8×16″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of days looking at my photo references. Usually I set aside photos that I take that appeal to me for paintings, and place those in a separate file. From time to time, I look back through ones I did not select, and usually find many that appeal to me now, though for some reason they did not grab me at the time. This photo is one that I took a couple of years ago, but happened to stumble upon it yesterday and saw it in a new light.

I did this painting with four of the new Golden OPEN colors: Prussian Blue Hue, Cadmium Yellow Dark, Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide, and Quinacridone Crimson, plus Titanium White. In the end, I also used a little Cadmium Yellow Primrose in the greens to increase the “sparkle factor”. I love these new colors! The Cadmium Yellow Dark mixes rich, warm greens. The Prussian Blue Hue is clean enough for skies, yet muted enough to not take over the painting, and mixes very deep darks (as I was hoping). The Quinacridone Crimson is going to become the new cool red on my palette. Transparent Yellow Oxide is a color I frequently use for underpainting and glazing in both oils and Golden Fluid Acrylics. I’m so glad that I have it now in OPEN as well!

I still vividly remember this bright, late afternoon at the Vanderbilt Mansion property along the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York. It’s one of the best sunset locations that I’ve ever encountered, and one of the few parks where you can drive right to the river (though they do close the road to the river on weekends). I haven’t done any plein air painting there for a long time, but I think I will change that soon!

20×16″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on canvas covered hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

I was eager to work in a medium that would enable me to layer quickly today, so I grabbed my Golden OPEN Acrylics and a 16×20 canvas covered board for open studio portraiture. I left most of my acrylics upstate, so had to make due with what I had: Cadmium Yellow Primrose, Pyrrole Red, Transparent Red Oxide, Ultramarine Blue, Carbon Black, and Titanium White.

These paints are just sooooo much fun. I prefer them on paper or smooth hardboard rather than canvas, so next time I’ll have to remember to size some watercolor paper or matboard before I go.

Leigh was a really great and beautiful model. We’ll have her for another sitting in January, so I’ll get to sketch her again!

20×16″, Oils on Canvas covered hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

You may remember two weeks ago when I sketched Troy in pastel. We had no open studio last Thursday since it was Thanksgiving, but today I went back, oils in hand, for another sketch. I used Rembrandt Ivory Black, Gamblin Torrit Grey, and Winsor Newton Artist Titanium White with a little Winsor Newton Griffin Titanium White mixed in to speed drying. I also used Weber Res-n-gel medium.

Troy will keep the same pose for three weeks, and most of the artists are keeping their spots and working all three weeks on the same painting. I waited until after the posing started for any returning artists to reclaim their previous spots before setting up in a new position, but go figure…. (Yes, you know what’s coming!)… As soon as I got set up, someone came in late and said, “You’re in my spot!”

I didn’t really care where I painted from; I just didn’t want to miss the posing time. There is never enough time with the model! Anyway, this ended up being about two hours of posing time altogether. I always seem to have difficulty getting the head situated exactly where I want it on the canvas. This time, I really took my time with placement and it ended up right where I wanted it to be! Amazing!

I like this model, Troy, very much. We’ll have him for one more week.

12×9″, Pastel on Art Spectrum sanded paper
For purchase information, please email me at JamieWG@aol.com.

This is my first portrait since last winter — a two hour sketch from life. The model sits for three consecutive sessions, but I prefer to use them as sketching opportunities, and generally try to wrap up in a single session if possible. This model, Troy, is new to the art center. We’ll have two more sessions with him, so I plan to do others from different angles.

I’ve always felt that portrait and figure drawing and painting keep me honest as an artist. When painting landscapes, we can move a tree from one side of the scene to the other, enlarge a mountain, and put in clouds where there are none. But with portrait and figure painting, you can’t transplant somebody’s nose to where their mouth should be, or put a foot on the end of their arm!

Once the cold weather gets underway, I go into the portrait or figure studio a couple of times a week, using the winter to sharpen up my drawing skills. It really helps my winter doldrums too, since I’m not fond of plein air painting in the frigid weather. By late fall, I start looking forward to the change of subject and venue that winter brings. After a winter of studio landscapes, and portraits and figures from life, I feel really charged up about getting out for plein air work again in the spring.

Today I dove in for the first time this season, both in subject and medium. I hadn’t broken out the pastels for quite some time (although I’ve been talking about it for a month or so), and it’s my first portrait of the season.

12×9″, Watercolor on Arches 140# hp
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

11×14″, Watercolor on Arches 140#hp
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

18×12″, soft pastels on Wallis
For purchase information, please email me at JamieWG@aol.com.

I haven’t done any pastel work for quite some time, so I decided to bring my large Dakota box of pastels to open studio this week.There’s everything under the sun in that box, all mixed together and sorted by value and color.

This has been a tough week. My poor husband got food poisoning, and I hurt my back yesterday trying to move a cabinet, so my artwork may well be a little sporadic for the next week or so. I miss it already.

Path Through the Open Land Foundation
8×10, Golden OPEN Acrylics on Multimedia Artboard
Please email me if you are interested in this painting.

It’s been sooooo hard for me to keep this under wraps, but the time has finally arrived when I can share the great news! Everybody’s been asking me this year what acrylic paints I’ve been using that look so much like my oils, and I have to hem and haw and politely change the subject……until now. Golden Paints has developed a brand new line of “acrylics” with a very long open time. It is called Golden Open. They’ll be shipping to stores on July 1. The painting above is one of my favorites done with these new paints. You can see my demonstration thread for this painting here.The underpainting was done with Golden Fluid Acrylics, and then the Open paints were used over that.

I’ve been testing these paints for Golden Acrylics since last August, and it’s been such a thrill for me to finally have an acrylic paint that does what I want it to do. The long open time enables me to paint like I would with oils, only better. It is really like a new medium in that it can do some of the things oils can do, some of the things acrylics can do, some of the things gouache can do, and some of the things watercolors can do. After nine months of using this paint, I feel like I’m still just scratching the surface in terms of its possibilities. Almost all of the acrylics that you’ve seen here on my blog since August were done with this paint.

This still life on clear-sealed linen is another one of my favorites done with this paint:
Flowers on Linen, 8×6″

The paint tacks up as I work just enough to be able to do things that oils cannot. No more acrylic paint drying on your brushes either. When you finally get that mix of colors just right, the paint doesn’t dry out before you get a chance to use it. Edges can be blended and manipulated—no more razor-sharp acrylic edges in your paintngs unless you want them. Yet, it tacks up enough as I work to be able to scumble, glaze, and overpaint. Oils can’t do that! For plein air painting, they can’t be beat. Just a spray of water now and then keeps them totally workable. I can get paintings varnished and out to galleries in less than two weeks. I don’t have to put up with that nasty “sinking in” and flattening of values that oil paints do overnight without my permission! The color remains as beautiful and vibrant as when it was painted. These dry to a matte finish, so do not at all have that plastic look of many acrylics.

I’ve had good success with it in the figure painting studio too. This one from a few weeks ago is one of my favorite figure sketches with the new paint:
Amanda Resting, 8×10″ on Canson board

I hope any of you artists out there reading this will have the opportunity to try out this new product. It’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. I’d be happy to answer any questions relating to the working properties of the paints; just enter them as comments on this post. I am so happy to be able to discuss them at last.

8×6″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on linen, matted to 8×10″ or mounted on board (buyer’s choice)

I loved the way the backlighting rimmed the front of the figure in this pose.

8×10, Golden OPEN Acrylics on Canson board
For purchase information, please email me at JamieWG@aol.com.

This painting is from today’s open studio—a great pose from our model Amanda, with lots of foreshortening to make me work extra hard!