Life Drawing Today

These are some of the work from life drawing today. The quick gestures (one minute) are to warm us up. We practice catching the movement of the model. They are fun to do. The longer pose (20 minutes) is done with nupastels. I am trying to work from within the figure instead of outside outlines. I am squinting at the model to see the unity of light and dark and the essential details. I am trying to convey the image with an economy of information. Fun challenge!

Painting the Desert in June

It is really fun to continue to paint the desert as it changes with the summer. We see the colors warmer as the sun is higher in the sky when we start to paint. Months ago the mountains stayed quite blue with the morning shadows. We are staying under the big shade of the preserve's center so we are able to paint and feel comfortable even in June. We had nice breezes this morning as well.

Aloha

I am starting to work on some Hawaiian inspired art this month. For our next First Friday we are having a little luau. Both Laura Cohen Hogan and I went to University of Hawaii and love the islands. We are celebrating that wonderful place with art at our July 1st open studio. It is our hot and dry time of the year, so day dreams turn to a gentle tropical breeze along the ocean shore. Hope you can join us for the fun!

June Morning

Well the colors are changing again in the desert. This is the beginning of summer and the desert blooms are beginning to fade. Cactus blossoms are still open, but you can see the brush drying out. Still beautiful though!

New Color in the Desert Palette

This morning there was a new color to paint in the desert.The ironwood trees which previously looked mostly like dead trees have woken up and are in bloom. They have lovely pink blossoms on them which are a beautiful addition to the paint palette. It was a lot of fun to add this new color to our paintings. The palo verde trees are losing their yellow flowers so the ironwoods stepped up just in time!
My second painting was a little study of a baby cactus making its way in the shade of a tree. It was hard to separate the gray of the tree and the gray of the rocks.
What another great day in May. The high will be in the 80's today. A good 10 degrees lower than we should be. I am not complaining!

That's better!

Yesterday's painting had a strange split personality. I realized later that a half hour interruption during the painting might have altered my attack at the work. (maybe just an excuse!) My friend Carole Belliveau suggested that all was well except the tree which I knew didn't go with that saguaro. This morning I softened those brushstrokes on the tree. In a matter of seconds the tree now seems to be part of the painting. It is funny to realize how a tiny bit of blending could make such a difference. The surface quality of your work has to be cohesive with the whole. My colors and values were ok, but the use of the brush and the texture it provided were not in harmony with the rest.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you....

Not my best results out in the desert today. If you look at the painting it is almost as if there were two styles fighting it out. The saguaro cactus was a multi-armed specimen that was full of blossoms. The details on it just weren't jiving with the palo verde tree, also in bloom that got me really bogged down. Neither one were speaking the same language in the way I was painting them...Oh well, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose...but you always learn a little something along the way! Besides the not so great results it was another beautiful day in the desert. We set up in the shade of the preserve's building to get out of the wind. It was actually chilly! Unheard of for this late in May!