Watercolor Art Society - Houston (WASH)

I am so honored that juror, Judy Morris, chose this painting for a Merit Award ($200) in the 32nd Annual International Exhibition of 2009!

  The Show will be up until April 3, 2009.  The Beautiful new WAS-H building is located at Alabama and Mendell.  Hope you get by to see it as it is wonderful show.

First Annual all Figures Art Crawl

Come out and see all the great art!

More abstract experiments!

This is one of the last ones I did in the workshop.  I still have two in progress, one on paper and one on a 36"X 48 Canvas. Will try to get photos and post them later or tomorrow.   I had a great week and liked most of what I produced.  The process seemed more fun to me this time so maybe I'm catching on! LOL!

Virginia Cobb Workshop

Today is the last day of the workshop so gotta go but here are two of my favorites that I did so far.

I'm taking Virginia Cobb's workshop this week at Studio in the Woods here in The Woodlands.  It is very fun so far just as it was last year. She has a way of opening up the idea of abstract painting in a way that makes it understandable and accessible that I have never gotten before. Great class, wonderful teacher!  I will try to post some photos of my work tomorrow.

Saturday Morning Model Session

We had a great new model yesterday. It's always fun to have someone new to draw.  This is just one of the sketches I did.

Still unfinished!

I was hoping to finish this painting of our wonderful model George, but I could only stay an hour and a half before I went to my critique group so I will have to finish from my photo on my monitor.  Almost like being there.  Much better than just a printed photo anyway.

Saturday Model session

This is a pose that I transferred to an 8"X 8"  panel (mounted on wood frame)from a sketch I did in Saturday's model session.  I had planned to finish it out as an oil painting but I took it to my critique group yesterday and everyone there thought I should just leave it as is.  This is just what I intended to be the underpainting.  I was so looking forward to painting on it!  I will live with it a bit and see if I can resist. 

Wednesday and Thursday's Efforts

This is another area of the "Patron's Courtyard" portrait mural.  I've been working on this family for the last two days. Not finished obviously and missing one of the subjects who is on another board. 

  The portraits are catagorized by the size of the head from chin to hairline.  These are quite a bit bigger than the Hometown hero portrait of Tuesday.  HTH portraits are 3" and these are actually 5" so they take longer to do. 

   I find painting portraits in acrylic very difficult because the paint is hard to blend so I have taken to putting layer over layer until it looks right.  I know there are blending mediums and slow drying mediums but since the portraits are so exposed to the elements I like to try to keep them as pure as possible in hopes they will last better. When they are finished I coat them with a sealer.

Tuesdays work

This is one of the "Hometown Heros" from this past year.  It's acrylic on plywood prepared with gesso. I didn't finish his shirt yet because part of it is on another board that is usually installed next to this one and I want the paint to match on both sides.

   Hurricane Ike destroying the huge tent like cover over the Mitchell Pavilion which is now being repaired.  During the remodeling the 8 mural boards were removed to make way for the heavy equipment passage.  This is such a wonderful opportunity for me because I now get to bring the boards home to my studio and actually work inside to paint and restore them!  I have three now and have spent quite a bit of time mostly cleaning and resealing them and am now getting down to the fun part of getting caught up on the portraits.  Fortunately the boards were not damaged in the hurricane but the elements have taken their toll on the acrylic paint over the years.  I have until May to restore them before they have to be reinstalled.  Okay, back to work!