Pursuing my passion

In 2010 I made my first venture overseas. I spent 14 days in and around Paris sightseeing and attending a painting workshop. The workshop was mostly focused on portraits, but we also painted en plein air in the Paris countryside.

One of our wonderful models was Florie-Anne, a college student, who not only posed for several days, but served as our translator when needed. I painted a head/shoulders portrait of her while there and always had it in the back of my mind to create a painting from a photo I took of her coming out of the old farm house where we stayed at La Bonne Etoile in Fontaine-Fourches about an hour outside of Paris.

I'm experimenting with building more texture in my paintings and wanted to use the knife to lay on thicker layers of paint to indicate the stucco, gravel, etc. It was a lot of fun and makes for a nice surface quality. I'd like to incorporate some of these techniques into my landscapes.

I'm not quite finished with this painting of Florie-Anne, but want to put it aside for a while - don't want to over work it.

I'm so excited to be heading to southern Colorado to paint soon - I need my mountain fix! Hopefully I'll return with some great references and plein air studies.