Dancing Light Studio

Music and Art: A Great Relationship

2012-01-27T18:00:00.000-05:00

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Palette Knife Paintings, Impressionism and Broken Color

2012-01-25T18:00:00.000-05:00

I like to use my palette knives when I paint. They really load the paint on and encourage you to be bold! Sometimes if I have an interesting photo I will hone my palette knife skills by trying to do the entire painting with a knife. I don't usually try it with paintings of people but I did today. Using the palette knife causes you to use a lot more paint than you normally would but you also end

Cleaned Up and Previewed in a Frame

2012-01-23T18:00:00.000-05:00

Today I spent an hour or so cleaning up the painting of the wine and vegetables. Sometimes things are not apparent until you view them on a screen or from further away. I have renamed the painting Don Bosco with Vegetables because the focal point is really the wine bottle and the glass. The vegetables are incidental. I darkened the bottle, made the highlight a bit brighter, ran some cooler color

Using Half of Your Brain

2012-01-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

OK, maybe I was using more than half, but I think I was pretty much on automatic pilot. I painted this one last night while I half watched a movie my husband had on, so I was really using the "intuitive" side of my brain. The one that runs on auto-pilot. I love painting peppers and tomatoes but you have to be quick because they don't last long under the spotlight. When I photographed it this

Rework gets more interesting

2012-01-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

If you're like me you have a lot of paintings hanging around that are just, for lack of better words, "no good". You can't sell them. You've tried. You don't want them hanging on your wall. You live in the city and bonfires are illegal. So you recycle the canvas. That doesn't mean you throw it into the trash. No- you sand it lightly (outside) to get rid of the gloss, rub a bit of OMS onto it,

Coupon for Utrecht

2012-01-19T22:05:00.001-05:00

I had to pass this along.... it is good for any item not on sale plus free shipping if you order over $75 at Utrecht. They have some good prices and their quality is good too. I found it on the very first page of my American Artist magazine! Enjoy!

Continuing Along the Same Theme

2012-01-18T23:38:00.002-05:00

This poor girl has been waiting for a nose job for almost a year. It was time to fix her. I started the piece at a class at the Scottsdale Artists School last year but we only had three hours to work on her and at 16" x 20" this is a life size painting. This girl has some head of hair! The cold weather forces me to stay inside anyway so I don't mind trying to finish these pieces. I have a few

Rework!

2012-01-17T13:37:00.000-05:00

Rework is a dreaded word in a factory but not in the art studio. Definition: rework [riːˈwɜːk] vb (tr) 1. to use again in altered form the theme has been reworked in countless well-known poems 2. to rewrite or revise 3. to reprocess for use again I worked for a large commercial printer years ago and we were all unhappy when we heard the word "rework". Usually something was printed that

Some pears are better than others and then some foods are not good for you at all

2012-01-14T23:44:00.000-05:00

We like the Anjou pears because they are versatile and ripen faster. I like to paint them because they are cute and compact. This 6" x 8" painting was done in an hour with a palette knife and the paint that was left on my palette after painting the one below it. So these two foods are kind of like "good" and "evil". Pears are healthy and green, hot dogs are red and artery clogging. Whatever...

New Year's Resolutions....Less Travel, More Planning

2012-01-06T11:56:00.001-05:00

My New Year's Resolution is to spend less time on the computer and more time working on improving my painting. Expect to see a few larger and more challenging pieces on the blog this year as I change my focus from 'learning' mode to 'creative' mode. I still plan to teach a few workshops but not as many as last year. I am cutting down the travel time as well. I love to travel but it requires

Last two paintings of the year

2011-12-31T18:47:00.001-05:00

11" x 14" oil on canvas THE GROCER Watch a short demo of how I created this painting here: And a quick painting I did on New Year's Eve....

My Portrait Exchange painting arrived

2011-12-29T21:23:00.001-05:00

Kevin from S.F. with the painting I did of him and me with the one he did of me!

2011-12-26T08:24:00.001-05:00

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend. We had a quiet Christmas so I finally had a chance to paint something for myself after painting many commissioned Christmas pieces from photos. I truly hate working from photographs but they are necessary if the subject is not available I suppose. This is a "paint over". I have a lot of pieces I don't like and would never sell because I don't think

Portrait of an Artist

2011-11-17T18:56:00.001-05:00

14" x 18" oil on linen

Painting from the Live Model

2011-11-09T21:23:00.001-05:00

Most of the students who sign up for a painting class with me are surprised to learn that I believe it's easier to paint from life than it is to paint from a photograph. I need to qualify that statement a bit. It's easier if you are a fast painter. Of course you don't become a fast painter until you put in the hours necessary to make quick decisions while you're painting. That is where practice

Arizona and the Grand Canyon

2011-10-30T23:32:00.002-04:00

Ever since I started painting plein air pieces I have wanted to paint out west, especially the Grand Canyon. That dream came true this month thanks to my good friend Charlotte, who let me stay in AZ with her and who traveled up to the Canyon with me and my 14 year old daughter. The weather was perfect and the paintings were a challenge, due to the sheer immenseness of the landscape. Not qhat I

Self Doubt

2011-10-29T10:21:00.002-04:00

I want to take a few minutes to write about something that we all, as artists, have experienced at one time or another: rejection. If you haven't yet, you will. This ugly word strikes fear in the heart of any aspiring artist who has swallowed that lump in her throat and risked entering a juried show. Juried shows, unlike open shows, allow the judge(s) to weed out any piece he/she feels is not

Barn on County Road K

2011-10-23T01:06:00.002-04:00

A painting of a barn in Williams County done plein air.

2011-10-23T01:03:00.001-04:00

A painting of Angelique, who posed for our portrait open studio group this past summer.

A portrait of my friend Charlotte

2011-10-23T00:59:00.001-04:00

A thank you for her hospitality and generosity in allowing me to stay with her in AZ.

Paintings from Lake Waynoka, Sardinia, Ohio

2011-09-01T21:37:00.000-04:00

The OPAS paintout at Lake Waynoka was August 19-21. I ended up with a few nice paintings form the weekend.

Palette Knife Painting

2011-07-26T21:51:00.000-04:00

This is an 8" x 10" painting of a scene looking westward on Lake Erie near North Point Park. There was a lovely breeze blowing in from the lake and the day was made very comfortable because of it. One of my favorite places to paint in the area. 8" x 10" oil on board

My Favorite of the Trip

2011-07-26T21:47:00.000-04:00

The view of this old Schwinn bicycle from the porch of the house where I was staying was irresistible. No. 1: It was cool on the porch and I could relax. No. 2: The sun was glancing off the bike and the garden in a picturesque manner. 8" x 10" oil on board

Jessie on the Porch

2011-07-26T21:43:00.000-04:00

This is a painting of a porch and the child is incidental. I gave it to the family who had invited me to stay with them. 9" x 12" oil on canvas

Lakeside Plein Air Paintout

2011-07-26T21:41:00.000-04:00

This is the third year I have attended this paint out which is help in conjunction with the Lakeside Wooden Boat Show at Lakeside, Ohio. This year I stayed with a host family and it was a more comfortable experience. I painted the ubiquitous Marblehead Lighthouse because I hadn't done it and I needed to. Everyone paints Marblehead Lighthouse. It's almost a requirement. It was unbelievable hot on