Oil painting still life with banana in gar

I love days off. Because of Thanks Giving, I've been able to paint the last couple of days. Here are the fruits of my labor. I set this still life up because it presented some interesting challenges. The green glass, and the red cloth colors are both present in the reflected light on the banana. The glass gar with it's floral decorations also made for some wonderfully interesting painting.

Desert Impression

I got out my old computer tablet the other day and painted  this as a test of colors and loose brush strokes. I find it interesting how well this very loosely done painting still gives the impression of the landscape.  It is best viewed from few steps back. I may do something similar with oils on canvas. Any comments would be appreciated.

Still life and an angel

These are my two latest oil studies. My shoes on a stool, and a study of my little angel figurine. I have drawn the angel a couple of times in the past. I am quite happy with how this turned out. I kind of stumbled upon putting the light spot underneath her to give her a floating feeling.

Wed night figure drawing

Here is this weeks figure drawing. I think I got his waist too small. This pose seemed a bit ridged so I tried to exaggerate some of the curves to loosen it up a bit and in inadvertently made his waist too small, oh well. No session next week because of Thanksgiving. I will miss it.  I am working on more painting that I hope to share soon.

practicing my starts

I got a new book on oil painting  the other day. "Fill your Oil Paintings with Light and Color" by Kevin D. Macpherson. In it Kevin stresses the importance of a good start. He suggests making a hundred starts just for practice, so this weekend I started practicing starts. The first two I copied out of the book. The second is from life and just the shadows painted in with raw umber. The third painting I did from a figure drawing I made earlier this summer. I got a bit carried away with this one, and took it a bit past a good start. I found another painting on the web with a color scheme that I really liked. So I tried to use similar colors in my painting. I am actually quite pleased with how it turned out.

Figure Drawing 11-9-11

Here is my figure drawing from this week. 

Portrait of Mom and Dad

Well, painting Mom turned out to be a challenge. I just couldn't get the painting to look like her. I wanted to get that smile she has, like she's just about to break out in a giggle. I think I finally got it pretty close. I found it hard to concentrate on the painting while I was thinking of her. I'm sure some of you understand.

Figure drawing from this week

Last week class was canceled due to a snow storm. This Wed produced another snow storm however class went on as scheduled. We had a new model. She is very good. She did some very active poses for our warm up gesture drawings. Then she settled into this nice subtle contraposto. (Spell checker doesn't recognize that word.)