Sing It

Mixed Media

The words in this painting are intentionally backwards. Making it more challenging for you to participate with this person in a solitary moment crying out the music he privately listens to.

Intro to Arcylic Painting Workshop

Acrylic paint on wood

For the Intro to Acrylic Panting workshop I taught at the Chester County Art Association I created these paintings for the How to Paint with a Palette Knife lesson.

Inspired by William Blake's Eternity

Oil and Acrylic on Canvas

Inspired by William Blake's poem, Eternity

He who binds to himself a joy 
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise

The background painting, before the hand and butterfly was painted in, was a lot of fun to do.

Temporarily, I was a little sad to paint over it.

Learning Corel Painter 2015

My first attempt to create "something" in Corel Painter. With only 10 minutes of watching video tutorials and playing around with the program I dived into the program trying to create a painting. I struggled with understanding the dynamics of the paintbrushes and was really lost on why the paintbrush would keep it's "dirty color." Obviously, making it very challenging to paint since I did not know what color my brush mixed into or how to "clean the brush." Furthermore, I naively expected Corel Painter to have similar keyboard shortcuts and tools than Photoshop.

Please note that these are not a complaints,  just observed reactions and part of my learning "as I go" process.

A detail of the concluded effort on the head of the cherub.

This old master drawing was my guide while painting the sketch.

Underpainting - Young Girl

Acrylic under-painting on Canvas

Painting of Fear

7" x 11", Acrylic on watercolor paper

Let's play with color!

An oil painting I began recently. A lot of opposites are happening in this painting. Cool colors and lighting of the sky against the warm colors of the woman's face created by the candle. Is the windy exterior blowing out the candle or is the woman?

So far, this painting has one and a half coats of oil paint. After the first layer of paint has been blocked in and dried, I render the background as well as possible before I begin the second coat of paint onto the figure. Typical painting takes up to three and a half coats of paint to achieve the quality I desire.

The intitial sketch for the painting above.

An experiment in acrylic

Occasionally, I like to make a mess and try to incorporate a figure within the mess. Sometimes it works.

I started out with layering washes of acrylic trying to achieve unique brush strokes similar to illustrator, Sam Weber. It didn't happen. But, the portrait turned out OK. It was an experiment.