Productive Weekend

It feels good to get things done. After spending quite a bit of time on this painting over the weekend, I feel that it is near completion. I'm really enjoying how it's coming along! I have quite a few that I want to get finished before the St Paul Art Crawl (which is the 29th...eeek, less than 2 weeks). So hopefully this productivity will continue to flow!

The Average American

As I am doing portraits of different types of people, I am sure to create some portraits that may offend. But I guess art shouldn't necessarily be easy to swallow. For so many reasons, obesity is a major problem especially in this country, so it is a type I definitely could not omit. This painting is based on a picture I took of a woman at the MN State Fair. As always, I am not using her face for the portrait.

First sketch:

And a bit more time into it:

Animal Celebrities

And the beautiful Rudy makes an appearance:

The dude needed a dog.

The Homeless

I didn't make the March 31st 11:59 PM deadline...but this work was done in March - I promise. I set a goal for myself, which I didn't meet...but I got sort of close with starting this new one the other day and working on it a bit tonight. I did a sketch a while ago for it:

Based on Pity the Sorrows of a Poor Old Man by Theodore Gericault:

Rough sketch of the painting composition:

Slow and Steady

Spring time in my life has been incredibly busy. March has flown by mostly because I've been working a lot of overtime recently. Good for the savings account, bad for the painting production. I am, however, almost done with this gem - and my my my it's taken a while :

The lighting in my studio sucks, so I'll get better images soon. My favorite part has to be this negative space her body creates:

Thanks to my beautiful friends for lending me their body and face for this piece!

Art Crawl is in exactly a month, and I'm hoping to have a few more done. So...here we go!

Done, done, on to the next one!

Life imitating art

I've been working on this sickly/medicated concept painting for quite a while. No wonder why I woke up this morning with a fantastic cold. So I took the opportunity today to catch up on some much needed rest and painting. I think this one is almost done. Just a few finishing touches are needed after this coat has dried. This is becoming one of my favorite faces so far:

And a close-up of a mighty fine hand:

Once the paint thinner dries I'll get much better images up...