Category Archives: Drawings

More collages.

2 Replies

I took a second zoom workshop with Rotem Amizur which focused on still life collages. This one was less intense than the first and I produced less work, but this time I was working ‘from life’ based on a simple still life arrangement: plastic watering can; two lemons; and a small orchid (that I pumped up in the collages using artistic license.

Rhw set-up
Drawing to analyze light/dark paper pairings
The final collage – take one.

I then made a second collage of the same set-up, using a different selection of paired colored papers to represent lights and darks. Do you have a preference?

Second take, using same arrangement.

Next, for an added challenge, I did a collage of one of my special ceramic pieces, filled with twigs from the beautiful Chinese maple tree in my front yard.

Progress shot — the pins almost function as flowers — was tempted to keep it this way!
The final, glued piece.

New Facebook Challenge ~ 10 Paintings in 10 Days ~~ per friend Kathy Stowe

1 Reply

Ooof! I did one of these challenges not long ago, but here goes! Day 1 of my mission to share something from my art, my studio, or my life for ten consecutive days, no explanation needed, and nominate someone to do the same. I nominate Penny Smith to share some of her beautiful artwork and carry on the call. The idea is to promote positivity and bring art into each other’s lives.

Here’s what’s on my easel at the moment — inching toward a dual portrait of my deceased brother-in-law Albert ‘Terp’ Ward, and his widow, Donna Garnett.

Double Portrait – 2d session
Initial drawing, using Catherine Kehoe’s method of building a web of intersecting lines until features emerge.

My iPad art has been getting lots of ‘likes’ lately!!

1 Reply

Marc Hanson post of Maureen’s iPad sketch of him. ArtRage. 2018.

After a recent workshop down in Ocean Springs, MS, I sent teacher Marc Hanson a quick little iPad sketch of himself as a thank you for a wonderful experience.  He promptly posted it on his Instagram account – surprising me greatly.  I was tickled to see it and was especially delighted when it gathered 550 likes and a number of comments and questions.  Wow.  Thanks, Marc, for the exposure!

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

Doodles While Traveling

Leave a reply

We flew to California for Christmas this year and, as usual, I occupied myself at the airports and in-air by some iPad doodling.  Thought it would be fun to share some of those from this and earlier flights with you.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rita’s Portrait ~~ Session Five: More Home Work, using the iPad

Leave a reply

I had made good progress during my work based on the reference photograph, but I decided it wasn’t good enough.  As a way to visualize changes that might improve the painting, I decided to do a mark-up on the iPad, using a side-by-side comparison with the reference photo.

markup of portrait using iPad

markup of painted portrait, as a result of side-by-side comparison with photo. iPad screenshot.

I cropped the photo included in my September 8th post and imported it digitally into the ArtRage app on my iPad.  I then ‘painted’ over the portrait area, trying to remedy the problems I identified in the painting.  This was a freehand process, done by ‘eyeballing’ the photo reference.  ArtRage is not able to make measurements for a closer comparison of the two images.

I like this markup as well as the final painting — if not more!  The ability to easily edit iPad marks liberates me from feeling that each (potentially incorrect) modification is ‘permanent’.  Playing around with the marks often yields spontaneous and interesting ideas that I would never have attempted initially in oils.

Even though I liked the resulting mark-up, I knew it would still be a challenge to implement these ideas in oil paint on the actual painting.

 

The Painting of Rita ~ Steps toward a Portrait

Leave a reply

My friend Carlos, who wants to experiment with natural-light photographic portraits, joined me for the first session with my neighbor Rita.  He made a number of beautiful pictures, while I snapped photos of Rita from my on-looker’s vantage.

Rita at ease

Rita at ease

After he left, I did a quick charcoal sketch of Rita, in a three-quarter pose.  It was ok for the first session, but I didn’t like the pose and definitely wanted to capture a grin, if not a smile, in the final product.

Rita in Initial Pose + Sketch

Rita in Initial Pose .  Charcoal Sketch.

Enough for one day!  Rita’s not tired, but I am!

Paint the Kitchen Table. Paint the Kitchen Sky.

Leave a reply

Yesterday I read an interesting post by Daniel Gerhartz about the hubris of ‘needing’ to paint a grandiose image, while neglecting the “profound, staggering elegance of the subject right before my eyes”.

outside my window on a drowsy spring day. original iPad painting.

matching trees and white clouds outside my window on a drowsy spring morning. original iPad painting.

He’s talking my walk.  I love looking at everything in my path.   Right before seeing Dan’s post I had been mentally composing an image based on the condiment bottles before me on the kitchen table.

The sunlight was falling ‘just so’ on the tops of their caps, making stair-steps of light down through the bottles shaded by the window will.  It would make the perfect line drawing or a juicy value painting.

salt and pepper, mirrored. original iPad painting.

salt and pepper shakers, meeting their match in the napkin holder. original iPad painting.

And looking up and out the window I noticed that distant treetops were the same yellow-brown-green as my neighbor’s weeping cherry, now that its flowers had fallen.  And gorgeous clouds were slowly sweeping across a strong blue sky.

In honor of Dan and the daily, I decided to grab my iPad and make a few sketches of the loveliness at my fingertips.  I also took some pix of the stair stepping bottle tops — they deserve a painting on canvas!

stairs on my table

stairs on my table.

Drawing the Line

1 Reply

With some of my 7Palettes friends, I’m studying plein air painting with Carol Rubin this Spring.  Last week, it was too chilly to paint outdoors, so we made line drawings of a complex still life Carol had assembled.  Here’s a ‘line drawing’ made of oil paints.  Our warmup exercises follow.

Hat, Vases & Vegetation

hat, vases & vegetation. oil on canvas.

Two 30 second drawings.

IMG_0731 - Version 2

bottle, pot & dried hydrangea. charcoal pencil on vellum.

Thirty second hat and more. charcoal on vellum.

hat and more. charcoal pencil on vellum.

A minute-long ‘continuous line’ drawing — made without taking the pencil off of the paper.

IMG_0729 - Version 2

hat, pots & plants. charcoal pencil on vellum.

A ‘blind contour’ — made while keeping eyes on the object.  NO looking at the paper!  (Well, maybe we got to take three short peeks. . . .)

no looking at the vegetation??? charcoal on vellum.

no looking at the scribblings??  only the objects???  charcoal on vellum.

And finally, as depicted above, we made complex line drawings in black paint and then brushed thick white paint over selected areas to ‘erase’ lines as needed to make the ‘drawing’ more accurate or more interesting.  A fun day.  I did more at home using my own props.  Will post those next time.

Painting a Study during Maud’s Portrait Class

6 Replies

I made a quick portrait study yesterday during a class I’m taking with Maud Taber-Thomas.  I hadn’t been able to attend for several weeks and was happy to be back.

Dozing Damsel. Oil on Arches Oil Paper.

Dozing Damsel. Oil on Arches Oil Paper.

During the first class, Maud had recommended as homework that we draw a series of skulls, each in a different position.  I was tickled to have found online an inexpensive, life-size plastic model.  I brought it in yesterday to show, along with the drawings I’d done.  You can catch a glimpse of the skull herself in the last post, where she’s shown modeling for the painting.

Skull drawings. Charcoal. (Doesn't that one in the left middle look like Donald Duck?)

Skull drawings. Charcoal. (Doesn’t that one at middle left look like Donald Duck?)

 

New iPad Art: Fairy Lilies in Negative Space; Pat’s Scarecrow in the Garden; at the O’s Game

Leave a reply

I’ve done a few iPad images lately — good fun while sitting around at night.   I just finished a drawing with the ArtRage pencil tool of a sprinkle of fairy lilies against a background clump of ornamental grasses.

Fairy Lilies, original iPad painting, 2013, 1:1 aspect ratio

Fairy Lilies, original iPad painting, 2013, 1:1 aspect ratio

 

And I also had fun doing a more stylized rendition of Pat’s scarecrow standing in our garden, stopping passersby with its cuteness, but doing nothing to deter the critters from eating our veggies.  Pat actually built this wooden adjustable man, based on one our son Sam had seen in a magazine and really wanted.  Sam enjoyed it for years and then Will inherited it.  Pat has now re-clothed it in his old duds for scarecrow duty.

IMG_0823

And I did a quick wild fun sketch of the ballpark when Pat and I went to an Oriole’s game in Baltimore last weekend.

IMG_7370