January portrait
 

When a painting is framed and finished, I usually take a digital picture of it hanging on the wall in my studio. I take an angled shot like this to get a good descriptive record of the frame.

This is painted on a NEW TRADITIONS canvas panel. The panel material is gatorfoam board and the canvas in this particular case is Claessens 15. Since I

I always work as broadly as possible using both brushes and a knife, the bigger the brush, the better. My normal painting method is to paint direct. I work on a toned canvas

The Claessens 15 is a fairly rough textured canvas. Normally I would use a finer weave canvas for this size. My intention was to paint broad and loose and I knew the canvas texture would help me preserve good edge quality. The painting turned out to be more polished than I intended, reminding me once more that I don

I was just about to ask for a frontal view and you beat me to it.:) As usual, a beautiful and emotional painting. About the natural lighting, do you also have something propped to reflect the reddish tones, especially on the ear? Thank you.

I will answer questions you might have, but first let me put down some answers to some fairly common ones.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE? This painting wasn

Gosh Bill, as always... Wonderful!

I am still waiting for the EPA guy!

:) Beth

PS. Even after watching you paint for a week, I cannot figure out how you get the larger brush strokes to look so blended, you're pretty good at this you know!

Beautifully done.

Nice to see you back on here.

Dear Bill,

What a delightful treat to open my Forum email to this posting! One of the many things I find so interesting about your paintings is that they look so very finished from a distance, yet when you're able to view something up close, the painterly nature of your work gives just as much pleasure to the eye, yet for a variety of different reasons. The edge variety in the close-up is so instructive to me.

If you get a chance, would you post a close-up of the hands/arm? That forearm definitely has the "squishy" feeling you have descibed before.

Thank you so much for this wonderful contribution.

Bill, my heart just stopped and had to be re-started. A wonderful painting and, as usual, an intriguing mix of classical and painterly techniques.

You give your sitters such an air of serenity and presence.

Beautiful. I am glad you spent some time explaining your ways, thank you.