Buffalo Dreams

This is a model I photographed last year. She is a Lakota named Teri, she was also VERY pregnant the day we got together for this shoot. Perhaps that is why her face looks so blissful...

Training Day

Pastel, 5x7

Wild Horses finished

"Wild Horses" 3.5"x 11.5" Pencil and charcoal

Guess who is coming to breakfast...

We woke up to the sounds of gobbles this morning. Ten turkeys showed up and ate our deer feeder. This proud fellow strutted around for about an hour and was completely ignored...poor guy. I think John and I are going to have to start taking donations for food, between the birds, deer, racoons, opossums, ducks...and all the rest, my husband and I are not going to have any money left to feed ourselves. We are going through 150-200 lbs of corn a week now. It does make it interesting though.

Finished... River Walk

River Walk

I really hope to have this done today...hope, hope, hope....

A little bit closer...

Inch by inch...

One thing that most people don't understand if they are not artists, is how long pencils take to do. It may be one of the most unappreciated mediums out there. By the time this small piece is done, it will have 20-25 hours in it.

5:00 update

I call this cardio painting...

3:00 progress

Building a foundation...

It is hard for me to post a painting at this stage, but it is important. Building a foundation for a good painting means it has to go through an "ugly" stage. You can not build a house on sand, and you can not build a painting any differently. The hardest thing an artist has to do is push past this stage and see that you are building a foundation for a great painting. This is a painting that relies heavily on light, and to make that light believable, I have to lay down colors that will show in later layers. I wanted to post this for those of you that get to this stage and tell yourselves that it is just not going to work...hang in there. It will work, as pastel artists, we have to lay down the colors that will "peek" through after you put the layers on top of it. This is about 5 hours of work today, and hopefully I can push through this stage and make it work....

The strongest ally you have in a painting is your drawing. If you don't know how to draw, you can not make a painting work. I am relying heavily on my drawing skills at this point...my initial value sketch is what is going to push me to the end of this painting. Take the time to do value sketches and solve those problems first, then tackle the colors later. If you don't do that, then you are doomed from the start. Values are your friend, embrace them and put them into your paintings or they will fall flat...literally.

Something new...

I decided to put the oils aside for a while and tackle a few more projects. This is a pencil titled Wild Horses. I work on the pastels during the day, and do the pencils at night while sitting upstairs with my husband. So you will see the progression of several paintings at once.

Days work...

Just a little further along...