My 2008 student version of Gustave Courbet's Early Self-Portrait, aka "Is that Johnny Depp in fancy dress?"

Gustave Courbet painted his dramatic self-portrait very early in his career. My copy (from an 81/2"x10" reproduction of the original painting), posted here, is on cardboard in oil paint. The original is astonishingly good--and also astonishing because apparently Johnny Depp has a look-alike in another time and place. (Great jumping off place for a science fiction story).

As general matter, I learned a lot by copying the work of others. This (finding something you liked and copying it in grays in the same size as the original) was an assignment in Ron Llanos' painting class at Art Center at Night. (If you're curious about Ron's critique, he thought it was okay, except for the whites of the eyes, which I made too white. He was absolutely correct. I didn't go back and change the painting, so the error is still visible.)

Flower Seller (Work in Progress)

Okay. I heightened the colors and contrast in values in some areas, I made some marks with my white and dark oil sticks and with brushes and (some) with my fingers. I'm as done as I'm going to be, until I let it rest and re-evaluate. I'm thrilled and relieved to have painted on this larger scale, 30"x40". It was much more fun than I thought it would be.

Adding leaves and stems

I've added some leaves and stems. Now, it's time for lunch and then I get to take the dog to the vet.

Painting flowers

I'm really focusing on the large shapes. I'm also incorporating some of the purple-ish flower color into the rest of the painting.

I don't worry about getting the colors (that is, for example, pink, blue, yellow, green) accurately; I do work to get the values (the relative light and dark of the colors) accurately.

Getting Some Paint on the Canvas

After the initial sketch, I stopped for several hours. I was intimidated by the white space. Usually, if I am starting a fresh canvas, I start not with a sketch but by putting down an underpainting. Mine is usually some mix of paint colors that are dark. I tend to use paint colors that are less opaque, like ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson and Indian yellow, but really it's also just as often whatever I have the most of that is left over on the palette from my last painting. I apply it as fast as I can with the largest brush that I have and usually rub it with a paper towel so that it's uneven and very thin in places, so the white of the canvas shows through. Basically, I mess up the canvas deliberately, so that I can then be fearless about painting on it.

With this painting, I have titanium white, Naples yellow, azo yellow, transparent yellow iron oxide, naphthol red, anthraquinone red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, manganese blue hue and olive green on my palette. I mixed the paint with a palette knife to get some more neutral colors, then used my three-inch hardware store brush first, then my two-inch hardware store brush, then an approximately one-inch flat hog bristle brush to apply this paint. (I changed brushes mostly so that I could paint quickly, without wiping off the brush in between.) I also used my dark oil bar to paint lines.

Initial sketch

This is what I hope will be my second painting from my visit to the Vancouver, Washington farmers market.

I'm painting on a larger scale: this canvas is 30"x40." It's also a canvas that is fresh out of the wrapper (very unusual for me, since I tend to use and re-use my painting supports).

Anyway, since I actually had a white canvas to start, I decided to plan my painting directly on the canvas. I used my dark oil bar to lay down some lines that, while I will soon paint over them, at least give me some assurance that what I'm thinking of can fit well on the canvas.

My plan is to keep adding Flower Seller posts as I paint (this is this morning's work), until I either complete the painting or it morphs into something else.

"Parallel Play" and "First Date" from my Sketchbooks

These are marker drawings from life, done at Spring Studio in 2008. The drawing on the left is approximately 5"x8", the drawings on the right are about 10"x10" each.

Strangely, the models in the drawing on the left actually posed together; on the right, they were in separate sessions, separated by a few days, but adjacent in my sketchbook.