Inner Musings Blog

 I love reading the energetics behind a person's face, and I feel like I really get to know people from the inside out.  This portrait of Stephanie captures her gentleness and sensitivity.      I remember my college roomate staying up all night to paint her self-portrait, and I then seeing it the next morning once she'd painted in the eyes. It was spooky how it suddenly embodied her spirit.      I'm pleased with the large range of values I got in this portrait. It can feel risky to take them that far, but fortunately it kind of worked. I'm trying...

   I  spend a lot of time looking at faces and it's a privilege to be able to spend time studying the face of someone I love by painting from their photograph. It's certainly less stressful and intense than doing an actual portrait sitting, but I'm working up to that. While this isn't an exact likeness, I feel like I captured her amazing smile and joy, as well as her childlike openness to life. I like the looseness of how I painted her  shirt and the background, and am hoping to eventually get to that level of freedom with the...

   I have been visiting and revisiting the figure throughout my art-making life, and am delighted to be able to incorporate (no pun intended) all of my years of drawing into this study of realistic skin tone and the dance of warms and cools over the landscape of the body. I guess I never wanted to go completely realistic with watercolor - it's water!  - so it's a matter of keeping my impression expressive. Obviously, this image has been done billions of times by artists throughout history and around the world, so it's not about  originality. But there is an...

I was looking for something meaningful to paint that I hadn't done before, and pulled out a stack of my favorite bowls. They felt very alive to me-- each one has a certain personality and flavor and they are an important part of my daily life. I set them up on a simple still life stand at eye level, with one directional light. They were easy to paint, and it was one of those rare experiences when everything was in tune and just flowed. I realize how important it is to paint things that have a personal meaning. I am...