Portrait of Riley

I loved this photo of my son's fiancee the moment I saw it because it captured a moment between them in a wild and beautiful place not far from here on the Bay of Fundy. This pair is all about the outdoors, enjoying nature, camping , hiking, skydiving, adventures they squeeze  into  their busy hard working lives. I wanted to help remember this special day so the pic became the inspiration to the only painting I got done before Christmas.

This started out as a watercolor on toned pastel paper then evolved through charcoal, conte, and pastel. I wanted to capture this lovely lady's adventuresome windblown spirit along with her sort of 1940's glamorous look she pulls off without even trying.

      I am having the same battle of procrastination I face every winter in getting back to painting...can't seem to focus on it when there's other things to "get out of the way first." I'm sure the only reason I finished this portrait was the looming deadline of Christmas. So since the end of the tourists in november I have been having a prolonged slate clearing exercise, cutting hundreds of mats for next summer's print sales at our shop. Tomorrow I'll clean up the studio and then I should be out of excuses.

A watercolor work-in-progress

I'm beginning a commision piece about 20x22" of these cute little boys, Ben & Lucas. I selected this photo as a reference out of a couple dozen I took while they played on our swing.

Here is the preliminary pencil drawing..(the lines are darkened by the contrast button on Picasa, they're really not this dark)

I've lightly penciled in all the major light and shadow areas to guide me.

First an all over wash of skin tone made of new gamboge and cadmium red.

It starts to look scary at this point with the underlying colors going in. Putting in some greens to kill that white background will help.