ON THE STUDIO WALL--Working on the Painting in Progress

Each week I am explaining my process in painting the piece on my studio wall. I am posting an image that will show the progression from week to week, as the work unfolds. It is beginning to enter the final stage. I am continuing to fill up the form with swathes of color; balancing bright against neutrals-sharp line against soft; working on evoking a mood of joyousness, light and buoyancy. I am crafting an expression that reflects an inner presence of alignment with self…art here is an extension of an emotion of serenity. I’ve added more grays, blacks, sharper lines and more warm green. Her face is not yet complete. Final touches are still needed to make the piece complete.

ON THE STUDIO WALL

A weekly look at the progression of a new painting. Here is a snippet of my newest piece of work. My process in this piece is to contrast warm grays against bright cool colors of the model’s body. I am working from a sketch that I composed from the live model. Her pose got my adrenaline flowing. The sketch is only a jumping off point. As the piece progresses, the composition will evolve and “fill out”.
I have not given this piece a title yet. I usually wait until it is completed to decide on what the work is “saying” to me.

Travel and Art…Ideas from Tunisia and Painting at Sea

I visited Tunis this summer from a cruise ship and was struck by the contrasts; from the market shapes and sounds, where the booth owners were hawking their wares; abundant in everything: people, spices, sound and sights…exciting and a bit anxiety provoking too. And, it was hot, desert hot. At the highest point of the market, I climbed to the top of a building filled with middle eastern rugs and stepped onto the terrace and saw the world, teeming below.. Then, off I headed, to the calming hues of the sand and sea, a beautiful enclave of beaches and hotels.

By the time I returned to the ship, my head was swimming with color, sights, sounds and textures of city, market and shore. The next day I spent on deck with my pencils, paints and paper sketching, painting abstracts in cools, then warms for paintings to create in my studio. There is nothing like the smells and feelings of a foreign place to incite the senses for new painting ideas.

Women as subjects, and the “ideal” proportion

I paint women, both nude and clothed…and I find that I often need to “doctor” up the proportions to fit into what looks right “proportion-wise” to me. But, has this-my viewpoint- been affected by our society’s dictum of the “ideal” women’s size? This brings me to the concept of what is the ideal? There are simply too many to list here and, of course, this depends on who is looking….