Painting with a Friend

A friend visited the other day and we paint together. Laura's primary medium is acrylic and I was introducing her to pastel. When she left she decided not to take the piece she'd been working on. I wanted to see what would happen if I continued painting a piece someone else had started. Her color palette was different than mine as was her mark making. It was an interesting challenge. The process pushed me to use new color combinations and find a way to incorporate her marks. It's fun having a friend who likes to collaborate.

Duet by Laura Preciado and Kathleen Secrest

This is part of the painting I was working on during that visit. I couldn't seem to resolve the painting and cropped it to the 12" x12" image below.

Fall by Kathleen Secrest

Little Abstract Landscapes

I continue to create small landscapes as a warm up before jumping into a larger project. My favorites are the more abstract paintings. A fun way to start the day.

Storm

I love working with mixed media, working in layers. For this painting I've used graphite, charcoal, acrylic paint applied with both brush and roller, and pastel. The title is Storm. Art reflects life.

Storm, 30" x 22" mixed media with pastel

Little Landscapes

Getting ready for paint out/plein air season. These little landscapes are practice, practice working fast and loose. The small size helps. I'm trying to push the color beyond local color and use up scraps of a variety of pastel papers. So far Wallis paper toned with Burnt Sienna is the winning paper. This is a fun exercise. All paintings are 4" x 6" soft pastel.

The Visit

Working with cruciform compositions. The weather has been gray and I needed some color.

The Visit, 22" x 22" pastel

More in Black & White

More work using ink, acrylic, graphite and charcoal. I added a little pastel just for fun. I'm still having a good time with texture and marks.

Storm, mixed media 30" x 22" 

Alleyway, mixed media 30" by 11"

A Gang of Voices

A couple of drawings that resulted from playing with mixed media. These were created with black ink and charcoal. I erased into the charcoal and applied acrylic paint with a brayer. I like the textures and depth created by subtracting with the eraser and layering with paint and brayer.

 A Gang of Voices,  22" x 30" Mixed media and pastel

Shouting into Cotton, 22" x 30" Mixed media

Black & White

A couple of abstract compositions in black and white. I used charcoal, graphite and black acrylic for these drawings.

More Marks

I spent the weekend experimenting with mark making and layering. Make some marks. Paint over the marks. Make more marks. Try to find balance and an interesting composition. I used ink, water soluble graphite and acrylic paint. Having fun. Seeing where they lead me.

Add and Subtract

I'm still confined to sitting with my foot elevated for part of the day. This gives me a lot of time to sketch. I'm working on a series using a high horizon line. I've been adding some color to the background. Mostly I work with charcoal, graphite and an eraser. I enjoy the give and take of adding tone and subtracting with an eraser. I like the textures I can create. The paintings below were done  today.

I found a great video of painter Barbara Moody using this process. She works in layers and layers, applying charcoal and erasing to create drawings that change, metamorphosing from image to image. Here's the link.
http://www.barbaramoody.com/pages/drawings.html

More Cruciforms

Another day of being confined to sitting. Another day of drawing cruciform compositions. Today I decided to try composing some of them as negative a shape. I also added a little color.

Big Foot

Following surgery to realign my toes I find myself confined to sitting for a few days.

To pass the time I sat with a stack of paper and a collections of pencils and charcoal and made quick sketches based on one composition, the cruciform. As soon as I can return to the studio I'll take these drawing, paint over some and use other as ideas for abstract paintings. Here are some of the drawings before I begin to paint over them.