Demo for Rita Crocker Art Conservatory class

This is a demonstration painting I did for an art class I taught at the Rita Crocker Art Conservatory at Trinity Baptist church a few years ago.  I had a small class that had never painted before and had a great time teaching.  All of the work in the class came out great and I was very proud of my students.  This was painted quickly for the class using whatever I could find laying around our kitchen beforehand.

Jenna in pencil

Portrait of Jenna my middle daughter in pencil and charcoal 11x14.  Jenna was valedictorian of her class this year,won an art contest for the school which puts her painting on the Shelby County school calendar for this next year.  She also won a school essay contest which earned her a lunch with an author from a book her class read and the school art contest to have her drawing on T-Shirts that the whole school wore on the end of year picnic.  She is a very talented piano player and loves to read.

This was the first of three pencil portraits I tried of each of my daughters.  I used Arches paper and was very pleased with the results.  It is a very forgiving paper and took a lot of abuse.  I've only used three of the sheets so far and I think there are 40 in the binding, so I need to get busy.

I did this picture free hand after using the grid methods for so long.  I always felt like I was cheating using the grid method and found it to be very tedious and frustrating.  I took a class by Daniel Green, a very well know portrait artist a few years ago and was fascinated by how he could capture a likeness using proportions and angles.  I began trying it out and really liked the results.  I found it much easier to get a likeness by just drawing rather than looking for shortcuts to drawing.  I even used to use a projector many years ago but it always had a rather odd look to it in the end and put it away in the attic about 10 years ago!

Selling my work

Spent yesterday at the Arlington Open Market with my wife in a booth we shared for our art and her jewelry. This is a once a month event and is usually followed by a night of music and food on the square. Some shows are better than others as far as how much we sell. My wife tends to sell more of her floral paintings that are unusual in that she uses stucco spread over canvas and then uses a tool to sketch a flower like a daisy and then paints with bright acrylic paint. My work tends to be more representative in nature leaning toward realism. Sometimes I may sell one or two paintings but it is always frustrating to not sell more. I will get commissions sometimes which are stressful at times because you are trying to fit a mold that someone has in mind instead of selling something that is already complete. We always get very good comments but would like to be more successful. I try to read all I can and enjoy forums like WetCanvas to get feedback and ideas. Anyone have comments on the best way to show and sell your artwork?

Pear using chiaroscuro effect

Oil 11x14 on canvas: An oil still life study from a book by Gregg Kruetz of a pear. I like the chiaroscuro effect in a lot of his work and thought I'd give it a try. First attempt at a chiaroscuro style painting (contrast of dark and light) and I did this one quickly in about and hour. I enjoy trying different techniques and subjects and hope to do more of these with fruit.  I need to darken some of the shadows and diffuse some of the edges but just haven't gotten around to it yet.  Used a palette knife to rough up the paint on the table edge and it came out pretty cool.  I've always admired great still life paintings and the way they capture the atmosphere around and behind the subject matter.

Sunflower painting in oil

Oil 11x14 on canvas: Always wanted to try a sunflower painting and enjoyed painting this one. Will probably paint more as I like the bright colors and the complementary of the blue and orange. This is my second flower painting and florals are much more challenging than I thought they would be. My first floral was the large gardenia. Took this painting to a open air market for sale yesterday but had a lot of lookers but no buyers. I enjoy meeting folks at these kind of events. My wife does floral paintings using a stucco base on top of canvas and uses bright colors.