Carly

Carly posed for us last night and I really enjoyed painting her. I also tried out a new support. It is a canvas board by Raymar and I absolutely loved it. I cannot wait to use these supports again. If you live in the States you probably already know about this product, but here in Canada it is new to me. I highly recommend the supports; I ordered them directly from Raymar.

Border Crossing

I have been working on this painting for the last couple of weeks. I took the photo of it outside and ended up with a lot of glare, (the sky is really more blue than green) it must be all that snow outside reflecting back on it. I found as I worked on this painting that the more details I edited out the happier I was with it. It was a difficult composition to work with because the overpass split the painting in half. I may go back to this piece after it has sat for a bit.

Cory

Last night at my portrait group, the daughter of one of the painters modeled for us. She is a gorgeous girl and I am not sure I quite captured how striking she really is. I wished I had just a little more time on this one. I felt it was just starting to come together when our session was finished. Hopefully Cory will model for us again sometime.

Toronto Skyline

This painting is of the Toronto Skyline. I used a really limited palette and resisted the urge to include too much detail. I am quite happy with the result. I may play with this image again, just changing up the palette to see what happens.

Sunshine Blog Award

I want to thank Trish Seigel and Carolyn Finnell for giving me the Sunshine Blog Award. Once you receive this award you are to post it on your blog and then pass it on to 12 other bloggers with links to their sites. Here are my 12 fabulous nominees:

1. Lisa Daria

2. Catherine Jeffrey

3. Last Cup of Coffee

4. Robin Cheers

5. Dreama Tolle Perry

6. Julie Hill

7. Karen Appleton

8. Ann Gorbett

9. Judy Mackey

10. Tony Allain

11. Leslie Saeta

12. Claire Kayser

Portrait of Karin Jurik for the Thank You Project

This is my portrait of Karin Jurik for the Thank You Project that Jill Polsby organized. Jill contacted as many of the 180 artists that participated in Karin's Different Strokes for Different Folks year end portrait challenge as she could and supplied each of us with a photo of Karin. We were all sworn to secrecy and asked to paint Karin and send a photo of the painting to Jill. Jill compiled all the portraits into a book that has been sent to Karin. Please check out Jill's blog for a link to see all the fabulous portraits that were produced.

Study of Bernie

This is my effort from last night's portrait group. I struggled with this one. There was a light right over me that was causing a lot of glare. I found when I removed my painting from the easel what I had looked different once that light was gone. Not sure about this one - but I did enjoy evening and the process of painting so I guess that makes it a success.

Untitled Portrait

Here is my effort from last night's portrait group session. I found this fellow a real challenge to paint, but finally ended up with a fairly good likeness of him.

Highway Series #1

This is actually the third painting I have done based on this subject matter, but the first since deciding it would make a nice series. Most of this series I see in a larger format, but thought I would get the paint flowing on a smaller scale first before I start tackling my larger supports.