Painting the costumed model – I

Painting study (Jenny at the beach) © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Looking forward to this weekend's workshop, Painting the Costumed Model, I began pulling out painted studies I'd done in my Costumed Model drawing and painting group in Carmel, from nine to thirteen years ago.

Painting study (Big hat - looks a bit Lautrec–ian, don't you think?

It did moreso before, though. Now she looks a bit healthier.) © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Looking wasn't enough! I began working on some of them, finishing them a bit, working with the colors.... It was fun to deduce what colors I'd been using in each one. My palette was very different then – very experimentational – and included colors I haven't used in years. I didn't have the model in front of me, but that enabled me to work on each study simply as a painting.

Painting study (Dancer at rest) © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

I'm enjoying returning to them after all this time, with what I have learned in the interim. It's not exactly like picking up where I left off... it's better.

Figurative painting

Most people know me as a landscape painter, but for most of my artistic life I drew and painted people almost exclusively. I thought I'd post a painting from 1998 of my nephew and a friend of his. He's just gone to college, for his first year of film school - it makes me feel more than ever the old, old saying that "art is long, life is short."