Woman In Red Glasses, Reading; Woman In Red Glasses And Blue Scarf

Painted/drawn this morning, en plein air (outdoors), by the lakeside.

Woman In Red Glasses, Reading is oil pastel on 11"x14" canvas.

Woman In Red Glasses And Blue Scarf is oil pastel on approximately 12"x20" card.

The model, a dancer, was reading an art theory book, courtesy of one of the painters. Her glasses, highly decorative, are purely a fashion accessory.

In the background you can see a white swan and several black coots.  Coots are funny ducklike creatures with chicken feet and loud querulous voices.  Don't know if any of these coots are old.

I expect to paint the background and leave the foreground pretty much as is shown, here.


The drawing of the face will probably change a bit, as well.

Awaiting Results

Drawn from life, yesterday morning.

On 12"x16" pastel paper.


Below is an oil sketch I made this morning, from life and out-of-doors ( en plein air) .  Motivation to get a painting space set up, unpack my painting stuff completely and start painting again.  I'll get back to working on this particular painting when I can.  Reminiscent of this painting.

Girl with an Orange Scarf (in progress)

Oil paint on 12"x16" canvas.

I'm painting from a photo I took this spring, while visiting Portland.

Most recent versions of "At the Museum" (36"x18") and "Trees at Night" (24"x20")

June 19th update: I've posted the earlier versions of each painting directly below the newer versions, at the request of Altadena Hiker and Pasadena Adjacent.

I've been working further on the paintings I started recently.

Trees at Night

This is an oil painting on a shellacked hardwood board, about 24"x20." Another Pasadena Old Town scene, this time off a side street, at the side of a parking lot.

I was inspired to paint these trees by a recent post by Vivien Blackburn, at paintings prints and stuff, of trees she had drawn and painted.

Karate Student at Night (work in progress)

June 14 update: On left, the most recent version.



This is an oil painting on 36"x48" canvas. It's another Green Street night scene, this time of a student at the karate school, that I am painting from I photograph I took while on the same walk that resulted in the painting, Discord on Green Street.

There were two students and a teacher in the studio. The students were blindfolded and doing moves that their teacher called out. This is a painting of one of the students, just gathering himself to move.

Mythological creatures in our lives/Can you name this painting?

Update June 3: The painting on the left is the most recent (with special thanks to help from Pasadena Adjacent). I've re-painted a lot because changing the background made me also change the foreground and the girl's face and arm, especially, but some of the difference in colors is due to different light, today.


Original post:
I've painted further on Girl on a Cell Phone in response to some helpful in-person criticisms and reactions. As part of my response to the kind of blank reaction I got to the title and painting, I'm looking for a better title. Any suggestions?

Discord on Green Street

I've painted some more. I think it's time to wait awhile and then re-assess.

Discord on Green Street (work in progress)

This 20"x24" oil on canvas is one of the things I've been working on. This is painted from a photo I took recently on a warm night in Old Town Pasadena.

Shopping for Vegetables and Breakfast at the Cricket Cafe, together

These are what I believe are the completed paintings.

On Shopping for Vegetables, I did considerable re-painting since the last post and completely changed the light. (Thanks, Cafe Pasadena.)

On Breakfast at the Cricket Cafe, I worked mainly on the sign, the female figure and the truck.

Breakfast at the Cricket Cafe (work in progress)

This oil on 30"x40" canvas is a painting I'm working on from my March visit to Portland, Oregon. The Cricket is a small cafe in the south east quadrant of the town, at Belmont and 32nd Ave., with really good breakfast (based on one visit, for breakfast).

What I've learned so far, from working on a larger scale, with this painting, Lorena and Flower Seller, is that I really should at least mark the canvas and the source photo into quadrants, so that I have some good idea of where things go. It's very easy for my eye to get lost in all the space and lose relationships between things. Marking quadrants sure would have made painting this much easier.

Girl on a Cell Phone and Girl with a Red Muffler, together

I've done some thinking and some painting on each of these and decided to post them together because they go together in my mind. Both instantiate and memorialize parts of LA that I love.

Girl on a Cell Phone, set in Silver Lake in winter, has been considerably punched up. I've developed the girl to the point where she more than holds her own with the looming mural.

Girl with a Red Muffler, set on a winter day at the old Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax, has also had substantial work on the central figure, especially her face, shoulder and hand.

Boy and Girl at Night, 2009

I painted this from a cellphone photograph. What was important to me, and the reason I painted this, was the relationship between the two people, both on the canvas and in life. This is clearly a contemporary urban street scene. The city is Los Angeles, late on a fall night.

This is an oil painting on canvas, 18"x 18". The square shape is something I've been using a lot ever since a few months ago, when I found a few squares of cardboard, gessoed them and started using them for quick little paintings.