Category Archives: Photo References

A figurative and an interior collage, for more fun

I wandered off on my own again and created a collage based on a photo from ‘back in the day’ when two of my little sisters, Susan and Mary, were swimming in the back yard pool (pre Hurricane Camille). I’ve always loved that photo and had earlier done a fairly abstracted version on the iPad. After my collage class, I decided to do a second version using the paired color technique I’d learned from Rotem Amizur.

A hard thing about this method is that Rotem encourages us to use whatever papers we still have on hand, rather than painting new ones that hew more closely to the reference underlying the image we’re trying to create. Here, that hot pink on the two girls is jarring, but . . . whatever.

I’ve been trying to paint more interiors lately, so I decided to try a collage construction based on the view of our living room from the kitchen table. The first cut was pretty dreary, so I layered up the background with a bright pink. Granddaughter Maya was around as I was critiquing the first version and she too agreed I needed a hot pink wall in the background, rather than the lavender I had already used.

Living room in wonky colors and with an imagined painting on the wall beyond the windows.

Catching up with collages posted elsewhere.

With more apologies to my Facebook friends who’ve probably seen these before, I want to post some collages I produced during a zoom-based workshop with Rotem Amizur, a fabulous Israeli artist. Key tasks included painting two contrasting layers of acrylic paint on each of a large stack of paper; selecting three or four sets of lighter and darker papers to represent light and shadow in different areas of the reference photo; and then cutting and arranging pieces of those papers to interpret the reference image in a collage. Here are two sets of paper selections I used in a couple of exercises:

Rotem had us select a couple of ‘old master’ paintings to use as our references. I started with a portrait of Matisse, followed by his portrait of his wife. I did one of Matisse and then a number of variations of Mrs. Matisse, some looking at the reference image or an earlier collage and others relying on just my memory of what Mrs. Matisse looked like. It was fun to get wilder and more abstract with each iteration, as we had to come up with a focal theme that didn’t duplicate an earlier collage.

And here are a few progress shots, showing the method of pinning the paper pieces, which were glued to each other in the final stage.

This was an exceedingly fun and challenging workshop — so good that I took a second one from Rotem a few months later. See the next post!

Summer 2022 ~~ and our Art Exhibit at Oasis Gallery ~~ has come to an end.

This past Spring, the Oasis Gallery invited the Seven Palettes (some of my art buddies and me) to mount a live exhibit at its Washington Metro location in Bethesda. Our exhibit ran from Monday, May 2d to mid-August 2022. Understandably, the show didn’t get much traffic, given Oasis’ use of zoom classes during the Covid hiatus, so I thought I’d post one last look at the paintings I contributed to the show. You can see the work of the other artists at the link above.

Love and Loss

A dear friend recently commissioned me to make a portrait on my iPad of her friend and her dying spouse. It was a challenge to capture the obvious love and tenderness of the woman and her husband. Despite my hesitation to share such a private moment, I’ve been encouraged to post it, as it may be touch others in a good way.

Goodbyes near the end.

Inspired by the Masters

It’s a time-honored tradition for artists to deepen their craft by studying, copying, transcribing components of, or gaining inspiration from old and newer master painters. In various zoom classes over the last months, I’ve had occasion to do that kind of work.

An abstraction of a Titian nude:

After Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’. Oil on Linen. 9.5 x 16.

An abstraction of van Veerendael’s A Bouquet of Flowers in a Crystal Vase.

After van Veerendael’s Bouquet of Flowers in a Crystal Vase. Oil on lInen. 9,5 x 13

Modern subject (Cuban art students studying on a busy boulevard on a Sunday morning) in the style of Vuillard’s paintings of women working.

Cuban art students at work, after Vuillard. Oil on linen.

Some Quick-Hit, Limited Palette Landscapes

In a never-ending pursuit of quickly and accurately matching colors using only 3 or 4 tube colors + black & white, I did a series of rapid landscapes to share with some painting buddies and a more experienced guru, Bernie Dellario.

Multnomah Falls, OR. Oil on Arches Huile Paper.
Marshy View, Eastern Shore of Maryland. Oil on Arches Huile Paper.
California Coastline. Oil on Arches Huile Paper.
Mississippi Marsh. Oil on Arches Huile Paper.

More Pandemic Art ~~ a challenging composite of personal memories.

Over the last six months, I’ve been zoom-studying with artists otherwise out of reach. Here’s the final project of a recent class with Ed Praybe — a composite of several separate images arranged into relatively natural composition. It is based on an image of my mother Annette, taken in her twenties, a photo of my six sisters and me, taken years later as a reference for a group portrait lost in Hurricane Katrina; and several photos of our Biloxi home, also later destroyed by Katrina.

To make it work, I had to adjust the relative scales of the elements and imagine a consistent light source across the whole scene. . .

The final image:

Composite of family home, mother, and sisters. Watercolor on Paper. 14 x 11.

The 4 images that provided the underpinnings of the composition:

A Diversion to Gouache ~~ Yellow Convertible, Cuban Style!

I came across a photo I took some years ago in Cuba and it made me smile. Pulled out my gouache set and took a stab. It turned out too precise, but I’ll try to be looser next time. It was fun anyway.

Yellow convertible, Havana Cuba. Gouache on Paper. 7.5″ x 5″

Rhodos ~~ wild and wooly against yellow grasses

This is another floral, painted a few weeks back. The little petals aren’t as well-suggested as were the petals on the peonies I posted yesterday. And it was extremely difficult to suggest that vibrant magenta. But ‘it is what it is’. . . . I may go back in and soften the strength of that one green leaf between the flowers. Draws the attention too much . . .

Rhododendrons against yellow grasses. Watercolor on paper. 9″ x 12″.
Photo reference from our garden.

Another new watercolor ~~ Los Angeles Palm with golden necklace!

I love palm trees and have had to practice quite a bit in order to capture a semblance of one. I’ve been procrastinating on this beauty for a number of years — based on a photo I took in LA.

LA Palm, with Golden Necklace. Watercolor on paper. 7” x 5”.