Teaching painting is a great task to ask of a person who doesn't paint. I do not paint. I teach the manipulation of media through experience. "Learn from doing!" I say. Monochromatic pastel exercises help my students to get a handle on the media. We explore value and composition and the handling of media. Sometimes happy accidents occur. This was my example to the teens on composition and value. It is a journey.
This is an acrylic painting that I made for someone I was close to. We would often take turns of one of us being overly affectionate and the other being playfully annoyed. I tried to capture this dynamic in the painting of these two owls. This painting was an experiment in portraying animals, something I don't do often, and using my paint knife as a tool in my paintings.
I took a portrait collage course, and this is my first project. Fidelia Bridges painted incredible watercolors and landscapes, and the instructor assigned her as the subject.
I got a little emotional when I heard the Lahaina banyan tree would make it through the Maui fire. I found a reference and painted a watercolor of the new growth. I come from a Navy family and was born in Hawaii. Let me know if I got the transparency and shading right or if it is aesthetically pleasing.
