Portrait of Dan Mitchell

I painted my father in law this summer, which was great because I seem to paint women most often, so it was a great change of pace. I'm going to have to re-post pictures, because I ended up fiddling with it a little more since I took this. It's 18x24, my usual oil on linen affixed to a board.

Master Copies

I've decided to start doing master copies to start learning more from master artists. I was going to order really high quality prints from The Art Renewal Center, but they ended up being really pricey, so I just ordered some from Allposters.com. My first is a 12x12 copy of Bougereau detail.

I'm working with a limited palette of white, black, raw umber, cad red, cad yellow, and ultramarine blue.

Portrait of my mother

Here's one I did a while ago, but haven't posted yet. My dad, about two years ago asked me to paint a portrait of my mother for him. He paid me with a shed. Of course my mom is a very busy woman and so it was at least a year after the shed was built that she finally came to sit for me.

Her request was that I paint her looking straight at the viewer, so that "the eyes will follow people around" Also, I painted it to correspond a portrait painted by my great- grandmother of my great-aunt Hannah. ( shown above, sorry for the glare)It is 16x20.

Here are a couple videos that my friend Sharon took while I was painting

Summer Atelier

This summer I attended the summer Atelier at The School of Representational Art in Chicago. The Atelier was two mornings a week, one with a model and one just to work on a still . I had attended there seven years ago and it was nice to see that nothing had changed and to reconnect with a few people.

Two unfinished paintings, each with approx. 15-20 hours of work into them. The zebra painting is 11x14 and the figure is 18x24. I should have been able to get it further along, but the model missed several days because of heat. The school is at the top floor of an old building and isn't air conditioned, not only that, the windows are closed and blacked out for light control and their is black fabric hung everywhere insuring that there won't be any air flow. But I'm a trooper and made it in every day and stood at my easel with sweat dripping down my back. Just to let you know how I suffer for my art, I also had to walk about 5 miles to and from train stations each day, uphill both ways barefoot,without a Starbucks in sight. Ok, not barefoot or uphill and I pass about a dozen Starbucks.

What I did on Summer Vacation

Well, it's been a busy summer, but a good one and I accomplished a number of things. I moved my studio, which I have mixed feelings about. I loved being in the artist community at Water Street Studios. It was great to be around other artists, to have people to talk to an lots of opportunities. However, my new place is a much more logical fit right now.

I've moved to a house that my husband and I own. It was the house we bought as newlyweds but then moved out of before our second child was born to a much bigger place a few blocks away. Anyway, for the past few years we've been renting it out since we were unable to sell it, but last year our tenants moved out and we decided not to be landlords anymore (since we kinda hated it). So rather than the property sitting empty and me paying rent somewhere else we consolidated.

The advantages are, hey it's a whole house, I have lots of room to spread out and the kids have plenty of room to run and play. Also, it is five blocks from my house, and Ty's school, which I really like.

My main studio area is 12x24, plus I have a room for storage, a room for all the kids play stuff, a reception/office room and of course a kitchen.