attended.  Roger is patient, a very good teacher and he provides an excellent notebook full of material for his students.  In this notebook he provides exercises for practice, his own Philosophy, and his step by step approach to a painting.  In addition he describes the steps to a successful painting and he provides several articles and other resource materials.  Roger gave an important hint in one of his articles, "Keep control of your painting by mastering the art of comparison.  Find the brightest color and relate all other colors.  Find the sharpest edge and relate all other edges.  Find the darkest value and relate all other values to it."

A valuable lesson I learned from Roger was to set goals.  He stated that setting goals has been one of the most critical aspects of his development.  He has personal goals and business goals and he provides some very specific examples to get anyone started. 

Roger paints wonderful landscapes but also paints a variety of subject matter.  You can find his website here:

http://www.rogerdalebrown.com