Daydream - NFS

"Daydream", 8" x 6", Oil on Museum Board
This is a portrait of one of my daughters--the one who plays the violin.  It doesn't look exactly like her, but it is close enough.  I never tire of doing portraits of my two daughters--they are so lovely.

Woman in Pink

"Woman in Pink", 8" x 6", Oil on Museum Board
This was one of the strictly 30 minute paintings I did on the first day of my portrait week.  Doing timed exercises like this is a sure fire way for me to get out of the painting doldrums.  Everything is limited to the essentials.

Girl from Dali

"Girl from Dali", 8" x 6", Oil on Museum Board
Dali is a city in Yunnan Province, Western China, situated on Lake Erhai.  This young girl worked at the guest house where we stayed and she agreed to model for us. We spent several days in Dali, painting the girls at the guest house or traveling by bus to other nearby villages. This guest house, like all the other places we stayed in Western China, from cities to a very remote Tibetan region, heated water with a simple solar system on the rooftop.

Peruvian Child - SOLD

"Peruvian Child", 8" x 6", Oil on Museum Board SOLD
In order to complete my small portrait marathon before I leave on my trip to Cornwall, I'm pulling out photos from trips long past.  This is from a photo of a child in the town of Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley of Peru.

Girl in Green - SOLD

"Girl in Green", 8" x 6", Oil -- SOLD
This is another small portrait in my series.  This one, like the last, has warm and cool greens with complementary reds.

Chinese Girl - SOLD

"Chinese Girl", 8" x 6", Oil
Limiting the time for a painting focuses the mind on the essentials.  But my question is: limiting the time and doing a lot of paintings in a set period of time definitely puts me in the "zone," but since the "right brain" does not "think" in the same way as the "left", how does learning take place in the "right brain" when the "left" cannot remember what I did?  How does this fit into the idea presented in "Art and Fear" that a focus on quantity produces more growth than a focus on quality?  Anybody have any thoughts on this?

Girl In the Sun - NFS

"Girl in the Sun", 8" x 6", Oil on Museum Board
This is the second painting in the small portrait series.  When I'm in between things in my studio, I tend to thrash around with great indecision about what to do--there are too many choices.  So I have to narrow the choices and in this case narrow the time for each study to 30 minutes.  At Peggi Kroll Roberts' workshop, she had boxes of small studies from 4"x6" to 6"x8".  When I went to Ovanes' workshop, he said go out and do twenty paintings in a day.

Girl with Scarf

"Girl with Scarf", 8" x 6", Oil on Museum Board
Since I'm getting ready to go to the UK with a group of painters in mid-September, I needed a project for the next 10 days that I could get really organized around.  I decided last night to do a series of small portrait paintings.  Maybe I'll even be able to do a few extra because I don't think I will have a computer in Cornwall or easy access to the internet and I'm probably not going to be able to post while I'm gone.  This is the first of the series.