The first portrait is of my father who sat down for me sometime last year. I never wanted to show it as I felt indifferent about it. But I stumbled upon it again while cleaning up my work and saw it with fresh eyes. The second is a color study of a larger painting I'm working on. Next is a portrait of one of the students at school who gladly posed for us after class. The figure painting was a difficult pose to describe. I needed to have the weight really push down into the cushions and leave the abstract presence of her pose intact. Last portrait is of another classmate who posed last week.

Did the still life today at my friends house while waiting to go to work. I've been wanting to paint a more traditional still life setup where you can't see the ground plane.

The figure was done over at the Palette And Chisel. I used a somewhat limited palette. White, yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, and cad red because I realized all the other colors were too cold by themselves. I also mixed in Raw Umber to a lot of my colors I was mixing making them a little less saturated and cooler. Drapery and background I usually don't make the priority unless it's really interesting so like this time I only see them as abstract shapes and patterns to compose with. In this one I specifically went to get the form down in such a complicated pose in 4.5 hours but it's really tough and I didn't get what I was aiming for. Some parts which looked okay when painting (left leg especially) get lost now that I see it in front of me. In real life the only part that stands out to me that was decent was the right thigh. Even in the photo it's pretty bad. Another piece to learn from.