Nadine and Me

Here is the portrait party of Me (Krista Smith) painting Nadine Bozek. I dont like how this one turned out. You can tell the flowers were an afterthought....but i spent more time on them than her face so I'm not proud of this one.

Above: My painting of Nadine


Above: Nadine's drawing of me

How it all started

Besides the mandatory hand prints in preschool, I had never used paint before a couple years ago. I am an Art History major and have taught myself to paint not by practice, but by viewing the teqnuiques of the masters being drilled into my head after mindlessly starring at slides for several hours a day. I have done a few small John Constable paintings and one Renior but they had been damaged while moving so they are now in a trash heap somewhere.

Above: My painting of "Pysche and Cupid" by Rococo artist Fragonard, I love his art and plan to do a lot more large scale reproductions of his work.

playing with light and shadow. I love how the lamp turned out.




Above: "The Lady of Paso Nogal" a recent painting of mine. This is a portrait of my first dog, Sadie who has been gone for several years now, it was a mothers day gift for my mom who has yet to get over her. She walked Sadie at the Paso Noagal dog park almost daily for 11 years. I got the idea of dog in costume by Thierry Poncelet. He had a book called "Sit! Ancesrtral Dog Portraits" that include all of his works. I would highly recomend you go and check it out, I just love it.


Above: just a random charcol sketch of mine

I usualy paint in a more traditional style but I painted this for a friends living room and wanted to do something bold with orange to pop on the green walls. Low quality photograph of the picture but the canvas is 4'x4' so it is very large and a lot of th detail is lost in this fuzzy photo. My friend had an obsession with "the dark tower" series by Stephen King so the urban cowboy thing was my inspiration for this.

the other "dark tower" inspired painting that I made for his hallway. This is the first time I attempted extremely loose brush strokes and it was difficult to stop myself from adding detail

pencil drawing used for my friends band's CD cover.

My first Portrait Party

So my first portrait party exchange went well. I love having a time frame and set subject matter. When left to my own devices I tend to procrastinate and scrap the painting half way through as my enthusiasm wanes. I painted Paul Brown and he painted me, we decided to paint in similar styles so we choose to do oils and keeping the look in the same era. I painted Paul in the style of Frans Hals and he painted me as the girl with the pearl earing. It was really a great experiece but the waiting for the trade rendered me quite impatient! I have included the painting from both of us in whole and the detail.