Sassy Pig, sold.

*sold*
Sassy is a South American terracotta piggy. She's wearing lipstick.

Tiny Elephant

This tiny wooden elephant sits on our kitchen windowsill, guarding the tea canister. When we were first married, my husband went on a round-the-world cruise on the USS Carl Vinson and brought home treasures from everywhere. I'll be painting tiny portraits of some of them in the months ahead, as they are perfect subjects for daily paintings.

This is a 5x7.

Mr Shorb and Calvin Klein

I shot several pictures of this little 6x6 and they are all totally glare-smacked. It's too dark to reshoot so I'll give you an apology to go with your painting today.

This is Mr Shorb in a CK tie. Mr Shorb was our model this week and this painting was mainly about reflected light.

The light side is pretty bleached out. The shadow side, while still white, is just about the same color-value as the background drape.

When painting, the artist brings knowledge to the task but should allow observation to make the final decisions. When what you see doesn't match what you know, trust what you see.

Before I Fly

Before I fly off to other projects, I need to post a further working of the Stolen Beauty. Still a sketch but a little less sketchy. I do like to come back to unfinished paintings, with fresh eyes and ideas. I'm trying not to do that with sketches so much, though, as it defeats the purpose.

Stolen Beauty

This angel sketch is a demo, teaching how to quickly and accurately sketch out and block in a design, and also a lesson in light and shadow.

As always, as soon as I see the blog post, I want to make corrections to the painting, but it serves the original purpose adequately enough.

I called it Stolen Beauty because the demo was done from a calendar, so it's from someone else's photograph and therefore copyrighted. I can't use it for anything except a demonstration, but that's all I wanted it for so it's a crime without a victim.

I have been employed, since my return, with expanding my studio space and, while I'm thrilled with that job, I am missing the blogosphere and my peeps. I keep thinking that things will slow down but I'm beginning to think that that will require applying the brakes.