Autumn Leaves II

This commission is complete, unless someone wants to give additional critique. The last steps of the painting were to add some leaf groupings. The leaves are really too far away to be seen individually, but we perceive them more as shapes and color. The birch tree was added in the front picture plane with its bright white look in the sunlight and gray shadows.

New Card Designs

Ahh. Time just to sit and let the ideas flow! Just before Christmas, I got the opportunity to put my hand made cards in a downtown stationery store, so I am designing as many as I can while there is some quiet. It is my plan to put unique designs there from my cards at LibertyTown.

It has also been great to get back into my oil paints. I'll have more about my latest work in oil in future posts.

Below are some test prints for the blocks in the top picture. I will be printing in multiple colors and doing some hand painting of the blocks so that the images are colorful and fun.

Progress on Portrait and Landscape

I've tweaked "Cutie-Pie" and gotten a more accurate photo of the actual colors in the portrait. I used Maimeri-blu oil paints in cadmium green, vermillion deep, cadmium orange, burnt sienna and burnt umber and Windsor blue, red shade, Grumbacher flake and titanium white.



The fall picture also got a second layer of color today. I'm using a similar palette to the portrait, with the addition of Windsor blue, green shade, Windsor yellow and permanent rose, and Maimeri-blu naples yellow. I also usually use flake white only when painting portraits because of its warmer tint for lighter skin types.

The next layer will likely be the last and will see the addition of more detail, including the birch tree in white and grays, which should stand off nicely in the foreground.

A Little Bit of This... A Little Bit of That

How nice to have a bit of quiet to begin planning some painting projects! I have begun to do that even as I finish up some commissioned work and hang a show of student work at LibertyTown.

We opened the show of work by students of LT teachers on Friday to a wonderfully enthusiastic crowd. The weather was mild and recent First Night festivities didn't keep all of our regular visitors away. Here is the work of a few of my students from 2008 on the right hand side of the arched entrance to my studio. (The painters of the cardinal and the peppers are not my students.)



On Saturday, I resumed my regular teaching schedule after a break for the holidays, and when that was done, began work on a portrait that had been commissioned in early December. It was fun to paint such a cutie! With a little tweaking, I think I am done with it and will show it to the commission-er this week. It is painted on a 5 x 5 canvas in oil. I had a hard time getting a picture that did not wash out the skin tones too much. The portrait has more color in the face than this picture shows.


I got another request for a fall picture, and so worked in oil on a small canvas, also 5 x 5, of a fall scene in the Fredericksburg area. My mother took the photo when she was visiting us one October. My underpainting is a dark green, and this is the first layer of paint with the background colors of the leaves blocked in. When this layer dries, I will add in the actual leaves in golds, reds, oranges and greens and add a white birch tree on the right just in front of the dark trunk you see here. I will also add touches here and there of the sky which can be seen behind the tree in the photo.

Commissioned Piece, Finished

The piece is ready for delivery after attaching a ribbon or piece of leather for hanging. I etch with an awl on the back of each finished painting on slate with the date and: slate recovered from St. George's Church, Fredericksburg, VA.

Commissioned Piece

A friend commissioned this piece for a mutual friend of ours. Since the receiver of the gift is a native Fred Girl and a member of St. George's, it seemed appropriate.

What you see here is a stage somewhere in the middle of the piece. I have drilled a hole in it for hanging and printed the image from one of my hand cut blocks onto the slate in white acrylic paint. The sky is blue, as it always should be during the day in Camelot, and a Carl's ice cream cone has begun to appear in the left hand corner.

Pendants' Progress

I'm still finishing details on my new pendants --evidenced by the flag flying on above-- but I'm happy with these first attempts. I try to let the shape of the small pieces of slate suggest what I will paint on them. Several broke in this curved way, so they seemed to me to need beads painted on them. I am stringing them on a relatively fine cotton cord and adding glass, porcelain and wooden beads (which I had way too much fun shopping for!) Anna also donated some beautiful, large, iridescent glass beads to the cause. They are great because their holes are large enough for a double strand of the cord to pass through. Thanks, Anna.

I'm hoping to have a few finished slate pendants to debut this weekend at the open house. I could spend all my time doing these fun little pieces. Someone must remind me that I have a commissioned portrait that I need to be working on!