Aug282014

Art Classes Fall 2014, Winter 2015

:: Classes 2014 – 2015 :: Fall/Winter classes will be starting soon. I will be teaching 3 again at The Atelier.  The Atelier Studio Program of Fine Art is a friendly little traditional art school located in Northeast Minneapolis, MN (a bit on the outskirts of Dinky Town). The...

May212014

Portrait Practice – Color Experiments

Colors used for this head study Perylene Black (Winsor & Newton) Yellow Ochre (Winsor & Newton) Permanent Yellow Light (Rembrandt) Permanent Red Medium (Rembrandt) Permanent Magenta (Winsor & Newton) Permanent Alizarin Crimson (Winsor & Newton) Untramarine Blue (Utrecht) The white was either Utrecht White, or Flemish White by Utrecht....

Apr92014

Head Study in Oil – Trying Out Colors

In an effort to see for myself what different colors and paints do and decide what I like, I’ve been experimenting. For this head study I tried Rembrandt Sepia, Gamblin Flake White Replacement, and Gamblin Chromatic Black. This combination also gave me a chance to concentrate on values (more...

Mar122014

Portrait Study – Paint

Last week I posted about how I transfer a drawing to canvas. This week, paint! I’m using oils and decided to use a limited palette. Initially I was going to use Ivory Black for the cools but the flesh was looking dead so I added French Ultramarine Blue. Basically...

Mar52014

Portrait Study – Transfer the Drawing

This is a follow up from last week’s post about my portrait study using Russian Sauce. I went back in to the drawing with a fat tortillion and smoothed out the background. I’m liking it much better. Next I transferred the drawing to a prepared canvas panel. Materials Used...

Feb272014

Portrait Study – Russian Sauce

I teach a portrait class Tuesday evenings so when I’m not helping students, I’m helping myself by working on this head study. This was a great opportunity to experiment with Yarka Russian Sauce. What fun! I love the darks I’m getting. This all started with my interest in Valentin...

Jan292014

Posthumous Portrait

As a present for my husband, I painted a posthumous portrait of his mother. Kinda tricky. I had to work from photos, and my memories and impressions of her. Step 1 Transfer the photo reference as a line drawing/tracing to the canvas and start painting. I thought this would...

Dec312013

Portrait Practice

I’ve been studying Valentin Serov’s portraits. He was a Russian artist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I love his dancing, searching line mixed in with bold marks and wanted to experiment with that. A few Saturdays ago I had some extra time and got to attend the...