Paintings With Soul

"Coming in for a Kiss," 5" x 7", commissioned dog portrait of an Italian Greyhound, acrylic on canvasboard. Inquiries may always come to me . Just as I was setting my palette up for today's painting session, the Fed X man brought me a box from Dick Blick, a box containing my order of Golden Open Acrylics. Open acrylics are a new type of acrylic paints that take longer to dry (similar to oil paints) yet still retain the ease of solvent free cleanup typical to acrylics. This is my first piece using the Open Acrylics, but so far I'm really liking them. I was able to do some blending and mixing on the canvasboard that I couldn't do easily prior. I could lay marks down and return to that area an hour later and still push/pull the paint. The hardest thing (for me) was waiting a couple hours after finishing the painting, allowing it to dry enough so that I could scan it. With retrospect, that really isn't so hard. I think I'm going to like these. A l...

“Sandy and Shelby,” 8x16, commissioned portrait of two Italian grayhounds, private collection (thank you!). I’ve broken a couple of my rules with this painting. The obvious being including two faces on one canvas. And a second one – working from a reference photo that is purely black and white. Now the client has provided me with supplemental photos of each of the dogs, so I have a sense of their natural coloring. But I’m working on laying in the colors using supposed knowledge in my head – how a silvery coat turns to blue and lavender in the light, and the various hues apparent in a fawn dog with black points. It’s been a good experience, but one that’s taken me a couple of days. And one, I fear, that has led into a rather exuberant exaggeration of color. But it’s been fun, nevertheless. This painting is subject to additional changes, based on the clients’ feedback. So I’ll most likely be continuing to pick away at it in the background next week. It promises to be a continued excellen...