Dance Lessons - SOLD

  This is a beautiful little girl and a lovely model.  Her mom and family are very important to me and when I saw this little angel I had to paint her.  She looks like she is waiting so patiently for class to start and she is very intent on watching the teacher.   Such a sweet little ballerina in training.

This is a 8" x 10 " original oil. 

Don't Fence Me In -SOLD

This week's challenge was a Touchy Feely Challenge to try and paint texture.  This little smiling pig had some "fuzzy" little hairs that I tried to capture on his back  I loved the fact that he looks like he is smiling.  If a pig can smile surely we humans can smile a little more.

SMILE!

Marquise

I attended the Sarah Towery Carlisle Art Colony this past week as I have for the last eight years.  This year my instructor was Nancy Chaboun.   Nancy teaches at the Scottsdale Artists' School and is an accomplished painter.  I found her to be very informative and  very accessible to each artist, giving personal one on one instruction and assistance.  She possesses great skill in both still life painting and portrait painting and she combines her teaching with humor.  Some of the main "take aways" I received regarding portraits are:

1. The less values you have in a painting, the stronger the painting - this is the #1 problem in painting and the #1 asset.
2. We recognize people from a distance by the shape of their heads so insure that this is correct 
3. The eyes are balls so create the "roundness" when drawing the eyes
4.  Do not make the whites of the eyes "white" but a more muted color
5.  Ears are slightly redder because of the closeness of vessels to the surface
6.  The top of the ear catches light
7.  When painting hands you can follow the line of the arm to the first finger and the third finger to position the fingers on the hand.  She created the shape of the hand not each individual finger
8.  More comes forward and less moves back - therefore, if you want something to "come forward" in the painting then add more detail 
9.   White always cools
10.  Simplify! 

And......Make your darks darker ----she said this quite often to our class.  

You can find her lovely work at       http://nancychabounfineart.com

 

The Elephant - SOLD

Some of my Alabama Roll-Tide friends wrote to me after I posted the Tiger and requested I try an Elephant.  Those of you who know my husband know that I had to go out on the back deck to paint this.  I am so fortunate to have some wonderful friends who travel to exciting places and they are good photographers so I get some good reference photos.