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Allan, Julie, Chris and Linda,
Yikes, I am bowled over! Since I joined the forum I have seen some incredible work, and believe me you guys are doing it! So your opinions mean a great deal.
Allan, to answer your question about the woman in the portrait, she is not family, but a very dear friend whom we see in Maine in the summers. Her husband, who died several years ago, was an artist and teacher who believed in painting only from life, and Nan is fiercely loyal to that way of thinking. When I do drawings of the house and environs she loves them and puts them up on the wall. I've been wanting to paint her from life but she won't sit still long enough! (She has no electricity or running water, so she chops wood, fetches water from the lake, etc.) She says "maybe sometime you can paint me knitting," but I haven't caught her knitting lately. Except on a series of photos I took a couple of years ago. I finally decided to use them to create this challenge for myself, since in commisssioned work I often have no choice but to work from photos. I may bring this up to Maine and see what she thinks of it, though I'm not optimistic!
Linda, no I do not use a medium. It's just turpenoid (I'm allergic to regular solvents) and paint. I stopped using medium a while back because it made my edges too hard. Now I use more paint and I have a lot more control over the edges. I just clean my brushes off between colors, pat them on a paper towel, and there is usually enough turpenoid left in them to soften the paint. I forget why I started doing this. I guess I heard someone explaining why they no longer used medium and I thought "Hey, maybe that's my problem!"
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