This painting is of last weeks model, a young girl, 16 I think, who seemed less than enthused to be there (like most 16 year olds) I think I captured that attitude so am fairly happy with the outcome, although there a few edges that are harder than I would like.


16"x20"
3 hour from life

It's nice to be able to exploit the strong diagnols and sharp lines of a Man's face in a painting. This particular 3 hour study from life shows just that.

The jaw, nose, forehead, eyebrows, cheek, and neck are all very angular hardly any curves at all.

Compare that to the study below of his wife who posed for us the week before he did, all the features are round and curvy, just how we like our women.

This angular V.S. round is a long used tool the artist has used to help establish gender in painting, or sculpture for that matter.

These two older

paintings really show this. Both of these paintings are of the same model, one by me, the other by a friend at class. Notice how the gender is ambiguous on the painting with the strong angles, the other, curvier painting, is definitely a female. This, I believe, creates more tension in the angular painting and therefore it is the stronger painting. Although more subtle, similar devices were used in the Mona Lisa, creating a more dynamic painting.

Although I've been concentrating mostly on human subjects lately, I thought I would share a picture of a great blue heron I painted not too long ago. This was the first painting I sold, and was a commisioned piece. I first provided the client with a charcoal sketch of the bird in the wild (as painted), and also one of a more "portrait" type shot of just the heron's head and feathers in what looked like a glamor pose.












Oil 18"x14"

A few months back I was in a small local art show, it was my first public showing of my works and I was pretty nervous putting myself out there like that, firsts tend to be like that. Surprizingly, I won two awards for two different paintings, here is one of them.
This oil painting was pretty hard for me to photograph correctly since the size is larger than I am used to. This is about 46" X 29" done in oils

I called this "Stark Ratio" because of the high contrast in values and also, the very soft dress is contrasted sharply with the very "manly" depiction of the features..is it a man..is it a woman, I thought that this ambiguousness would add tension...did it?... you tell me.

here is a recent two hour study created from life, it's 16X20. lovely girl, and I am pretty happy with the outcome, it is not technically perfect, but has an indescribable "mood" to it.