Kittens

It dawned on me that as many animals as I have painted I've never tried painting a kitten. I found this cute photo of two snuggling ones and knew I would use them as my models. What I wanted to capture was the softness of their fur. I also wanted them to appear so cute that the observer would want to pick them up to listen to their purring.

Card Players

I loved the pose of these two friends playing cards. Guess who has the better hand and is about to say "GIN"?

Farming Family

I guess I'm a farm girl at heart. I so enjoyed painting that last little girl on the farm, I had to do another farm theme. This time it's Mom, Dad, the three kids and their plow horse doing the work all together as a family. I think the kids are having the most fun in this scenario. It looks like hard work to me for the other three but I'm sure the fruits of their labor will be delicious corn on the cob for dinner.

Little Farm Girl

I love painting people and animals so I had it all with this subject. A little girl with her dog and her Dad plowing the field on their farm. It was lots of fun to paint!

First Haircut

In this painting I wanted to get the "look" just right on this little boy. Apprehension but not fear and his eyes had to say "I better not move a muscle". Hopefully, this is what the viewer will see and all the Mothers and Fathers who have taken their sons for a first haircut will remember the memory with a chuckle.

The Artist

Dick Blick had a sale on their acrylic brand of paints and you could buy 12 2oz. tubes for $33. Since I haven't used acrylic paint in years, my old tubes were as hard as rocks so this sounded like a good deal to me. For a couple of extra dollars I could also buy a chart that was designed to show you just what happens when each color is mixed in equal amounts with the rest of the colors in the chart line. Of course, I'm the proud owner of 12 colors and the chart has 40 colors. I got the feeling the acrylic painters don't like to mix much and would rather buy a bunch of premixed tubes. For my first project I wanted to do a 6x6 portrait of an interesting face. I chose a photo of an artist with a Beret who is standing in front of his painting. After penciling in the face onto the canvas board, I got to work with the acrylics. I think I painted 90% of the portrait before I started in oil. Acrylics are so fast drying and so opaque that the subject can be completed very quickly. I was ready for the application of oil in no time. I would guess that the finished work is 60% acrylic oil and 40% oil. I think this gentleman turned out quite handsome.

The Harvest

Harvest time on farms all around the country is a very intense working period in the lives of the farmers and their families. This is what this painting is all about. A family all working together to bring in their crop which is their livelihood to provide for the family.