Looks like I did a pretty poor job of cropping this image, doesn't it? But the fact is — what you see of the figure on the left is all that I drew, because I wanted to place the rest of the young man's face and body outside the picture plane. I'll tell you what I was trying to achieve with this strategy in a moment, but let's look first at the sin I committed by implementing it.

I consciously ignored a cardinal rule of Composition Theory.

This rule lays down the laws for guiding a viewer's eye through a 2-dimensional work of art by means of its overall design. In a nutshell, it states that:

1. The design of the piece should be such that it first catches the viewer's eye at the focal point — the visual element that is the lynchpin of the work (e.g., the young woman's smile in the above sketch).
2. The placement of the surrounding lines, tones, etc., should then lead the eye naturally around and through the rest of the image in such a way that it continually brings it back to that focal point.
3. There should nothing in the image that will lead the viewer's eye out of the picture plane, or arrest it at any of its edges.

Why is the third prong of this rule so important to formal fine-art composition? Because it is believed to be psychologically (though perhaps unconsciously) disturbing to a viewer to be driven visually out of an artwork, or brought up short at one or more of its enclosing borders.

Of course, in art, psychological disturbance is not necessarily a bad thing, if it serves any of the artist's underlying intentions for the work.

But why would I want this work to disturb you?

Actually, my quirky idea for this drawing didn't arise from any desire to disturb you per se — but rather from a personal sense of loss, and a need to somehow depict it.

The bisected boy in the drawing passed away about 8 or 9 years ago, in his mid-thirties. Now the girl beside him (his sister Debby) has also passed away, just a few months back — her in her early 40's. Their mother, a dear old friend of mine, has now lost both of her children. I cannot imagine her sadness — but I felt that I had to try.

After her son's death all those years ago, I did a small portrait of him at age 11, and sent it to her in lieu of a sympathy card.

Eric in the Sun • Oil on Cavas • 10"x8"

Nancy seemed so genuinely pleased to receive it, that I now felt it incumbent upon me to produce a similar work to commemorate Debby.

Among the pictures that her mother had recently sent me, was an old xeroxed photo of Debby and Eric standing together in front of some foliage and a brick wall. Since this was to be Debby's memoriam, not Eric's, my first impulse was to ignore him completely and produce a simple portrait of Debbby's beautiful 16-year-old head, with that great smile and all that gorgeous hair.

On second thought, however, it seemed only fitting to allow her long-gone brother Eric to slip part-way into the frame and place a comforting arm around his newly-departed sister — there, perhaps, to lead her beyond the frame, as well. As contrived as that sounds, I found some solace in the notiion.

There is consolation, too, in Debby's bright smile, which is supposed to be the focal point of the piece. And since human faces are always provocative to other humans, it may well be that her happy smile is, indeed, the first thing that catches your eye.

But I'm banking on the sharp abbreviation of the figure at her side to keep luring your gaze left-ward — to a space beyond the paper's edge where the unseen portion of Eric only exists in your mind's eye. If I'm right about that, then I've successfully broken a time-honored rule.

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Meet the Young girls, Olivia and Julia — the lovely subjects of an oil portrait that I completed a few days ago.

The Young Girls, Oil on Canvas, 24" x 24"

The girls' father (who commissioned the double portrait) came to pick it up on the very day it was finished, while it was still wet. (Parts were very wet indeed!) Nevertheless, I needed to record the work for my portfolio before it left the building. So within the short amount of time allotted, I endeavored to get a usable shot.

I decided to first try shooting the painting outside in the shade; an approach that has worked quite well for me in the past, since there's no direct sunlight to cast glaring reflections onto the wet, oily surface. But the intense Texas sun that has caused such a long and fearful drought this year kept finding its way into the shadows — spreading its obscuring light over wet areas of paint in its wake. An overcast day would've been preferable, of course . . . but if we could order up our weather here, we'd certainly never have ordered a drought.

Disappointed, I lugged the work back into the room that I use as a studio, placed it back on the easel, and set up my camera and tripod to take the shot from there. You may be wondering why I didn't try the shot in this room first. The problem is the wall color: a mid-tone blue that has an unfortunate tendency to absorb light.

You see, when you photograph a wet painting, you have to point all of your lights away from the work to avoid flashes of glare (like the ones that appeared in my outside shots). And when you turn all of the light away from a shiny subject matter, you need to find a way to bounce that light back onto your subject's surface, in order to provide enough rebounding illumination to get a clear, detailed, glare-free shot. The way to do this is to either photograph your subject in a white-walled room — or improvise by, say, surrounding your lights, subject, and camera with hanging white bed sheets (something I didn't have time for under the circumstances).

Luckily, the room I work in does have a white ceiling, so I crossed my fingers and bounced the light from there. Although, the resulting image is not the best shot I've ever taken of my artwork (it won't produce a decent print-out, that's for sure), it's not too bad — considering the time constraints and the light-sucking walls. In the final image, the colors as well as the contrasts between lights and shadows suffered, but I was able to correct both of these problems to some degree in Photoshop.

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This is a series of charcoal drawings executed in the last few years. All works in this gallery are 18" x 24" Charcoal on Strathmore paper (some heightened with white). Included are:

• Friends Leah and Tanya in "Good Hands" (2009)
• Son Joseph and friend Kristin in "The Newlyweds" (2008)
• Friend Jay and husband Jerry in "Firekeepers" (2006)
• Daughter Rose and friend Charlie in "Game Plan" (2008)
• My husband and me in "YouTubing" (2008)
• My son and his two male ferrets in "Beautiful Boys" (2008)

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Using a beta version of the not-yet-released Rodeo development platform, I created an app that allowed me to compile a portfolio of selected works and post it to the web! Click the Portfolio link (at the top of this page) to view it.

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Simple Instructions

1. When you open my portfolio, you'll see is a list of works (see first gallery image). Click any item in that list to view the work, title, dimensions, and other data.
2. To navigate the portfolio, click the Forward or Back arrow — or click the Index button (identified by the red arrow in the second gallery image).

More New Links

Next to the Portfolio link are also links about me and my commission procedures.

• Portrait: Describes the kinds of references I'm willing to use for portraiture, my procedure for photographing subjects, suggestions for creating your own photo references, and the use (and possible limitations) of pre-existing photos.
• Process: Discusses the decisions that need to be made before I can give you an exact quote on a commission, my standard terms, your rights to the finished work, and a pdf of my standard Portrait Agreement.
• Prices: Lists the base prices for Charcoal and Oil portraits.
• Bio: Includes my artist's statement, exhibits, awards, and art education.

Your comments on all of this new information are welcome. And I would be very much obliged if you would let me know if you find any errors or broken links.

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Over 90 self-portaits of Rembrandt van Rijn are said to have survived to this day — making him arguably the most prolific self-portaitist of all time. Although the great Dutch master had no dearth of subjects willing to sit hour after hour, day after day, even month after month — he obviously found it deeply instructive to paint his own reflection, over and over and over again.

I, however, have nothing but dearth when it comes to subjects willing to sit for a live portrait; and as a result, I work almost exclusively from photographic references. But there is one model who is always on hand and happy to pose . . .

Me, Myself, and I (and Me Again, with Spouse)

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Three of the works in this gallery are acrylic on canvas — and the last is obviously charcoal on paper. The first two are quick studies from life using a mirror and only four colors, and working alla prima — which means "all at once" (completed in a single session): the first in about 2 hours, the second in 20 minutes. The 20-minute study was, in fact, executed so rapidly that I misjudged the proportions of my own face — and thereby had to leave part of my chin to the viewer's imagination. (For all you know, I was sporting a small goatee that day.)

The other two images, as you can see, are much more formal and highly resolved, because both were done from photographs that I took myself. In each instance, I created the set-up and lighting (just as I would for any other model), set the camera's timer, then quickly took my seat.

I opted to work from a photo to produce image #3 because it was part of a series of family portraits, the rest of which were also to be based on photographs. And like the rest of the works in that series, this one was completed over a number days and sessions, with a fuller palette of 8 hues for more color mixing options.

The last image was an opportunity to work without color, concentrating solely on line and value. Because this work included my husband, it also required a photographic reference — which allowed me to take my sweet time fleshing out the figures, the laptop and its Apple logo, and other details of the scene.

The Angst of Self Interpretation

Probably the most difficult part of working on your own portrait is the daunting task of staring at yourself for an extended period of time. While not all people feel this way, many of us are initially self-conscious in this regard. I know that I was. But over time, I found that I was able to separate myself from my reflection, and look at the image in the mirror (or photograph) as if it were unrelated to me. Once I entered this zone, I was able to take a more clinical view of my model (me), and consequently, work more freely — and more honestly.

The second difficulty is actually an off-shoot of the first: a reluctance to include what we consider to be physical flaws in our appearance, thereby unconsciously flattering ourselves. Such compromises with the truth can cause us to lose the likeness entirely, and even deprive the work of its spontaneity and vitality.

Once again, the solution for me has been to forget myself and focus strictly on what I actually see in front of me. When I do this, blemishes, wrinkles (and whatever else bugs me about my appearance) all become potentially beautiful lines, shapes, colors, and tones. The reward for relinquishing my subjectivity is a greater ability to capture the spirit of me at that very moment, under that light, with that expression, and at that angle. These are the things that kept Rembrandt's fascination with his own image alive for the whole of his long career.

If you can discipline yourself to treat your own image like that of any other model, there's much to be gained from practicing portraiture on yourself. Whether you are working from life or a photograph, you've set yourself an interesting problem — and in the pursuit of its solution, you can learn a great deal about painting or drawing people. The process may even help you to appreciate what a tremendous leap of faith it is for a portrait subject to surrender his likeness to you.

The bare necessities . . .

Moreover, self portraits are an opportunity to explore the limits of your medium, play with your brush strokes or other mark-making, explore the effects of shade and temperature on optical depth — and so on. And, by all means, try rapid renderings (like my first two images), working loose and large and including only the amount of detail needed to capture your hair, your clothes, your posture, your expression.

Speaking of expression . . .

With its stern visage and harsh lighting, the second portrait in my gallery may not be the most flattering — but I am nevertheless delighted with the buttery texture of the hair, the subtle colors in the shadows, the fluid and energetic lines of the face.

From this exercise, I learned a great deal about how much you can accomplish with just a few rapid strokes. In fact, the almost caricature nature of image #2 made me toy with the idea of using it as my avatar on sites like this one. But my husband rightly pointed out that my expression here seems less than friendly — the result of rigorous concentration as I worked. So I opted instead for the head in the work where I'm face-front and smiling. This also happens to be the earliest of the four portraits shown, so I'm a bit younger here, my face is fuller — and, well, let's face it . . . it's more flattering.

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Bear Medicine • 18.5"x24" o/c  |  Read a FREE EXCERPT from the book

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The Safety of Triangles (click the image below for a larger view)

Composition is often the trickiest element in a work's success and I struggle with it as much as any artist. But I find that I can rarely go wrong with a triangular composition. 

It's simple; it's orderly; and it's beautiful, provided that the nucleus of the set-up is off-center – a method of placement that somehow always seems so much more psychologically pleasing than dead-center. (See the theory of the Golden Ratio.)

As you can plainly see by the illustrations above, I used repeating triangles as compositional building blocks for Bear Medicine. Even the leftover negative spaces are triangular players in a network of facets that surreptitiously guide the viewer's eye over the entire image, while simultaneously holding the piece together. Now that you know this, try looking at the image sans triangles (the second item in the top gallery). Perhaps you'll notice as you review the work that your eye doesn't go in circles so much as it goes in triangles.

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I was inspired to sketch our 16th President after reading Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about the political genius of Abraham Lincoln. I got the idea for the title of the piece from something Carl Sandburg said in his trilogy on the life of Lincoln.

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Lincoln was 54 years old on November 9, 1863, when he stood for my drawing's souce photo. The Civil War was raging well into in its second year with no surety at all that the North would win. But, on April 9, 1865, Lee finally surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. On April 11 Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks to an audience that included John Wilkes Booth. On the 14th, Booth shot him. On the 15th, he died. In December, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified and slavery was abolished in the U.S.

A Digital Reference, an Abbreviated Grid – and a Big Mirror
Once I found a suitable image of Lincoln on the Web, rather than print what was bound to be a low-resolution copy, I decided to work directly from my laptop screen (gallery image 2). This was a first for me, and I have to say, it has its advantages.

1. I took the image into Adobe Photoshop and enlarged it as much as I could without causing serious pixelation.
2. I cropped it to a perfect square (which was all that would fit on my computer screen).
3. I added a Photoshop layer and drew an X over the entire image. (Normally, I'd put clear acetate over the source, and draw the X on the acetate with a Sharpie. In either case, I can easily lose the X when I've reached a point where I only want to see the unmarked image. I simply remove the acetate or hide the X layer in Photoshop.)
4. I lightly toned a 17" x 14" sheet of white paper using brown conte crayon, paper towels, and a chamois.
5. I needed to make a corresponding X on my paper. However, I wasn't using a square sheet because I intended to draw more of the torso than was visible onscreen after enlarging the image. So, I put light dots at four corners of an imaginary square starting 1/2 an inch down and in from the top of the page.
6. I pinched a thin edge on a kneaded eraser, and used it to lightly draw an X connecting the four corner dots. (Sometimes I draw the X lightly with the medium I'm using; but, lines from charcoal, conte, and other drawing media – however light – are hard to completely erase. This is especially true of a hard pastel crayon like conte. But, if the X is already an erased line, it eventually disappears completely into the drawing.)

When working from 2-D sources, I often use an X as an abbreviated grid to determine the general placement and relationship of the features without inhibiting the impulse to draw in a more free-hand fashion – or committing myself to slavishly copying the source. In lieu of a more complex grid, I use mirrors to check accuracy and perspective (gallery image 3). By simultaneously imposing distance and reversing the image, a mirror disrupts the context of a work causing the mind to suddenly see mistakes not previously apparent.

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Several years ago, I had to cast two works in metal for a sculpture class. I'd already done a bronze casting (see Lost Wax and a Bronze Barbie), so I thought I'd change things up and preserve a pair of old hiking boots in aluminum. However, to use the lost wax process I'd employed for my bronze, I needed a WAX REPLICA of each boot !!

Under the guidance of sculpture professor Roger Columbik, here's how I turned canvas hiking boots to wax . . .

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1. First of all, it was part of my bright idea to cast only the main body of each boot into aluminum – then, glue the original rubber sole, brand labels, and hardware to the finished metal version of each. Thus, my first order of business was to painstakingly remove these items from each shoe.
2. Next, I created a clay collar along the now-soleless base of each shoe – inset a little from its outer edge (as you can see in the top thumbnail of the first image above) – and used these collars to affix each shoe to a wooden board.
3. I partially filled each boot with newspaper and a thin coating of clay – creating something akinto the base of a bowl just below the tongue of each boot. (This hidden bowl is shown below in a finished boot. In the cast boots, everything below this "false bottom" is hollow.)
   
4. I applied several coats of varnish to each boot until it was as stiff as the board it sat upon; then, covered each one in saran wrap.
5. Using a rolling pin like device, I rolled sheets of clay like pastry into 1/4 inch thicknesses; then, cut them into workable pieces to lay across the shoes like blankets, molding each piece to the basic form of the shoe. (The saran wrap kept the clay blankets from adhering to the material of the shoes.)
6. Using a long thin strip of the clay, I built a flange (or lip) over the center and across the tongue of each shoe (shown in "Clay Blanket" thumbnail above). At the apex of this flange, I placed an additional plug of clay, which I'll explain in a moment.
7. When the clay dried, I coated one side of each shoe with plaster of paris up to the clay flange and let it dry.
8. Removing the clay flange, I coated the flange-edge of the first dried plaster section with vaseline. Then, I applied plaster to the other half of each shoe until it met the vaselined edge of the first section. (I had to be careful that the new section met, but, didn't adhere to the first section – so, I could crack open and slide the two sides of the molds off of each shoe as necessary. I also had to ensure that the plaster went around, and not over, the clay plugs – which would later provide needed openings into each of the plaster molds.)
9. I took the two finished sections of plaster mold off of each boot, removed the clay blankets and saran wrap – then, replaced the molds on the boots, using melted wax to secure each plaster pair to itself and to its wooden board. (The area that had once held the clay blanket was now an empty layer of space between the inside of the plaster mold, and the outside of each shoe.)
10. I sprayed the shoes and the inside of the plaster molds with a releasing agent; then, used a funnel to pour rubber mold mixture into the hole where the clay plug had been, filling the empty space between the shoe and the plaster with the liquid rubber.
11. When the rubber gelled, I removed the outer plaster mold, and the inner rubber mold, from each shoe. I was at last ready to create my wax models!!
12. I re-inserted the rubber molds into the plaster molds to steady them for the next step (tying the plaster sections back together with rope).
13. Turning each plaster/rubber-mold-unit upside down, I sprayed it again with releasing agent – then, carefully drizzled a coating of wax into each mold, swishing it around to form a thin but solid layer (just like making a hollow piece of chocolate candy).
14. Removing the rubber molds revealed two perfect wax replicas of my beat-up old hiking boots – with all the characteristic seams, folds, scars and textures of the originals!!!
15. All I had to do now was sacrifice these hardwon temporary works to the remainder of the casting process – which, from this point forward, followed the exact same steps used from the get-go to create Suburban Odalisique.

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I often take a traditional approach to oil painting that begins with a monochramatic underpainting, followed by successive layers of color. This approach requires me to follow the "fat over lean" rule: an under layer should be leaner (have less oil) than its over layer.

This procedure not only allows the first layer to dry faster (so you don't have to wait as long to apply the second layer); more importantly, it results in a stronger bond between paint and painting surface – while the reverse creates a weak bond resulting in much, much quicker deterioration of the work.

In deference to the "fat over lean" rule (a law of chemistry, actually), traditionalists usually dilute the paint used for the first layer (the monochromatic underpainting) with thinner. In the past, this was invariably turpentine – the very smell of which so intoxicated Vincent van Gogh and other artists of history that they reportedly wound up drinking it.

Acrylic Underpainting

Thus, I prefer to avoid even low-toxicity thinners, and begin each oil work with an acrylic underpainting followed by oil glazes and impastos (which adhere well to an acrylic base). Acrylic paint not only dries much more rapidly than the thinnest standard oil paint – it goes beyond lean to FAT FREE, since it contains no oil in the first place.

I used this oil-over-acrylic approach to paint Dreamcatcher, the still life shown above. Click through the gallery to follow this work from acrylic underpainting to finished oil.

To clean my brushes during the oil-painting part of this process, I just use clean rags or thick white paper toweling (such as, VIVA). I never park my brushes in thinner, and use only soap and water to clean them when I'm done for the day. Even when I was using thinner, I washed my brushes this way. You don't want to leave any thinner in a brush; it will eat away at it.

BTW: Never use acrylic paint OVER a layer of oil paint. This flies in the face of "fat over lean," and could lead to rapid deterioration.

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Ever wonder what sculptors mean when they use the term "lost wax"? Below are highlights of the lost wax process I used to create a small bronze piece called Suburban Odalisque (see historical art references).

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1. First, I sculpted the wax figure, and attached hollow tubes (called "gates") and a cup-like structure to the bottom of the work.
   
2. Then, I dipped it into a slurry mixture called "ceramic shell," followed by a sand bath. When the shell had air-hardened, I set the coated statue at an angle and blow-torched it to melt all the wax – which then ran out through the tubes and cup, leaving the ceramic shell empty. In other words, I LOST the WAX!
   
3. Next, the empty ceramic shell was kiln-hardened to withstand the molten bronze that was then poured (via the cup and tubes) into the space previously occupied by the lost wax.
   
4. Once the bronze had cooled and hardened, I hammered and whacked at it until the finished statue emerged.

The Chair and the Bathing Suit

I found instructions for building a full-size lawn chair/lounger on the Internet, then, just made everything really small. I actually built the chair first, then covered it with saran wrap so I could sculpt the wax against it – insuring that the finished figure would lie perfectly in the chair. When the bronze version was done, at the suggestion of my husband, I added a reinforcing strip to the back of the chair (shown in the last picture above) to better support the dense weight of the finished work.

I made the spandex bathing suit from my own pattern, and sewed it right onto the figure – a surprisingly difficult operation, thanks to the tiny size of the model coupled with its extraordinary weight. She's so-o-o-o-o heavy!

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