"A Day of Art, Friends and Fun"

I had so much fun last Saturday in my studio. A group of 8 painters and one model joined together for a day of painting and drawing the human form. Our lovely model was brave, as temperatures hovered around 18 degrees and snow flurries flew, she held her poses and didn't complain, even when one of us just had to go outside and let an icy breeze sweep in. We worked from 10am until 4pm. and I was tired by the end but exhilarated as well. It is a privilege to be in the company of like-minded friends striving toward the same goals. What hard work, so many decisions to be made, so many measurements to be taken. I hope we can do this again soon. Below is the start of a painting I did today based on the studies from Saturday. I'll keep you posted with the progress.

100 Stroke challenge

I set a challenge for myself today, paint a portrait in 100 strokes. Why would I want to do this? Well, I admit I heard someone recently talking about this and I got really excited by it. To say as much as possible in as few strokes as possible. I think this is the goal of most painters. After doing this I realized many things. #1, most of my portraits have a whole lot more than 100 strokes, and #2 in order to be economical, I needed to connect shapes in one stroke. To do this, a lot of paint needed to be loaded on my brush so I would be able to complete the stroke. I created some neat effects by not totally mixing my paint on the palette and having different colors show up by twisting the brush on the surface, especially in the hair. Also, you would think that it would be pretty quick just painting 100 strokes, but no, every stroke had to count, every stroke needed to be thought out carefully and placed precisely. 3 hours and I have to admit it took me 112 strokes. Yeah, I cheated, I couldn't help myself. I was having some chin issues. No, It's not ready for the framer, this was just an exercise, I was being a student today. It's not the best thing I've ever done, but I am not embarrassed to show you my experiment. Take this challenge yourself, it doesn't need to be a portrait, try a landscape or stll life, be a student, and let me know how you did.

4 srokes

12 strokes

26 strokes

54 strokes

55 strokes

75 strokes

89 strokes

106 strokes

112 strokes