Three New Messages

18x14 oil on linen

Gallery info to come.

On Monday, I got together with a group of artist friends to paint a model at a local coffee shop. Its something I've wanted to do for a very long time. Its a little difficult to paint strangers in a cafe... people become uncomfortable when you study them for a long time. And they tend to finish up and move off before you are done. But I want to get better (and quicker) at painting from life.
Several friends are interested too and we're forming a group to regularly hire a model to pose in a public setting. Not your traditional model sessions; the nude bores me frankly. And I want to paint the setting and atmosphere as much as the figure.

And boy do I need to work on painting from life... even with her longer pose, I was baffled. I had more than a few distractions though and I will now throw out a few excuses for not posting any of my sketches. My daughter was "sick" and had to stay home from school, so she was bounding around feeding the ducks, turtles and fish in the lake. I didn't have a tube of white to "travel" with. I had my tiny pochade box which is really useless... I can't paint that small. It was overcast. And I didn't have the right color choices on my palette. There! Is that enough excuses?

I did get great photos though and look forward to next Monday for more practice from life. I'm scheduling it now.