Monday, March 12, 2012

Portraits and Landscapes

This is a portrait -- actually a sketch completed in about two hours-- I painted at M. Reznik's portrait session at All Saints Church.  At these sessions the model often has as a background a pale green wall behind her.  Some compensation from all the dull tones is the warm light source , shining from the lower right of the model.  These sessions are really helpful to those of us who wish to keep up our portrait skills.  Since I am currently teaching portraiture in Wickford (at the Wickford Art Association) these sessions force me to practice what I preach about beginning procedures, keeping to the larger masses, saving the struggle with detailed features for the last.

A couple of weeks ago, I braved some cool weather to paint a landscape.  This was at Arnold's Neck which boasts a rail bridge:

The Bridge is particularly interesting at low tide when some mud and a few rocks protrude as perches for gulls.  I pitched the whole key as if it were a snow painting, since it was a bright but cool day.  I had done a few paintings of this Rail Bridge, but I think this one comes closest to the statement I wanted to make. (The painting is now on display at the Bristol Art Museum -- until next Sunday, March 18th.)