During the winter months my husband plays on a disc golf league that tours the region. This year the team needs new shirts and he had a vision that he asked me to paint. A spoonwood is a mountain laurel, which is native to the area and flourishes on the… Read More »Spoonwood T-Shirt Design
With every painting I am digging to reveal what lies beneath sand Watercolor, colored-pencil, and for the first time a wee bit of yellow gouache on hot-press paper. 9×12″
I have not taken very many commissions in this very busy year, but here is one that I have recently finished and can share with you now that it has been delivered to the client. A watercolor portrait of a family home, framed by snow in the owner’s favorite way.… Read More »Portrait of a Home Commission
We got a small tease of spring before plunging back into below-freezing highs, prompting me to paint another wish for warmer weather. This tiny watercolor was supposed to be less of a burden to finish in it’s diminutive format; a relaxing way to pass time with my hands I won’t… Read More »Sunset Sail
The snowpack was late this year, but once it arrived, it grew quickly. Still trying to get outside as much as possible, there were a few days when extreme cold kept me confined to the house to an even greater degree than the rest of the pandemic has. Embracing my… Read More »Heavy Snowfall, A Winter Landscape in Watercolor
Thank you for rejoining me in 2021 after my short New Year’s hiatus from blogging. After posting every single week of 2020, I thought I deserved a little time off to recharge and set some new goals. I’m heading into 2021 with loads of painting goals, but gentle ones. To… Read More »Endurance, a Winter Landscape
When we last left off, I had just put down my darkest values and finished the sky and mountains. Continuing to work primarily back-to-foreground, top-to-bottom, I’ve begun building up the tower and filling in the grasses with many overlapping short strokes. It took a long time to build up the… Read More »Commissioned Landscape in Progress, Complete
I’ve had to keep this one under wraps until I know the gift has been given. Today, I’d like to show you some in-progress shots of this commissioned landscape. We’ll talk about process, and next week I’ll reveal the finished painting, long since delivered to its intended recipient. The process… Read More »Work in Progress Commissioned Landscape
This is Zeke, Lord of Darkness and proof of concept for animals-as-dark-sorcerers portraiture. I feel a regal portrait is an appropriate thing to post for President’s Day…compositionally speaking. Zeke is a mischievous and smart good boy, with a face so much resembling a hell-hound that I was compelled to depict… Read More »Zeke, Lord of Darkness
Abstract art has it’s place in home decor. Representational work is my bread-and-butter, and how I’ve worked exclusively my entire career. The art I make is either utilitarian, or representational. Usually it’s both. But there are spaces in the home that don’t need the specificity of realism. For these spaces,… Read More »Desedimentation (My First Abstract Painting)
Happy Saturnalia! Bright Solstice! Merry Yule! It’s a very busy time of year for me, as always, so I haven’t had much time to post. I was doing so well there for a while! By now this painting has been published, so it’s safe for me to share. Above is a… Read More »Holiday Commission of the Boston Skyline
In the middle of July we took an absolutely lovely vacation to the heart of the Adirondack park to a private Island in the middle of Long Lake, in up-state NY. The Island is called ‘Round Island’ and it’s owned by the family of some of our closest friends. They… Read More »En Plein Air at Round Island
Happy Summer everyone! This post has nothing to do with summertime, but I hope everyone had a wonderful solstice nonetheless. This post is kind of the opposite of summer; it’s another skull painting that I finished last winter, but I was waiting to get it framed before I published a… Read More »Canadian Lynx Skull Watercolor
Arriving home after a half-day hike in the woods I attempted to recreate one of the beautiful landscapes that I came across by memory. Though the image seemed vivid in my mind, it is never preferred to recall an image by memory alone. Memory isn’t a reliable visual resource; most… Read More »Tiny Landscape From Memory
Another skull painting to add to the series I’ve been working on: a bison. This is the first full-size watercolor that I’ve completed in the new house, though the sketch and reference photos began last year before the move. Very straight-forward, I start with a pencil sketch transferred onto a watercolor… Read More »Bison Skull Watercolor
I am thrilled to finally be able to share this painting with you. I finished it some time ago but just presented it to the client this weekend. Commissioned by the Army Mountain Warfare school in Jericho, VT, this large watercolor painting combines the school’s mascot (a Ram’s head) with… Read More »Large Watercolor Commission
Merry Christmas! Below is the painting that I made for my aunt’s annual Christmas card. It is a portrait of two new family dogs. I painted this piece in quite a hurry using watercolors and colored pencils. It is impossible to get a photograph of two dogs looking in the… Read More »Commissioned Christmas Card: Watercolor, Colored Pencil
Fall is that one time of year where the squirrels seem to be extra busy. I see them everywhere! Collecting their acorns and getting into trouble. I hear that they have to bury extra acorns because they won’t remember where they put most of them. So if they just put… Read More »Ever Notice How Active The Squirrels Are In The Fall?
The other night I finished a painting of a leafy sea dragon. I saw one of these beautiful fish a week or so ago on TV and decided that it would be a really fun thing to paint. I hunted down a couple of different reference pictures online, and from… Read More »The Leafy Sea Dragon
Here is a commission that I finished some time ago for a custom Christmas greeting card. This portrait of a house was done in watercolors on cold press paper. As always, I worked from a photograph. Starting with a sketch, I refined the drawing and transferred it onto my watercolor… Read More »Custom Christmas Card
Here is a fun painting! Like my others lately, it was a quick one to finish, taking only a day and a half to complete. I wanted to try something really whimsical and free-flowing, while still defining the form of the face. I had a lot of fun with it,… Read More »Blue & Pink Fashion Illustration
I have given my studio a permanent home on Shaunart.net with its very own page! Complete with address, visiting hours, directions, and postings about upcoming events. The page is small right now but it is sure to grow and change. Check it out at: http://www.shaunart.net/pages/the_studio
Here I have two pieces just added to the Sketch book gallery. Done back in the Spring as practice for field sketching, the first is a watercolor sketch of the Hog River in CT on a rather dreary day. The second is a copy in watercolor of a Hopper master… Read More »Two new sketches
Here’s a little painting that I did a while back but haven’t had a chance to talk about. This is my Blue Chameleon; he is done in watercolors on cold press paper, and took about three hours to paint. He is currently in a cute little green frame along side… Read More »Blue Chameleon
Another painting from senior year that fits with my thesis on art for the theatre, this is a retro-styled poster for the musical Chicago. Here I am show-casing the main character, Roxie Hart. I wanted to add several elements from the musical, such as the stage, and Chicago night life… Read More »Chicago Poster
Part of my senior thesis project was to do a series of three. I chose to do a series of three portraits, of three women, in three different modes of costume, interacting with three different classifications of animals. The first portrait is of a woman in a tradition costume. A… Read More »Portraiture
This painting is more concept art, but this time for the musical “Into the Woods.” This musical, if you haven’t seen it before, takes all of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and combines them into one great big story. Cinderella is a major character in the play, and as you know, her… Read More »Cinderella
For the next few weeks I will be blogging about the individual pieces that made up my senior exhibition. In no particular order, I would like to start with this re-imagining of Audrey II, the monster from the musical ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’ For my senior project I choose to… Read More »Little Shop
Just completed a commission for a repeat client. It’s a drawing of a house, with a few light washes of watercolor over it. This painting was quick and inexpensive. If anyone needs a painting of a house, I would definitely take a commission like this again.
I have a thing for dark humor. The painting below is my final watercolor piece of the fall semester, 2010. Our assignment was to do a painting where the main subject matter is an egg. That was the only requirement; other than containing an egg, the painting could be about… Read More »Eggs, Anyone?
Here is my first watercolor from this semester. I did not post it sooner because I was waiting to get it back from my professor so that I could scan it. Then winter break came along and I had all of this other work to post, and so this painting… Read More »Fruit Mice
Here are some figure drawings done in monochromatic watercolor and ink wash! This first one is more of a portrait than a figure drawing like the ones you are used to seeing from me. But the model did not show up to class that day so we had to paint… Read More »Figure Drawing with Ink and Watercolor
New watercolor piece complete! Just in time to give me a breather for the Thanksgiving holiday. This painting took a lot of work; half of the project was research! Our assignment was to illustrate a scene from an opera, and we were given a list of composers to choose from.… Read More »Die Valkyrie
Wow! It seems like its been such a long time since my last post! Things have been really crazy at school with midterms and final projects starting up. I actually have a lot of work that I need to post but there hasn’t been enough sun to photograph it all.… Read More »Copy of Comtesse D-Haussonville by Ingres
Watercolor is getting easier. I guess it just takes a lot of practice. There are many different techniques to learn and try before you can decide which one works best for you. Because watercolors are translucent, you can either build up your colors, mixing them on the paper, or you… Read More »Learning to use watercolors.