Snow Progression

Two paintings - first on the easel and then then finished versions.


Fall Snow 18" x 24"


Winter Grasses 24" x 36"

Orangs

Working with sketches I've done of orangutans at zoos I started a painting I intended to be an exploration of orange.



The photo above is for scale. The canvas is about 34" H x 72" W.


As I painted I lost my initial layout lines. I like lines. So I repainted them (below).


But it looked funny - not right. So I watched it for a few days, and thought.

I'm more comfortable with yellow and white. It is my solution when a painting doesn't feel finished/concluded. And I added more orangs over the whole painting. My husband says he has to look really hard to see any orangutans. All I see is orangutans...and one gorilla (which I didn't put in the painting - he just showed up).

Life Drawing

I've been life drawing intermittently since 1994; there are year long pauses between the sessions I attend. I hardly ever have enough time to finish drawing a pose and after 17 years I still can not fit a whole person on a sheet of paper - something gets cut off - often the head or feet - sometimes both. I have advanced, though, from an HB pencil to softer pencils and even pastels...

Yellow Maples

These first two paintings won't ever be finished; they are part of my search with the brush to catch autumn color this October.


This last painting is shown early and as a final version. It had a different energy early on the easel.

New

I've listed these new paintings in my etsy shop. They're from this fall - drawn from nature. Except the last one; it is a view of the Maumee River that I did from a sketch.

Gorillas

Burnt Sienna is the only color in my usual acrylic palette that approaches red.
Last time I ordered art supplies I bought a bunch of small tubes of reds; this is the painting where I tried them all.

I thought if I used my gorilla sketches from the zoo and painted on the wall I might feel less inhibited to use color.
I've never done a more direct painting - from start to finish - without completely changing the composition and colors.
Finished size approx. 62" x 70".

Gerd

My husband's uncle had a plastic skeleton stored in his garage. I brought it in, named it Gerd and drew from it for weeks.
I went to illustration school in Hamburg, Germany and I asked about taking anatomy classes but I seemed to be the only one interested and teachers didn't see a need for it. Life drawing was obligatory, but it didn't include muscle or bone study.

Sidecut

In late 2009 I painted this from a photo I had taken of a fallen tree reflecting in a local pond. This was the first abstract landscape I'd done.

Winter Trees

Three years ago I started drawing the trees in our backyard in pastels.

Sometimes I used my left hand. If I use my left hand I'm not so tight in my drawing and I work more with color than with exact shape and placement, because I have no choice - I'm right handed.

I did a skillion drawings - and taped them up on a board in my studio room (where they dusted up the carpet like crazy).

Akt

This is the life drawing (2001) where I realized that it didn't really matter if I drew an exact portrait, because no one would ever see the picture held up next to the model. It was so freeing - after that I could concentrate on doing a beautiful drawing rather than laboring over an exact likeness.

Again with the elephants

Another progression of a painting. Another painting of elephants.
There is so much to love about elephants and I want to fill the walls with them - drawing and painting as big as possible.

This painting is done on four sheets of watercolor paper taped together.


Using a sketch of an elephant I did at the zoo and several photographs (which were no help at all) and finally trying to match the colors from a painting I did while I was in school.

I then painted over those colors with lighter ones.

Elephant

An acrylic painting on cold-pressed watercolor paper (2 sheets, ea. 22" x 30"). Reference from gestural sketches I did of the elephants at the Toledo Zoo.

Flower Sketches

All of these were drawn while looking at the garden in my front yard this summer. I am aware of color all day; I think about it and comment on it and watch it. But I'm not very comfortable painting it. Pastels help me be freer with color, but I am never as pleased with pastel drawings as I am with paintings. I sketch to reduce flowers to shapes - so I can understand them and put them on canvas.
As I wrote that I realized I am separating out the most important element and then expecting myself to reapply it without a guide - when I know that my best work comes from spontaneity and observation.