Child Portrait, step-by-step, in charcoal #2
by Linda Schweitzer on 11/19/2009 1:54:42 PM
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I'm sorry this is not a good quality image, it was still on the easel. You can see I've refined and softened the skin. Still working with vine charcoal here. By the way, the finger cots are not used now because once you get a lot of charcoal on the page, they tend to pick it up, so I have switched to a maul stick.
Ordinarily, I don't like portraits of small children with open mouth smiles, because young children have gaps between their teeth that create a snaggle-toothed look. But this little boy has nice close teeth. This is not really a finished portrait, but a study for a larger oil I will be doing next.
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Child Portrait, step-by-step, in charcoal #1
by Linda Schweitzer on 11/15/2009 2:11:20 PM
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I like to begin portraits with a charcoal study. Actually I was this far along before thinking my blog readers might be interested, so I'm sorry I didn't take some pictures earlier. You can see the grid lines I used for placement, and you can see I massed in the shadows using soft vine charcoal. I sort of work back and forth with the charcoal and an eraser, putting in darks and taking them out, till it gets to where I want it.
Here is the set-up in my studio. There is the image on the computer screen. I like working from the computer because it is so easy to enlarge the image. Any artist who has tried to work from a photograph, even 8" x 10" size, knows what I'm talking about. As you can see, I made it easier on myself here by converting the photograph to black and white.
For you trivia buffs, I know this looks like a condom... It is a finger cot. I like to use my pinky finger to steady my hand, and this keeps skin oils off the paper.
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Trout Pond
by Linda Schweitzer on 10/23/2009 2:03:47 PM
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...Trout Pond...
watercolor on 140# paper - 10" x 7"
This is a plein air watercolor of our beautiful WV autumn. Well, at least I tried. I have not done any watercolor painting for a long, long time, and boy, am I rusty! But there is something about the feeling of it, the downright joy of the colors, that caused me to go ahead and show it online.
Watercolors force me think in reverse from the way I have to think when painting in oils. I have to paint negative space and work light to dark, which is really an incredibly good exercise in visual thinking.
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Primeval
by Linda Schweitzer on 10/20/2009 9:51:33 AM
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...Primeval...
oil on canvas panel - 6" x 8"
Another West Virginia landscape painting. Here is a rocky forest floor covered with moss. It was positively magical! The slanted light was just hitting the tops of the mosses, causing them to glow.
Taking my inspiration from the medieval icon painters, who painted on gold leafed panels (the gold symbolizing divinity), I covered the panel with Daniel Smith's gold gesso, and painted on top of that, hoping some of the luminescence would shine through. Sadly, I seem to have applied the paint too thickly, or perhaps the colors were too opaque. At any rate, the glow is only apparent in a few places. Here is a detail:
Even though I failed in my objective of communicating the beauty of those glowing mosses, I feel the painting still contains some of the magic and mystery of nature. I do intend to try some more paintings on gold gesso.
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Framing
by Linda Schweitzer on 10/17/2009 4:13:25 PM
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...Nestled In...
oil on canvas on panel - 6" x 6"
Today was damp and cold, so I stayed in and framed paintings. I have a show coming up at the end of the month, and need to get everything ready. It's amazing how much more complete the paintings look in frames! This one is in a floater frame which shows the artwork all the way to the edges. You can see the pink underpainting.
To purchase, email me: linda@schweitzerstudio.com
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Early Color - Sold
by Linda Schweitzer on 9/23/2009 4:21:55 PM
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...Early Color...
6" x 8" - oil on canvas
This is another plein air painting, started in the field and finished later in the studio. The leaves seem to be turning early this year, probably because it has been so dry. It is easy to get too detailed in a painting like this, especially since there is so much beautiful detail in the scene. I tried to lessen the detail by making the tree trunk on the left the same value as the foliage behind it. Not sure if it helped--It's hard to judge your own paintings when they're fresh.
While I was painting, one of my friends took my picture. Yes, I am using an umbrella in the shade! It really helped, too. There was dappled light coming through the tree above.
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Falls Mill
by Linda Schweitzer on 9/11/2009 12:15:49 PM
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...Falls Mill...
oil on canvas - 6" x 8"
Last week, I went out plein air painting with some friends. We went to this little waterfall. There had been a mill here long ago, but all that's left of it is part of the stone foundation. At this hour of the morning, most of the scene was in shadow. I had to work really fast and did a quick study, which I finished later in the studio from a photo.
The photo, by the way, was really boring and looked nothing like my quick study. (Did you ever take a picture of a scene you thought was really beautiful, and when you see the photo, you wonder why you took it?) I altered the photograph on my computer so that the colors and contrast would match my study. Otherwise it would not have been useful at all.
Here is the plein air study:
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Lewis Falls
by Linda Schweitzer on 9/3/2009 5:09:26 PM
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...Lewis Falls...
oil on canvas - 6" x 6"
Getting to the falls was quite a hike, but it was downhill all the way. Getting back was another story. This was as much of the falls as I could see, because there was so much brush in front of me, I couldn't see the bottom. As you can see, there wasn't a lot of water.
CLICK HERE TO BUY $75
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Blue Ridge Mountains - Sold
by Linda Schweitzer on 9/2/2009 8:43:40 AM
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...Blue Ridge Mountains...
oil on canvas - 6" x 8"
I can't believe how hard this was to paint. I had to wipe it off and start over three times! And I'm still not totally happy with it. I just keep telling myself, "It's only a daily painting, it's only a daily painting, it's only... "
Maybe I'm being too perfectionistic, but the very slight changes in the value and temperature of the colors, plus all the soft blending made a huge difference in the aerial perspective. The so-called "rules" of aerial perspective, (that colors get lighter and bluer and less intense as seen from a greater distance), seem to have been written on a sunny day with a blue sky. Here, at dusk, there was so much red in the light, there was a lot of purple in the distance. Actually, the color of those background mountains, which appears blue-violet here, had so much red it, it looked pink on the palette.
The sun seemed to be floating on a layer of purple mist. I put a little thalo turquoise in the sun, so it would vibrate against the reds.
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