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                                                                  Splash Ballerina                                                                          9"x12"                         ...

Just a quick sketch today as Friday is "date day" and Atlanta finally got a break in the weather.  So it was lunch on the porch with a bottle of wine and I have been kind of fuzzy this afternoon.  Tomorrow nose back to the grind stone, but this sort of does go along with my minimal stroke concept. Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.

Back to ballerinas and light and shadow on this one.  Actually there were several more girls, or partial girls in this lineup, but decided to keep it simple but hope that it draws you into the painting.  Might do this one again as I would really like to work more on the shadows of the first ballerina, but you get the point. Thanks for stopping by and hope you  have a great day.

                                                                      The Dancers                                                                          16"x20"                      ...

Still working away on the dancers and wanted to stop as I want to be really fresh on the tutu of the dancer closest to the viewer.  I don't want to over work it.  I am really doing a lot of redrawing with the brush on this and am feeling more confident on doing that.  I am also going to do another several coats of thalo green/ultramarine blue over the black to deepen the color and pull all the darks together, I am finding that the black I over painted on the thalo in the center tends to be lighter than the black over the  white - go figure.  I have spent a lot of time on the skin tones of the dancer closest to us.  In the picture it reads very dark black, and even the hair versus the neck shadow just reads of black, of course we know that in real life we could see color variances.  So, I think there are going to have to be some additional blue/dark gray glazes there to enrich her tones.  Tricky, as I need to still be sure the light reads there ...

Linda Willison from PMP has ballerinas in her family, and has shared several of their pictures both at practice and I think maybe recitals.  This piece caught my eye immediately as I like the mystery of the dark, and the figures that pull you deeper into the background of the picture.  I also wanted to try the challenge of conveying the translucence of the tutus with the light coming through them.  Many figures or partial figures you can see where the light hits and where the figures are in the darkness.  Also it is really interesting how few strokes you need to convey arms, faces, etc. in the background.  I also am lightening the shadow areas so you have dark, but not all black - guess instead of shades of white, it's shades of black for this picture. The thalo green areas I tried using airbrush medium to get the really thin acrylic paint that almost is like a glaze but leaves a different texture on the paper.  I really like how this translucent color a...