Self portrait for contest

Started on this self portrait for an contest that Jerry's Artarama is having this month.   Used a small mirror hanging off the side of my easel.  Not turned it in yet because I have much more to do in the next few days.  Have not had much time to work on it and I work in my garage trying to use natural sunlight but it's been so cold and dreary lately that I've had not had the time I'd like to work on it.  Done in Unison pastels and NuPastels on Canson paper.

Sunflowers Oil Painting + Butterfly

So I decided to go ahead and work on that sunflower painting today!  Got a good start this morning and will start again tomorrow.  My wife and oldest daughter stopped by a field close to a place called the Agricenter here in Memphis and snapped some photos of these beautiful sunflowers when they were in full bloom.  They do this every year and each year I stop by and take a look and some photos.  Just happened to catch a nice butterfly leaving a flower.  Thought it would make a nice painting, so this morning I got to work and knocked it out.  Was fun to paint and have some more to do to it but putting paintings on my blog always makes me want to go back and do some more!  This is a 16x20 oil on canvas.                                                                          
         

Motivation to Paint (Lack of)

I am in one of those non-creative times in my life where I don't feel like starting a painting because I don't think it will be up to my standards, so I just don't start!  Life has been so busy with work and daughters starting to college and driving that I just don't have energy to paint right now.   My dream job would be to have a small art studio/gallery in some resort town and just paint all day and meet like minded people who enjoy art for art.   Who knows, maybe after posting this I will go home and paint tonight!  I have a oil painting started of some sunflowers that my wife and I took photos of a few weeks ago.  I got the background all blocked in but just can't seem to get started on the flowers.

Avenue of Oaks

Commission painting of "Avenue of Oaks", a beautiful place in South Carolina. .  A lot going on in this painting and trying to do justice to the moss that hangs from the branches.  When I first saw the image to paint from I thought of that scene from the movie Forrest Gump where he was running with his leg braces and they started falling off.  This photo of the painting was not the final product.  The painting got delivered before I took one last photo.  At first I thought this would be too busy of a subject to paint but it actually was a lot of fun and I enjoyed working on it.  I started off by blocking in light and dark areas with acrylic paint and just simplified the grass and trees concentrating on the play of light in the tree branches and the road.
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Avenue of the Oaks

    

Portrait of Megan

Working on portrait of my oldest daughter Megan. Trying to soften some edges and correct the placement of eyes and mouth. Teeth are very difficult to get right. I once saw  where a famous painter stated. "A portrait is a painting of someone with something wrong with the mouth". It has been fun to paint but I've tried to stay too tight and causes me not to work with thin paint. I tend to push around small bits of paint instead of laying down good mixed color. Oh well, something to work on.! I may do this same painting in pastel.

Pastel of my Grandmother Addie Wilkins

Pastel on Canson paper approximately 16x20.

I  took a portrait class from Daniel Green at his annual summer workshop in his home in North Salem NY back in 2005.   He demonstrated a pastel portrait one evening from a live model that I was absolutely mesmerized with.  I have been using his techniques of marking off the head into four equal sections, using Nupastels to lay in the drawing and then working from dark to light with softer pastels.  I did this painting 4 or 5 years ago and have learned so much since then.  This was a quick painting to give my mother for Christmas.  My grandmother has since passed away but this painting hangs in my mom's home for her to remember how special and loving my grandmother was.  I also have my grandfather posted in this blog in another post.  We miss you MawMaw!

Redo of Abby

 Redo of the portrait of Abby. Spent a long time on this one!

Pastel of Don

Started this pastel of my step father. Haven't done a pastel in awhile. Was really fun getting back into it.

Pastel of Abby

Pastel on canson: Work in progress of my youngest daughter Abby. Doing the pastel as a study for an oil painting to come later.  Plan to paint all three daughters again. I have been studying with a very talented artist here in Memphis named Frank Morris who does astounding work.

http://www.frankmorrisportraits.com

My current goal is to become better at judging values and edges.

Cotton bolls

Oil 14x18: It "cotton pickin" time here in the south (Memphis area) and you find cotton everywhere. My wife decided to pick some cotton bolls branches and make an arrangement in a vase. This is my composition of the arrangement.  I couldn't pass up a chance to paint something that you just take for granted around here.  My mom has worked in the cotton business for about 50
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years.

Red Flowers (picked)

11x14 (canvas)  Reworked:  I just didn't like the last post of the red flowers on a summer day. Never got them to look like i wanted so I just (picked) them out and made it a field of smaller flowers!  I may try using the palette knife in the future for looser flowers as suggested on WetCanvas in the landscape forum.