Latest Pet Portrait

Ginny, oil, 14x11

Here is the latest commission completed in time for Christmas! I have only a few progression photos as I actually used a clean, white canvas for this painting. That was hard. I have come to the conclusion that I enjoy carving out the image (like a sculptor?) rather than drawing in. This dog had so much white that I thought it might show better if she were painted on a clean canvas. I have not yet colored any white canvases but it has crossed my mind to go back to that. I started out my painting career doing that.
The commission was to join two images. Using the dog from one image and the background from another image with Ginny in it. In the first image, she is sitting on a wicker chair on a porch. That is the dog image I used. The second image Ginny is coming out of a patch of Hostas. So originally, as you can see in the image below, she was going to be in the Hostas. They were eventually going to be covering her chest and legs and leave her head and shoulders above the plants. I wanted to ground her before doing that so she did not look like a floating torso so I painted her in full body. Once I showed the client the second painting below with ALL the green blocked in yet still not covering her body I gave them the option to not do that and have here sitting in dirt in front of the plants. I did stylize the plants as I did not want them to take over from her as the main focal point.

The two lower images were shot in my studio so have warmer lighting. The finished painting was shot outdoors in natural lighting.

Life Imitating Art - Baumann

Life Imitating Art - at the Gustave Baumann Exhibit, 36x18

I have been working on two paintings simultaneously over the past several months but they were interrupted because of the welcome pet portrait commissions. I just received the final approval on a dog portrait so it is now drying awaiting varnish.

If you saw the link going around on Facebook from a photographer who took photos of people imitating the art they were looking at, I just want you to know these two paintings were started and this one almost finished, when I saw his collection. I did feel a bit gypped. This has happened to me before...where I get this idea and am in the middle of a painting and then something manifests in some form taking the uniqueness right away. I guess there is nothing new under the sun even when we want to believe it!

What captivated me about this scene is how she is standing like the trees she is looking at as well as the colors matching from her sweater and her skin tone. This one is from a now defunct art museum in Pasadena. It just recently closed its doors. It was a unique concept in that it showed only artists who painted in California, even if they did not reside there for long. There was no permenant collection. It was three galleries and there was usually one contemporary exhibit and two from the past. I had not realized that the Gustave Baumann exhibit was in the second gallery, so it was a very pleasant discovery to be sure! He is best known for his woodcuts of Taos. This exhibit actually included the press he used for his wood cuts as well as examples of the different color blocks. The pictures she is looking at were gouache, I believe. I wrote about the main gallery show, Joseph Kleitsch, if you care to check his amazing work out.

The second painting in this particular series is from NYC. The contrast is striking...to be continued.