Gloria Jean's

Oil on 6″ X 6″ Raymar Canvas Board $35.00

When organizing my work area I find it helps to have a “thing box.” I also have found that a few of my cats love to curl up in boxes. This kitten was found in my alley, lost and full of fleas. It took months of care to bring her back to health and rid her of a flea infestation. She became my best friend. I was smitten by a flea bitten kitten. Along with her, Miss Piggy Pinknose had two kittens about the same age. One of them looks so much like this one I am going to assume they have the same father. I couldn’t tell them apart.

Miss Piggy watches a swallow as it tries to find a way out of the studio.  8″ x 10″  -$75.00

She was given special treatment because she was about to have kittens. Her name is Miss Piggy Pinknose. She earned the name by finding and tearing into every bag of cat food I brought home. I had to hide it from her. She even knows how to open cabinet doors.  Miss Piggy’s fur is short cropped and feels like luscious  mink.  The painting is oil on an 8″x 10″ canvas. It is gallery wrapped and ready to hang.

It is important to simplify the object into three values: light, medium and dark.

Practice bears fruit when it is applied. Prior to doing the following exercise, the student should have done a value scale with at least 5 values (and preferably ten) from black to white. The beginner can use this exercise to learn to mix oils.

I recommend using burnt sienna and ultramarine blue to make a black instead of black from the tube.  Gray in stages using white. Burnt sienna will speed the drying time and when you add the right amount,  you can control the amount of blue in the mixture.  Burnt sienna, being orange, is the compliment of ultramarine blue and reduces the color intensity of the primary blue.

Simplify what you see to only three values. Set up a simple still life. Concentrate on translating it as a drawing using only 3 values, a dark, a medium and a light tone. For this exercise, you may want to mix the three colors on the palette, using the palette knife. I don’t usually encourage this. You can also do this exercise using a soft lead pencil, ink washes or other media that will give three distinct values.