Side-lit Open Studio Model

[Carol Norton]

I was afforded the luxury of seeing this in person today and it IS absolutely beautiful!!! Sure do wish I could do one as beautiful as this in 3 hours. Thanks, Linda.

[Linda Brandon]

Cindy, Kim, David, Ilaria, Garth and Carol, you are such good painters, I'm honored to get these compliments.

About the three hour session... well, the idea is to get both speed and accuracy, you don't really get brownie points for speed itself. When I paint I concentrate on getting the values and the facial planes down, and then I start placing features. People always move slightly and I try to leave them a little wiggle room for as long as I can. I can't get very much really subtle work done in three hours, other than soften some edges, so I do things like bring huge brushes and wipe the canvas with a rag, etc. .

Cindy, are you asking me about color or about the actual palette I hold?

[Michele Rushworth]

This might just be the very best open studio portrait I have ever seen!

[Cindy Procious]

Originally Posted by Linda Brandon

.Cindy, are you asking me about color or about the actual palette I hold?

Okay - now that I think about it, the question is sort of dorky. I'm referring to the palette you hold, and even dorkier - how do you transport your stuff to and from the studio? (Where's that red-faced embarrassed smilie?)

Speedy painting from life like this is probably kind of a parlor trick, like juggling or maybe flipping your eyelids back on top of your eyeballs.

Can you do that? My 12 year old son does it - it's so gross it freaks me out.

[Linda Brandon]

Originally Posted by Cindy Procious

Can you do that? My 12 year old son does it - it's so gross it freaks me out.

Your son is very talented! Everybody should have at least one freakish gift to liven up dull parties, board meetings, etc. Actually, I can vibrate my irises very rapidly, not that this has ever made me popular, I have to say.

About the set up - I put blobs of my paint in a flattish Tupperware container and keep it in the freezer (I put paint left over from a day's painting session in with the blobs) and take it to open studio. When I get there I just transfer the blobs to my handheld palette. If I had a bigger freezer I would just keep the whole palette in there (with the mixing area always scraped clean). I have two palettes going by the way, one with my outside colors and one with my inside colors. I once had a very beautiful Turtlewood palette (found at Michael Shane Neal's site) but I gave it away to another artist (I can't believe I did that, it was beautiful).

For the rest, I keep a big canvas shopping bag with art supplies in it, ready to go. I keep a checklist taped to the bag so that I can go through and make sure I have everything I need and I don't leave home without something. I keep around three or four 24" x 30" Masonite panels with taped linen canvas to them so that I can just grab one and go, either to open studio or a landscape.

Sharon, get back down here soon and do a great setup for us all!

Jean, there is always so much drama in your own work, and thank you for your nice comments.