Digital painting done in Corel Painter X using sponge brushes and a little charcoal. Always wanted to paint this one and needed to get the right mood for it and love the hair flow and curls.

If you want to learn how to do this, come to a Digital Painting Beginner Workshop in July in Asheville,NC. More information can be found HERE There are only a few seats left in this small private class so register now. Asheville Workshops for Digital Art include breakfast and lunch!

Kitty Kitty Digital Painting with a cool mosaic background. Mostly conte brushes and my own Marilyn Rainbow brush inside the ears. Had fun painting this one and I hope you can see her smile.

Moral to the story….Never paint when emotionally involved and can’t be objective. Here is the first rework of this painting…..I HATE it. Can’t get past it. Too much is involved. Sigh…..will have to try another one. Can’t get this one to work for me.

 Bottom line…does it matter? If it FEELS like a painting and looks like a painting then it IS a painting! All done in Painter using Quick Clone method and some of Maura Dutras new brushes on her DVD.

Sholin:  On the Easel:  Step Away from your Screen. New painting…..here’s part of it. Started soooo different and went in an entirely new direction. More about it coming soon! Can you find me on Facebook.com?  How about on the Facebook.com Group:  Paint Outside the Frame?

My personal assistant Stella was photographed last year in England by a fantastic photographer from Malta, Albert deMarco. I had always wanted to create a painting from the image and finally it’s almost ready for prime time. I still have some little things to fix and adjust and all comments and ideas are welcome!!  Here is Stella!!

On a rainy friday night last year we found ourselves in NYC in Chinatown right in the middle of Mott Street. It was dusk and the rain was coming down, but the busy shoppers ignored it and just kept shopping for the freshest ingredients for the weekend meals. It created a beautiful glow through the rain and a blur of people and open food markets.

As it happens, sometimes in order to finish another work “On the Easel” we have to walk away and paint something else and then come back to the problem child. Here’s what I did to break the brain freeze.

Here we go again. I restarted everything and am going an entirely different direction.

Work in Progress….let’s see where this one leads me.

Here is a painting I am working on, but I came about it by accident. It was from a portrait of a girl and her dog and as I started to paint it I got more caught up in the dog. But like most who don’t know where the journey is going, I had not prepped the dog properly for enough detail to begin with and had concentrated on the girl instead. I got caught up in Snowy and may go back and start this over as I’m not thrilled with the direction with no detail. I keep trying to bring the detail back in and keep the expression. As a true Work In Progress (WIP) this one qualifies for a “redo”. As in the movie ” The Mystery of Picasso “  I have learned I am allowed to be wrong, change my mind and wipe the entire canvas clean if I so desire. I have the freedom to make mistakes and change my mind. My thanks to my good friend Jeremy Sutton for introducing me to this movie and forcing me to open my mind to mistakes and enjoy the journey.