Saguaro Painting

I did this painting a couple of weeks ago of some saguaros. The sun creates form shadows and cast shadows on these guys that are challenging and fun. The shadows change pretty darn fast so the trick is to capture them quickly and then stick with it even if they change. Since they are way older than I am I try to be respectful of my elders when I paint these magnificent cacti.

Painting Sara

We have added a long pose day to our Life Drawing. Instead of several poses we have 10 short gestures (2 minutes) each and then one pose for the last couple of hours. I have been going on that day and doing acrylic paintings on paper. I gesso the page first and add texture with a rough brush or scraping tools. Then I begin to scrub, wipe out, add the paint. I am not trying to make a realistic rendering, but let the paint lead the way with the model as the inspiration. Here are the paintings from the last 2 weeks with Sara as our model. These paintings are about 16x22".