For the past several months, I have been working on a commission and I just completed it!   It is the backyard view of the house of a friend.   This was both fun and challenging for me and took me far longer to complete than I anticipated, for several reasons.

First off, I have done many portrait paintings but not many architectural paintings...and there are no straight lines on a face!  Look how many straight lines there are on this house!  I had to develop new skills to render a straight line in a way that made it read as straight but without such precision as with using a ruler.  I still wanted a painterly feel and not a photographic  feel...because why not just look at the photograph then!

There is also much information in the reference photo that had to be culled down and selected as worthy of being in the painting.  I  needed to make the judgement call and hope that the family agreed with what I included.

Finally, I spent a lot of time working the shadows under the porches.  To get those tones was really a challenge.  I feel that it helped me study color and that is so good!

My thanks to Anthony, my friend for giving me this opportunity to spend time with his home.

Powderpoint Bridge at Dawn

I went to the beach early one morning with my friend Maria to catch the sunrise and maybe set up our easels for the dawn's early light - or at least get some good photographs.  We found a breathtaking sunrise that turned our wooden bridge into shimmering gold.  It seemed to glow out of the fog of the morning.  This week as we braved the arctic elements here in New England, I wondered if I could conjure up that golden morning.

I took some pictures of the progress of the painting and must admit, I think I will try this one again.  But for now I thought it was an interesting attempt.

Beach Road on a Coudy Day

This was done two weeks ago.  My daughter and I are showing some work at a local hotel and I wanted to do some landscapes.  This is the road heading toward the outer most section of Duxbury Beach.  It is a never ending change of color and mood.  The afternoon of this photograph the clouds were impressive casting a purple shadow along the road.  I tried to capture the movement of the clouds and grass with the strokes.

Torn Hat Commission

This past summer, I received a commission to reproduce a Thomas Sully painting which hangs in the Boston Museum of Fine Art called the Torn Hat.  Here is a link to the painting.  http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/the-torn-hat-31554

This painting happens to be a favorite of a friend of mine and he commissioned a copy to be made for his wife.  Here is the original and my copy.  It was fun to do.  I did some research on Sully's palette and enjoyed deconstructing his process.  It was difficult because the painting is behind a glass enclosure in the museum making it difficult to get close to it.  I ended up blowing up a post card to use for my reference.  It isn't an exact clone, to be sure,  but I came to that familiar place where if I continued too much further I would risk botching the whole thing up and killing it.  So I ended where the likeness was close enough and I was happy with the paint application.

Happy Flower

I had wanted to play around with a palette knife for some time.  My friend and I set up a still life of this little happy yellow flower one day in the studio and then went at it with the palette knife.  It was fun.  I like the sculptural quality.  As a happy ending, the painting sold at my annual Open Studios in November.

Finally Back.

I have been certainly been exercising my artistic muscle since the last time I posted...way, way long time ago!  I just have not been faithful, like my brother Ric, to posting my progress.  Check out his blog:  http://ericlarsonart.blogspot.com to see how often he paints and how faithful he is to his painting blog.   You can click it on the bar to the right as well.

Well done, Ric.  I am more impressed overtime I see your work.  And it proves how regular painting is the only way to improve.  I have my New Year's resolution.  It is to paint 2 hours a day, 5 days a week.  My husband, Skip,  handmade a beautiful and LARGE pastel drawer cabinet so that I can get more organized and achieve my goal!  Thank you Skip!

So for now, I am going to post the paintings that I have done over the past 6 months and catch up.  This one was done from a picture taken at Duxbury beach.  My daughter, Callie, loves to sea glass hunt and this is a posture that I associate with her!