Latest Work
click for larger image Dr. Maya Angelou
30" x 43" oil on paper
Myself, being a mulatto adoptee to a white family, I knew I was "different" but my darker skin didn't matter to my parents and family, I was a welcome addition. Read more...
click for larger image Gordon Lightfoot
Sings The Edmund Fitzgerald
33" x 46" oil on paper
Work In Progress
These oil paintings are NOT complete, I am showing the stages of development.
click for larger image Felina of El Paso
20" x 24" oil on canvas
The drawing.
I was inspired by the Marty Robbins song "El Paso" and these are my renderings of Felina...or wicked Felina depending upon who you ask.
In this photo, I'm simply using a sharpened stick of umber Conte pastel and the palette is only
burnt umber and raw umber thinned down with turpentine. At this stage I am focusing just on light and dark shapes.
click for larger image Adding a bit more oil paint and naples yellow to the palette, but still fairly thinned down, I'm beginning to explore shades and realizing some big mistakes as well.
click for larger image Realizing that her shoulder and hand was totally out of proportion to the size of her head, I rubbed it out with some titanium white and let it dry completely. When dry I was able to re-work the shoulder, and when doing so it ended up shifting her breasts down too close to the bottom of the canvas.Yep, the emotional roller-coaster of creating art.
So to my disappointment, what may have been a beautiful nude...oh well. The up-side is that I got to render a lovley shoulder ruffle and perhaps that is the way it should be then.
I'm still struggling with her hand...I may have to get a live model for this part...I want it to be resting on her knee. I also plan to paint a beautiful red rose in Felina's hair, and somehow lightly depict Rosa's Cantina in the background. I'm hoping to finish this painting soon and do the song justice by including many of the emotions about Felina, naturally ofcourse making her eyes "blacker than night." Somehow though *sigh* I doubt I have the heart to make her wicked and evil, but definitely a beautiful Mexican maiden with exotic eyes.
click for larger image Girl in a Green Dress
20" x 24" oil on canvas
The underpainting.
I have actually done this painting this twice, and this is my second attempt at rendering skin tones. They don't know it yet, but this painting will be donated to the Children's Aid Society of Brant, when it is completed.
This a French style of underpainting called Grisaille and my palette is a monochromatic mixture of raw umber and titanium white. I wish I had taken some earlier photos, but what you are seeing in this photo is a dry underpainting where the skin is being tinted with a glaze of ultramarine blue. I am glazing with oil paint and turpentine only at this stage.
click for larger image
All that is left in the painting is the chair, some tonal adjustments in the arms and hands, and softening the hairline a little. I am not quite satisfied with the mouth either.
The question is, what is she seeing? Or, what is she thinking? I'll leave that up to you. For the skin tones, going clock-wize on my palette I used naples yellow, cadmium scarlet, lemon yellow, burnt sienna, french ultramarine blue, raw umber and titanium white...yes there is a reason why I place them in that order.
I can't stand the flesh-tint that you can buy pre-mixed, to me it is very dead and too pink-ish and I can never quite gray it down properly. I mix my own base skin tone using these colours and place large dollop of it in the center of my palette and tint it from there using the surrounding hues.
Practice, always practice.
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