Smith on her Shoes

The painting is a "redo" of an earlier painting that didn't quite work for me. There was enough about it that I liked so I kept it for several years and would occasionally take a look at it to see if anything struck me as a possible improvement. It finally dawned on me that it needed drastic action. I changed the tutu from white to black, repainted the background and foreground, worked more detail into the hands and feet and re-cropped the piece from a 30x40 to a 20x40. Most every square inch was repainted. I'm offering the companion life drawing to the buyer of the painting. Email me for a price quote.

Ch-ch changes

Finished this painting several months ago but decided to go back in and make some changes. Search my blog a few weeks back for a look at the earlier example. Took out some of the shadow in the foreground, added some of the wheat grass and made some very minor changes to the building. I'm not positive, but I think the back of this building showed up in a recent episode of "The Walking Dead". I know they have filmed here before(Haralson, GA) and I saw a roof line that looked just like this one. 16x20...currently displayed in Newnan at Fine Lines Framer and Gallery.

Good From Any Angle

"Good from any angle" is what I call a great pose. My drawing class circles the model stand...a great pose looks good to everybody. Sometimes those poses can be difficult to hold for 15 or 20 minutes. The drawings shown here are gesture drawings..2 minutes each but sometimes we try to recreate a good gesture pose in our longer poses. Alex P did that for us for us last night with the 2nd sketch above. These gestures are drawn on newsprint with graphite...two per 18x24 paper.

Stranger in Town

Artist and friend, James S, posed for my drawing class a while back as a cowboy. He even brought a CD of music from the great spaghetti westerns, very cool. I recently sold one of the drawings that I did that night and it inspired me to look back over my drawings and photo reference. I found this one, only he did not have guns or gun belt. I kept the colors warm and threw in a simple indication of a town. 16x20 oil on panel.

Fashion Studies

Often, when I have time that I'm not working on commissions, I go back to an earlier interest, fashion illustration. I came within a hair of going in to that profession back in the early 80's when I got out of art school. I'm still inspired by great fashion illustrators of the past and some recent books on the subject are giving them a nice stage on which to be shown. These studies are done fairly quickly...30-45 minutes usually. Mixed media...conte, pastel and oil on bristol board. These three are inspired by Avedon and Hiro photos.

Final

Details finished, background finished and signed. I'll hang it in the studio and live with it a while to make sure I'm really done. Current title, "Requiem's Repose". 24x30 oil on canvas.

Stage Two

Progress on the painting of Christina K involves mainly blocking in the background underpainting. Establishing the basic, neutral, color to get an idea of how the final will look. Additional work in the tutu is also shown.