Hipbone

Hipbone Studio is a great way to spend a winter Wednesday afternoon (it's always warm for the nude models) to draw or paint from life. Emilie, our model, was lovely in a young Marlene Dietrich kind of way. I especially liked the umbrella, walking nude in the rain is so Portland! As usual, we started with one minute warm ups, then 5 minutes, 15 minutes then some longer poses. I used micron pens for sketching, then added acrylic paint.

Layers

Two paintings developed from the William Park workshop. For the less successful ones, the choices are to just keep on going to develop or "fix" it, paint over it to become something else, or save it as a reminder of your learning process. I did a complete paint over of one of the paintings of a river based on a value study by Celeste Bergin posted on her blog. Hers was mainly in grays and vertical, I used a horizontal format and added warm and cool colors. The layers are mostly thin glazed layers, with some of the color and texture of the original painting showing through.

The eye peeking through a veil was started on the first day of the workshop. At first there were abstract lines and shapes, a round form became an eye, and a bit of blue was added. Other layers gradually transformed it. It reminds me of a dream of a bride with a veil, torn Japanese paper collages, the misty waterfalls of the Columbia Gorge, rain.

Workshop day 5

On the last day of the William Park workshop I worked on my larger canvas portraits of Fred, 20" x 24" and 30" x 40". It was great to work larger after so many small pieces, working larger uses more of your body with energy and feels like an immersion into the space of the painting. It was really interesting to see the development over days. Nothing is finished, maybe there will be more crows or fish, colors change, everything will evolve!

Workshop day 3

Day three was working on and developing previous images. Things changed, for better or worse. I went back and forth looking for what was calling out for change, piling on paint in thin glazes or thick with white. Fred has many manifestations, he is a dancer, an actor, a trucker, old, young, he wears shirts of many colors. Birds come and go. No expectations.

Workshop day 2

On Day 2 of the workshop more color was added to previous paintings and we had a model, Fred. I worked on watercolor paper with thinned acrylic paint and an ink pen. Some of these studies will be developed further, some are just what they are.