My portrait group is having a show at the Side Door Gallery at Dexter Picture Frame Co. in Dexter. The show. About Face,  will be up from February 24- April 10, 2010 and we’ll have a reception on Friday, March 19th from 6-8 pm. I have 3 pastel portraits in the show. There will be a lot of interesting portraits in various mediums and some of the models will be attending the reception. It should make for a fun evening. Stop by if you can make it!

Pastel portrait of a woman reading

Pastel painting 8.5 inches x 11 inches   $300

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

One rainy day down south we were trapped inside, so I did this pastel portrait of my sister. She made the perfect model because she was so engrossed in her book that she hardly moved an inch.

I really like doing pastel paintings on Kitty Wallis paper. It is a very rough sanded paper and eats up a lot of your precious pastels, but it is a wonderful surface to create interesting marks on. I think I work with a bit more expression on this paper.

We are having a portrait show soon and I will post that information in a few days.

Pastel portrait painting of a man in profile

Pastel painting 11 inches x17 inches   $300

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

We had a great pastel figure drawing session this afternoon. Our scheduled model didn’t show, but we were very lucky that Jack lives nearby and could run over to help us out.  We’ve all drawn him many times and you think we’d pine for someone new. But Jack is a great model and has such an interesting face. The more we paint his portrait, the better we are able to capture his unique look.

This pastel painting is one of my favorite portraits ever. I think I caught Jack’s likeness but I also like the painterly effect I was able to achieve.

Jack told me his friends all over the country check out my blog to see his portraits. Hi all!

Pastel Portrait of a man resting on a couch.

Pastel painting 9 inches x 5 inches     $80

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Felt bad that I had to miss my figure drawing class today so I thought I’d post a recent pastel painting that I did of my husband. I’ve captured him in his usual pose: watching TV from the couch. None of my family will pose for me anymore so I have to catch them when they are doing something else. I have hundreds of sketches of John in this position. I always joke that if I ever get famous, when I die the curators will look through my past work, and marvel at this reoccurring model. “This figure seems to have a deep and profound meaning in her work. Obviously he is a muse who she felt the need to recapture over and over in her paintings.” HA! Although he is immensely important to me, he also is the only free model who will stay still long enough!

Thanks for putting up with me, sweetie!

Pastel portrait of an elderly woman in a hat.

Pastel painting 11 inches x17 inches   $300

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Betty made a great portrait model at our pastel figure drawing session this afternoon. At first I was worried about the view I had, with her hat obscuring most of her face. But after working on it for awhile, I really started liking the unusual angle I had.

Pastel portrait of a man with cap.

Pastel painting 12 inches x17 inches   $300

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Its been a while since I’ve been able to attend my pastel figure drawing session. With the holidays and travel, I always ended up skipping it. It was great to get back in the groove this week. We are going to mount a portrait exhibition in late February at the Side Door Gallery at the Dexter Picture Frame Shop. Our fearless leader thought it might be a good idea for the artists to act as models for the next couple of weeks. Jim is a fine watercolor artist and was the first hardy soul to volunteer. We all loved his jaunty cap and serious expression.

Watercolor painting of an older woman relaxing at the pool

Watercolor painting 6 inches x 5 inches       $80

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We will be taking a trip down south soon and I thought I would post some of the  watercolor paintings I’ve done on previous trips. Although I spend a lot of time plein air painting at interesting landscape and architecture locations in Florida, I must admit that I also spend a fair amount of time lounging at the pool. I always feel guilty just relaxing (its part of my workaholic syndrome) so I bring my watercolors down with me and quickly paint unsuspecting victims. Its almost like figure drawing class!

Pastel portrait painting of a woman in a red beret

Pastel painting 10 inches x15 inches   $300

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One more pastel figure drawing from our session on Monday afternoon. I tried to incorporate what I learned in the workshop last weekend. I worked on seeing the warm and cool colors and creating a strong underlying structure. With the family “quilt” of watercolor paintings that I have been working on lately, I really feel buried in portraits. I am ready to move on to other projects for a while. I find it helpful to move back and forth between subjects. It keeps me looking closely and stops me from getting too complacent with a certain technique.

Pastel portrait painting of a young woman in profile

Pastel painting 10 inches x15 inches   $300

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

This is my final portrait from the class I took with Vianna Szabo. Wouldn’t say it is an exact likeness but I think it is an interesting pastel figure drawing. Vianna encouraged us to use warm and cool colors and also showed us how to use a no-odor thinner to create a dynamic underpainting. I learned a lot from the class and now I will work toward incorporating her tips into my everyday painting.

Small pastel portrait painting of a young girl in profile

Pastel painting 4 inches x 6 inches   $80

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Our Pastel Portrait class this weekend with Vianna Szabo was wonderful! She started out with some basic but essential tips on how to draw the head using axis lines and went on to give mini lessons in drawing the eye, nose and mouth. She did an amazing pastel figure drawing demonstration using her beautiful daughter as a model. It was inspiring but also quite daunting! She has such an excellent eye for capturing form, light and color. Our first task was to create a small sketch of the model using our chosen color palette. We were not to work for a likeness, but more of a form and color guide for our larger portrait to come.

Watercolor portrait painting painted from life of an african american male model.

Watercolor portrait of african american male painted on yupo paper.

2 Watercolor paintings   each 6 inches x 9 inches       $100

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

I decided to step outside my “pastel box” this weekend at our figure drawing session. I’d been getting pretty comfortable with my pastel portrait painting approach and I  wanted to force myself to work differently. I grabbed my watercolor painting bag and a bunch of yupo paper and just went with the flow. Luckily we had a great model (very handsome and built!). That is always inspiring….

I limited myself to only 3 colors: Ultramarine blue, alazarin crimson and yellow ochre. I find that I can mix almost any color I need with these 3 hues, and the result tends to be more “unified” than when I use a whole slew of colors…

Pastel portrait of an stately older woman.

Pastel painting 10 inches x 13 inches   $200

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

Hot off the presses from yesterday’s pastel figure drawing class! Our sessions last about 3 hours with frequent breaks. Just long enough to keep me from completely overworking the sketch. I had missed a week when we were on vacation and was really anxious to get back to portraits. But every time I looked out the window and saw the perfect 65-degree autumn day, I wished I was outside doing pastel landscapes.

Ahhhhh….so many paintings….So little time….

This is my 200th blog posting! I can’t believe I’ve made that many paintings and stuck to it this long. I recommend it highly. It FORCES you to paint and, by default, you improve!