Lauren

Lauren, Photoshop

It was really fun to paint this digitally, because if you understand how to read the RGB sliders in Photoshop, you can mix colors in seconds flat. It would have taken me two to three times as long to do this traditionally with oil, and I'm not sure if the result would have been better.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking oil or abandoning it as a medium. I just had to finish this painting as fast as I could, as I had to leave the workshop early to watch the new Harry Potter movie. Haha!

Crystal

Four hours. 11" x 14".

Christine

Four hours. 11" x 14". I am often afraid to paint the entire figure - hence all the portraits - but I really should be more confident of my abilities. I'll endeavor to tackle more of these from now on... they're actually pretty fun to do.

Keziah

Twenty-fives.

Lynda

Fives and twenty-fives.

Christine

Fives and twenty-fives.

Mike

Twenties.

Quante

Twenties. Some of the drawings are flipped - meaning, I tried to work out the pose as if I would be seeing it from the opposite side of the room, without actually walking over there. Looking back at these, I can't remember which were the originals...

Malo

Twenties.

Brant

Twenty-fives.

Amy

Twos, fives, a ten, and twenty-fives. I tend to get bored during the twenty-fives nowadays. I'm not exactly sure why, but I guess the reason why I prefer shorter poses is because I move my hand faster out of necessity, and doing so makes me I feel as if I'm conducting an orchestra or waving a magic wand. Or something similarly cheesy like that. I guess another way of putting it is that I end up feeling the natural rhythm and flow of the sketch. Whenever that happens, my drawings usually turn out well.

It's too difficult for me to reproduce that sort of experience and sensation with longer poses. I'm sure there's a way; I just haven't stumbled upon it yet.

Pasadena Plein Air

Various sizes, from 5" x 7" to 9" x 12". These four were all done in under 1.5 hours last weekend at a plein air workshop with Bill Perkins and company. Thanks guys, for being so friendly.

Our goal was to focus on color relationships to help establish the time of day and the atmosphere of a scene. Rendering was largely thrown out because the short time frame necessitated a focus on the big picture. In other words, since your main light source - the sun - is moving, you have to paint just as fast, if not quicker.

I mixed with a larger palette than I was used to for these exercises. I'm not accustomed to seeing so much chroma in my work.