Portrait Class at the Portsmouth Arts Guild

My portrait class at the Portsmouth Arts Guild will be starting next Wednesday morning,October 7,  9AM-noon. It's a class that's geared to people who are beginners or intermediate, so if you've wanted to try portrait painting but don't know how to start, this is a good class to learn. We work from live models each week, with a limited palette. Oils and acrylics.

Garden Clubs Art in Bloom

It's nice to be back- our computer crashed and has spent the last week and a half the Apple store being fixed. It's felt like missing an arm!
Last week I was part of a show and anniversary celebration held by the Rhode Island Federation of Garden Clubs. Fifteen pieces of art, mostly paintings, were interpreted by an equal number of floral designers. Above is my painting "Forsythia" and the interpretation by talented floral designer Candace Morgenstern. (It was held in the greenhouse at Roger Williams Park in Providence, hence all the palm trees in the background. Makes it a bit hard to isolate the floral piece.) It was fun being part of this and seeing how Candace interpreted what I painted, as well as seeing the other fourteen pieces.
(And I guess they liked my piece because it made the front page of the newsletter!)

The painting is oil on canvas, 20" x 20" unframed, and is for sale. Email me if you're interested.

Portrait class at PAG

Next week I start teaching a 2 week portrait drawing class at the Portsmouth Arts Guild, a warm up for the portrait painting class to follow (although you don't have to sign up for both!) It's on Wednesday mornings, and it's always a good time. All levels, even beginners, so don't wait to sign up. I promise not to make anyone draw eyeglasses, even if they're cute blue ones.

Meadow with goldenrod

Oil on canvas, approx. 7" x 14"
Trying to take advantage of the waning days of summer to do some landscape painting. This was painted at my new favorite wildlife refuge on a gray, slightly foggy morning. The color's not quite right in this photo, but it's as close as I could get.

Think Pink- sold

Oil, 6" x 6"
'nuff said.

Nockum Hill Fields- sold

Oil, 8" x 10"
Funny how you can live somewhere a long time and still not know all the little tucked away places. I just discovered the Rayner Wildlife Refuge aka Nockum Hill in Barrington and spent a lovely couple of undisturbed hours there painting this road through the farm fields.

Painting plein air - sold

"Hazy day in Middletown" oil, 11x14- sold
I'm actually pretty happy with this one, painted yesterday morning. And the opening for the plein air group show in Newport is this Saturday night. I'll be there. The details:

Spring Bull Gallery, 55 Bellevue Ave., Newport RI
SpringBullGallery.com  401-849-9166

Opening Sept. 5, 5-7PM

Hollyhocks

So if you've liked the hollyhock paintings I've done recently, you can now get prints of them at Fine Art America. I have to say, I really like the way these look together. You can get them as notecards or framed pieces to hang on the wall, among other things. They look pretty cool as tote bags...

Show at Spring Bull Gallery

"Morning, Newport Harbor" oil, 8" x 10"- sold
Group show of Plein Air Paintings, opening Saturday, September 5 at the Spring Bull Gallery in Newport RI.

Sun and Shadow-sold

More hollyhocks!
I'm realizing more and more how important it is to paint wet into wet to get the look I want. But sometimes you have to walk away for an hour to let the paint get tacky, so you can put paint on top of wet paint without having it lift off. This seems to be most important with with transparent colors like alizarin crimson.

Skiff from above- sold

Oil, 6" x 6"
As seen at one of the many yacht clubs where I hang during the summer...

Pastel portrait

After not using pastels for a very long time, I decided to go back to them last night to do a portrait. I stopped using them because I didn't like the dust, they're a pain to frame, and they're fragile. But I've missed drawing, and the softness and ease of layering colors over one another to build up the image. My surface was a gray Canson paper. I'll probably be doing more of these in the future.