NEW LOOK and NEW BEGINNING

When I added the logo's for the three new art guilds that I have joined recently I discovered that two of them were predominately black...that presented a little problem as the background to my blog was black.  I enjoyed the BLACK while I had it...my paintings look great against the black, but I wanted the logo's...thus the change.  CHANGE IS GOOD...I've changed my style...so, why not mix things up a bit on my blog...:)  Hope it isn't too shocking for you all!  Green...seems fine with all the trees and nature things I love to paint so much!

I am excited about doing figures for a little while.  I started it because I want to enter a show titled "Women in art" or something similar for one of my new guilds; Ken Caryl (a great group of people by the way)...and now I'm fascinated to see how I can fuse this with my new way of working...FUN STUFF!

I was searching around for more subject matter...my kids will be among them...but I'm still deciding which reference photos to use for them...SO, in the meantime I began to think about just what other figures I want to use.  A wonderful artist, writer, crafter and blogger I have met through blogging is Alisa Burke.  Alisa is one of the most inspiring people I've come across in the blogging world.  She is so full of energy and ideas...and she's beautiful, and a wonderful artist to boot.  As I've been following her blog I notice that she is also an incredible photographer as well...and, she often poses for the camera to display some of the incredible creative things she makes...and I like a lot of her poses...SO, I wrote her and asked if I could use her figure as reference for a painting or two.  Alisa; being also very generous, gave me a wholeheartedly positive response saying I could use anything...even asked if she could help in any way...THAT'S what I love about artists...most are so generous! I'm never afraid to show you my process...as it IS in process...because as we all know it can work or we can use it as a learning experience as we try again!  That is the beauty of what we do!  I remain committed to letting you all in on my journey as it unfolds for me...hoping you can be inspired as well as hopefully learn from my hits as well as my misses!  Let's see which. This will be! FUN!

SO, thank you Alisa...I've started a background for one of the poses I chose...your beautiful San Diego was the inspiration for the background.  It is loosely based on the beautiful skies when the sun is setting...along the beach...I began by applying flexible modeling paste to the entire surface of this stretched gallery wrap canvas and then tinted the whole thing with a dark mixture of purple and brown and then added my color on top...leaving some to show underneath.

My next step will be to consider what paper I want to add, where, and how...and only then will it be time to sketch the basic figure on top of that...I LOVE the tilt of her head in this and the slight angle in her scarf (that I may exaggerate a bit)...and those pleats...yummm!! You can see here that Alisa doesn't have any feet...well, I'm a gonna use her feet from another pic of course!! FUN DOINS!

Follow along as I go step by step with this exciting new experiment!