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Painting for a friend

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  I have this friend who really, really loves those hairless cats. I think they look like wingless bats, and she knows that I feel this way, but she loves their adorable faces and says that they have fantastic dispositions. Her youngest is "Rob," a male that's about 5 years old.  Last year she posted a picture of herself holding one of her cats while standing in her kitchen.  (I've blurred this picture for her privacy. ) We decided that this needed a Renaissance Madonna and Child paint treatment...which I feel better able to do now that I've completed a year of art history.  My reference photos include this, for the background. The Renaissance was the first time that atmospheric perspective was widely depicted in painted works.      I isolated the background from one of those paintings using AI.   I started with a blank, white canvas board. I didn't bother with a mid-tone ground because I wanted the background to be bright.  I laid ...
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Spooky forest stuff.

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 I live on the Olympic peninsula just a stone's throw from the Hoh rain forest. (Just kidding, it's like a 2-3 hours drive to get there. The Oly Pen is HUGE, and the Hoh is cool. The only way to get there is AROUND because other than a smattering of logging roads, there aren't many ways to get across it, maybe because there's a mountain chain.  I first saw the Hoh when I was here for the Seattle marathon over 10 years ago. We drove around the peninsula, and went for a short trail run in it, and it's this fairy mossy wonderland. Honestly, I could paint forever and never run of out subjects here. So, a mossy, damp green wonderland of ferns and trees that look like characters in a Grimm's fairy tale. One, in particular, gets photographed a lot. It arches over the path, like a gateway. And that's the scene I was after today.  I started out with a study, using some of the leftover guache that I had from Design I class. I thoroughly hate guache, but I have decided...
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A river in India.

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 I decided to try a new painting today. I have two week off before my next round of classes start leaving me with WHOLE DAYS FOR PAINTING.  I donned my favorite paint-smeared overalls and started studying a photo that had gotten my attention. I can't share the original photo because it was posted in a group I belong to on social media called "Landscape photos for artists". I also flipped the original photo horizontaly and cropped it. Apparently the original photo was taken in India. I just loved the atmospheric mauvey colors. In addition, the sky in the photo is yellow.  Like smoky, hazy yellow. That's kind of a challenge for me, but my previous work gave me some practice in transitioning sky into yellow, so just all yellow should be doable, right? I decided this could be done with some quick-dry white, alizarin crimson, indian yellow, sap green, and a tiny bit of ultramarine violet.   First I had to reconfigure my Artristic Evolve to hold a 16x20" cradled wood ...
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