Wednesday, November 26, 2014

...and down the stretch they come......

a couple more steps in the painting that i have tentatively called "the colonel has a lovely daughter." i have been doing bits and pieces of this while the calendar pages come off the printer.....its taking about a half and hour to print 50 pages, due mainly to the higher resolution of the photos this year. so, there is about 30 minutes work depicted in each of these.

almost done...some background and bill's hat to go

Thursday, November 20, 2014

just another darn painting

i wanted to get something posted before 2 months had gone by. since last month i have had the opportunity to paint with charles reid in a portland, oregon, workshop, see the kids and grandkids, visit seattle, and start a couple of new paintings. i am ready to make the final push of the year to get the calendar out (hampered by needing a couple more landscape-oreinted paintings.)

this one is inspired by a photo of an old friend from my dartmouth days bill (aka colonel chaos) badger and his lovely daughter charlotte snapped a couple of summers ago in vermont. bill is an architect specializing in restoration of historic buildings.....he worked with those restoring the train station in philadelphia, for example.

i wanted an intimate and fun perspective for this and cropped down to the scene above. charlotte is the star of the show with bill playing a minor but important role. i took a play from ted nuttall's book and cut off the right side of bill's face, just for interest.

i used scarlet lake and brilliant orange  with cerulean blue for charlotte's skin tones and vermilion, raw sienna with cerulean blue for bill's skin. brushes are escoda versatil rounds...mainly #10 and #14. the paper is fabriano artistico hot press, #300, 11"X 17". the dark shapes at the top of two of the paintings are shadows from pins i use to hold down the paper. here are the first few steps in the process: