This is my recent project having fun with mixed media, a rendering of my baby girl who just turned 7 months old. I included an image of a tiger lily on the background—since my daughter’s name is Lilly and she’s born in the year of tiger, it works!

This mixed media series started with me doing a demo piece for my students. Their assignment was to work on a wood board covered with collage—once I was done with one piece, I was itching to do more, and here you have it—this sax is one of my first paintings in this new medium. As you can see, I left much of the board untouched.


I also like the opportunity to paint on the sides of the board, so you can enjoy artwork from many angles instead of the traditional front view.

Here are the lemons—I also have an orange and fig piece—all the fruits that grow in our back yard.

Once done with fruits, I was onto some blooms, here is one of my favorite pieces, the hibiscus and amaryllis.

The first week of March came with a balmy spring weather here in Winter Park, Florida. My students and I enjoyed a visit of a plein air artist, Tim Malles, who spent four days sharing his painting expertise with us. While helping Tim work with my students during the day, I also enjoyed participating in his two sunset paint outs. I was able to pull my own paint box out and do some studies of the beautiful lakes Martha and Burkett on the banks of which is located the campus of the school where I teach.
This is me working my first night. Photo by Ed Malles.

As I was carrying my finished piece to the car that night, a strong wind started blowing and air lifted, turned around and smacked the painting right into my face—I had a big green mark on my nose, and, of course, an imprint of my nose on my canvas!

On the second night, I got ambitious with an 8x10 inch study of sunset and a 30x30 canvas…needless to say, two hours weren’t nearly enough to get both finished. I ended up working on these pieces the following day, and this is what my 30x30 painting ended up looking at the end:

We had great fun during our weekly 2-hour classes this summer. Laural and Marilyn, recently joined by Pat and Heather, have been wonderful students—enthusiastic and eager to learn. Here are some highlights of what they’ve been up to.
Check out Laural and Pat working on grisaille technique in oils—a thin coat of oil paint is applied onto canvas and then the lights are wiped out with the canvas serving as white. It’s an old master technique, and the umber browns used in their pieces never fail to produce a calm, classic look. These pieces are fantastic!

This is Marilyn after completing her monochromatic piece; the assignment was to only use a color of her choice plus its shades (mixed with black), tints (mixed with white) and tones (mixed with gray)--it's amazing how little we need to create a beautiful piece!

Once done with monochromatic pieces, we’ve ventured into lots of fun with color—check out these three pieces in progress.

And here is what we call Laural inspired by Van Gogh painting—the strokes are bold and colorful!

This piece is of Laural’s lake by her house—I love her use of varied greens in this piece.

And this is my very talented 14-year old student who has been taking classes from me for almost a year. Here she is working on a chalk pastel landscape. Gorgeous! I told her mom that if it doesn’t make it on their wall, I want it in my house!

I am looking forward to more masterpieces!!!

In my blog as of May 5, 2010, I talked about the Memory Project, a wonderful undertaking that my students and I have been involved in last school year. We created portraits for the orphans in Peru, who would keep these as their mementos of their childhood. I just heard back from the project organizer, Ben Schumaker, that our portraits have been delivered. Mine found its way to this precious boy. This is by far one of the most gratifying things that I’ve done with my art.

My first “Teach me 2 Paint” class took place yesterday night. I had two very enthusiastic students, Marilyn and Laural, who fearlessly dove into exploring oil paints and all the beautiful colors that can be mixed up and applied on canvas with a palette knife. What fun!
Getting started with great attitude!

Getting close to being done...

Can you believe this is Marilyn's first ever oil painting?!

My students and I have been involved in a Memory Project, which is a national organization that facilitates pairing student artists with orphanages around the world. The students receive a photo of a child and then draw or paint their portrait, which then gets sent to the kid. This is a second year of us participating—and I jumped in at the last minute to create this quick watercolor from a photo that my students were afraid to do since the boy’s eyes were closed. I took a chance at imagining how he would look with his eyes open—and voile! 40 minutes later, we have a portrait in watercolor. It was fun to do it, especially because I work with water paints so rarely!

I am mailing this and nine more pieces next week—they all go to Peru! Here is a web site for the memory project if you would like to find out more:
http://www.thememoryproject.org/

Strawberry season is still going full speed here Florida, and this means a trip to a local “u-pick it” farm. Before we know it, our box is full with ten pounds or more of bright red and juicy berries…can’t eat them all, so a strawberry jam (if I’m feeling motivated) or just plain freezing them for future smoothies is great. Keeping in with the theme, this is my recent quick painting

…it was actually done from a photo that I took in my mom’s garden in Latvia last summer…the flower pot is actually from my art college days, I made it when apprenticing with a potter—and now I’ve painted it, too!

A few months without entries…life is moving too fast—we’re in a new house, I have set up my studio and had two art shows. The weather is beautiful here in Orlando, so I had my first outdoor paint out the other weekend in Baldwin Park. I met with a few other fellow artists with whom I am exhibiting this year at the Lago restaurant. Since I love trees, it was easy for me to spot a perfect subject at the paint out—a beautiful sycamore next to the restaurant terrace—hence this spring sketch!

this is me painting along with a fellow artist, Patricia Byron.

I am finally getting to post my last painting of the decade (he he!)--I met with my former art student for a paint out over the holidays, and we had a great time catching up while also getting some plein air painting done. This is a view of Lake Martha located on campus of Trinity Prep school where I've been teaching for seven years. Colors are perhaps a bit too muted for me, but I enjoyed doing this little study...and reconnecting with my student!

My painting a day project stumbled a bit over the weekend, but I was able to get back on track with this piece today...I had fun painting all the relfections on the blue teapot!

Day 10 flew by too fast, with no time to sit down for a painting...so, thinking that something is better than nothing, I did this sketch

Today was a slower day, and I took a short stroll down the Lake Burkett right after my last class ended; I painted a close up view of the water. It was great to sit in the sun and ejoy the breeze...and a few minutes to myself

My painting a day project was endangered today...no time to spare to get outside my classroom, and I am tired of looking at the student still life and out the window...well, had to settle for a 10-minute sketch of these fruit...hope tomorrow I get to go outside and paint something more exciting

Another day, another piece--since I ran out of stuff to paint from the window, I took a short trip outside my room...had only about 20 minutes to spare, so the both walk as well as the painting session were very short--and here is yet another view of Lake Burkett

Ta da! Freshly painted today--yet another view from my classroom...used an old canvas board that one of my students gave up on...some of the reds from the old painting are showing through--I love working on color backgrounds, it's less intimidating than a pristine white of a new canvas.

Here is what I’ve been up to during the last few days…
Day 3 piece…still life that I have set up for my students in the art room at school

Day 4…looking out the window in the classroom…quite an overcast day, not at all typical here, but I like the moodiness of it.

Day 5…well, I skipped this one, I have a lame excuse of hosting a Halloween party and all…that’s why I call this challenge doing a painting ALMOST every day.

Day 6—realized I didn’t have all the paints and canvases at home as it’s been a while since I actually had time to paint at the house. Well, wanted to keep up with my challenge, so I used my 2-year old daughter’s water paints and her drawing block… we worked on our paintings together on the back porch…this is what I managed while also keeping an eye on Ally; she actually contributed to this piece by adding a blob of black in the top left corner, no worries, it all worked out fine, ha ha!

I recently stumbled upon one artist’s blog that has taken a challenge of doing a painting a day…so it gave me an idea of trying it myself…so far so good…
Day 1

Day 2

Today is day 4…Let’s see how long I can last 

I had a meeting with the new book author last Friday, and we were discussing the color options for cover. We started with this sketch…

And then this one…

And this one seemed to have good light but a bit too mysterious looking…

And even though this one is my favorite one when it comes to color, it is a bit too edgy for the type of book that it is (gentle read literature).

We actually ended up choosing the original color version—well, at least we made sure to explore other options!

Last Friday night my dad, daughter, and I spent some time at the art show opening in the Historic Center in Sanford, FL. The works of 25 artists, including me, were showcased. Here’s a picture of us next to my pieces.

This piece is of a view off of Highway 50 when heading towards Titusville—do you know that area where airboat rides are?

And this one is just an interpretation of what Florida heat looks to me in color, titled “Hot Day’s End.”

For the past few days I have been finalizing my sketches for the book cover that a new author commissioned me to paint. The book is a gentle read genre about a woman who is a Christian Science practitioner who prays for patients with healing results. Now, my artwork is anything but gentle in appearance, and I had my doubts if my style would be a good fit. The author felt strongly, however, that it would be wonderful to bring the kind of colors and sense of movement that I have in my work into his book cover. Off to the drawing board I went! Here’s my first attempt…thanks to the Photoshop program that allowed me to bring my concept ideas to life quickly.

Now how about this one?

Or maybe this one?

And the winner is…

I am excited to keep refining this sketch and eventually making it an actual painting.