"Twisted Venus" is a Grisaille Painting. A friend challenged us to paint a Grisaille painting, and since that's how I paint and teach, I had to take up the challenge. The idea is to paint something using only Black and White, in 2D to appear 3D and Round. I think I've achieved that.
Once a month I participate in the Stephen Perkins workshop at the Artists' Guild in Melbourne, Florida. I need to do life drawing at least weekly, but I just can't squeeze it into my schedule. I need to do better, because it is available both at the Guild and at Ralph's Art Supply in Eau Gallie. If you can draw people, you can draw anything. I should spend a year of my life drawing and painting people from life. Yep, that's what I should do. The wonderful artist Karin Jurick painted 200 mug shots, and that body of work was really impressive. The colors, the brushwork, the expressions--every time I saw one I wondered what the person's story was. She captured defiance, sadness, hopelessness and other raw emotions with her very expressive paintbrush.
The cool thing about paintings is the glimpse you get of an event. Just enough to make you start asking questions about the who, where, when, and why of what you are seeing. Yeah, I know who she is, but I'm going to let you imagine her story.